Cast Out Stigma - Help Each Other

Day 395.

Well I tried to stop journaling.

I tried to bring this ritual to a poetic end at a year, but in truth, there is no poetic ending to this need, at least it isn’t yet.

My body is full to bursting and proceeding pages written on loose sheets of paper are testament to my need to journal even in the absence of a notebook, to bring my thoughts out, so that I may bring order to them, to expel them or even bring sense to them as they are transposed from my head to paper. Any paper.

Outstanding matters -

-The events that led Luke to drugs and his eventual death.

-The night of his death

-How he fell into drugs

-What kept him clean during those years?

-Why a boy so loved, fell so hard?

-Where do I stand in all of this?

Today I reached out to Marlon’s mother. A woman in despair, her son in so much danger. My intent was not as noble as the outcome. My black swan seeking the answers that I cannot get from Marlon. What I learned was a lot. When Marlon overdosed, it was heroin by injection. He called her from the hospital to come and pick him up, but he lied about the reason. It was obvious to her.

Marlon was with a friend when he overdosed. The friend called 911.

The night they took heroin, Luke and Marlon were talking and laughing, she tells me. This oddly makes me happy. Not the dismal scene of my imaginings. At least Luke was having fun. Oh! The strange ways the heart of a grieving mother finds a moment of relief.

She, like so many other mothers with a son in full addiction, drives into frozen nights to search the streets for her child. She’s alone, silenced by shame, by stigma. She weeps and worries and is tortured by what can happen. By what did happen to Luke. As my heart is torn by her suffering, my white swan emerged - I passed her the details of a help group for those in her position, a new way, not the Alanon way.

This is the way forward - Mothers uniting in strength and numbers. Sharing and caring for each other.

I admit to her that I was clueless about Luke’s opioid use -

She reminds me I could have done nothing, after all - she knows.. and is still helpless. This is oddly soothing.

I remind her that ‘little Marlon’ is in there some place, that this is a disease, that if it was cancer she’d be surrounded by support and yet all she is left with is me - the mother of a boy who tragically died in her home.

Cast aside the stigma, reach out, help each other. Soothe each other.

Of course the toughest discussions will be with George, of whom I am still afraid.

Afraid to seek into what I may not be able to handle.

The intimacy issue again.

Easier to deal with strangers.

If I were to drug test George and find a positive, what would I do?

I swore I’d not be this way.

I swore I would not stand by.

But here I am again, in frozen fear.