We Are Totally Fucked, Part 2
It’s no longer 2022. It is fully 2023. I rang in the new year. We all did. But, as I could have almost predicted, I toasted midnight and the passing of a year…without my son. Without knowing his whereabouts or whether he was safe, warm, dry, sober.
All three kids celebrated a Christmas “back home,” where they grew up, surrounded by their extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. It was the first time they had celebrated the holiday with their dad in a few years, owing to family conflict and schedules and all of the detritus of grown-up life. This year I rented a house at a ski resort where we’d all rejoin in the afternoon of Dec 25 and continue enjoying family time through the 28th. I imagined we’d cross-country ski, hike, play board games, create memories.
We created plenty of memories. Some wonderful, some very much not.
My son had been on a precipice for quite some time, needing mental health support and the guard rails that come with it. As I wrote in “We Are Totally Fucked,” that care is tough to come by.
He successfully got sober in 2020, probably the toughest time for anyone to do that. He found stability and love here at my home rather than in the then-chaotic and disjointed environment of his father’s house which was shared with his dad’s manipultive and emotionally unwell girlfriend. He was…
