Growing up, I lived with my adoptive parents, and while it's true that we lived as a family, we did not have a relationship, instead, we had associations. From the outside, everything seemed like a family, but from the inside where life was lived day to day, there was distance. That distance can never be crossed because of boundaries that had been put in place by my father and mother.
Just how wide and long the distance was came into sharp focus during November of my journey of my junior year in high school. It was then that I had to " break the news" to everyone
I shivered on my way to school that day, both from cold wheather outside and fear I felt inside my soul. Who could I talk to? What should I say? How should I say it? How would they respond? The questions pelted me like the snowflakes I was walking through as I approached the front door of the high school.
A thought suddenly came to me---- meet with the guidance counselor. Of course! That was the help I needed to clarify my thoughts-----the help I needed to communicate my story to my parents--- the help I needed to stand between them and me and fine some kind of balanced answer to my dilemma, my problem, my crisis.
Bbat I sat trembling in the hard wooden chair, I could barely speak. My words were woven tightly in sobs. I know now I was gripped by a fear that had been growing in me since I was a small child. At home deep level within my soul, I felt like everything was coming to a head and I was powerless to stop it.
The high school counselor was thin and in her late forties. She wore a black and white herringbone, double- breasted dress. Her kind eyes peered from behind her black- rimmed glasses and she tried to help me gain my composure.
"Your mother will be here shortly," she said." I will stay with you...both.. while you speak with her." Her words were carefully selected so as not to promise good outcome to this meeting---at least that's what I sensed.
As I waisted in the counseling office, the temperature seemed to drop....yet my hands dripped with perspiration. Tears streamed down my flushed cheeks. My sobbing gradually subsided, stunned by the continual river of terrifying thoughts that assaulted me. How angry would my parents be? What would happen to me once they found out? Would this for ever kill the chance of a loving relationship with them? My mind was spinning with thoughts, question, and self-recriminations when my mother glared at me! Then she looked at the counselor as if to ask a question. Again I began to cry hysterically, and she turned her gaze back to me with that what- have- you- done- now? Look----one I had seen many times during my life with her and my father.
"Are you in drugs?" She blurted out in a tone that assumed my answer would be" yes".
"I can assure you, son is not on drugs," the counselor interrupted." Your son is a drug addict and was afraid to tell you by himself."
My mother's look hardened into a stare, empty of concern, void of fear, and filled with spite and contempt.
"You disgust me," your are a coward just like the woman who gave birth to you."
The counselor creaked forward in her chair about to respond, but hesitated. At that, without further comment or emotional expressions, my mother turned on her heels and abruptly left the room, slamming the door behind her.
Again, I began to sob." Can I stay here for a while?"
"Stay here until you pull yourself together," offered the counselor, her voice softening a bit.
And I did stay until I felt I was able to return home. Even after another half- hour , I wasn't really able or ready to return home, but gathered up my things anyway. I didn't know that my father's initial reaction would be, and I was afraid of my mother's continuing response to my situation.
On the way home, I drew my coat and scarf around me as tightly as I could, almost as if the clothing would protect me from what waited for me at home.
As I approached the house, my stride slowed and finally stopped. There on the front lawn lay irregular blobs of color scattered here and there, strewn throughout the area.
As I drew closer, I could see wisps of colored cloth blowing around in the wind. Then I realized all of my belongings had been thrown out of the house and onto the lawn. I bent over the first grouping and saw trousers and undis. Another clump of items included my jackets and gloves. Yet another was boots and shoes, then wrists watch and pictures, lastly, there lay my trophies and baton and toothbrush. My world had been torn apart and thrown to the winds of the world.
Sixsteen and cast out from the only home I had ever known, I nearly fell to my knees in front of the snow. Urgently, crushing thoughts raced through my mind. What am I going to do? Where am I going to?
I ran to the front door and rang the doorbell severally. I pounded on the door, crying and begging my mother to let me in. Surely she was home! Surely she could hear me and would respond!
I was wrong.
Eventually there was a response all right. A police car pulled up to our house and one of the officers slowly approached. His black boots crackled on the icy sidewalk and crunched on the snow- covered grass as he came closer.
"Excuse me," he said." We were called by your parent to take you to the emergency foster home until they can decide what to do with you." He sighed slightly at the statement as if he regretted having to say it and render such a duty. How contrary to the motto on the side of his squad car("to serve and protect") this must have seemed to him.
In a state of shock I bent down and gathered up a few items in weird combination: a scarf, a small trophy, and my toothbrush.
As the squad car took me away from my house and family, my silent sobs were mingled with the worst feelings of confusion, sadness and fear I had ever experienced. I was overwhelmed to the point of despair.
In the foster home, the rejection continued.y foster parents told me I was terrible for being a drugs addict." How could you do this your parents?" They ask over and over as the days progressed. They let me know I was not to be included in any of their normal family activities lest I negatively influence their children.
So I stayed in my bedroom almost all of the time. My foster parents felt it would serve as a good way for me to reflect on the wrond I had done. In the dark, alone, I pondered these and many other terrible feelings. It seemed as if the room itself drew darker with each self-condemning thought I had.
Five days later, my foster mother called me to the telephone. It was my father. His voice was low and measured; it seemed almost strained and hushed. He said he and my mother had come to a decision about me----about my situation. They were going to give me the opportunity to choose the future path of my life.
The" opportunity" he suggested was that I was free to choose to fly to new York where they had arranged for me to undergo counseling on how to stop taking hard drugs or could choose to continue the hard drugs taking and be permanently placed in other home than theirs. They would disown me.
The choice was mine. No matter what I chose I would lose something. No matter what I chose everything would be changed forever. No matter what I chose would never be the same again. But choose I did.