Confession #6: I feel guilty living my life.

A stage of grief.

I am taking a vacation this month.

It is a long anticipated re-do of a cancelled anniversary trip from last year, for which I had been too ill to travel. My husband and I have worked hard; we have saved and planned and organized and jumped every logistical hoop in our personal and professional lives to make this happen. And yet, I have been apathetic and fretful and generally unenthused.

I sat with this apprehension for a while the other day before I realized what it really was: guilt.

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At the top of a backpack chocked full of conditioned shoulds and should nots, there is perched a heavy and awkward weight— While I board a plane to go soak in the sun and the sea and the most incredible food, my oldest child will remain locked in an 8x10 cell, cold and hungry.

Yes, I am in therapy, thank you very much.

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I have thoroughly explored my many “issues” over the years with a trusted therapist and— when needed, we have gently (or not so gently) challenged my perspectives. She has helped me to identify patterns of erroneous thinking and unearthed more rational thoughts. I have good coping and grounding and self-care habits. Mental health is my trade, and I know the tricks.

But, as the saying goes, it is always the cobbler’s shoes that are the worst healed.

So much of my current experience cannot be gone over, under, or around with CBT techniques or reframing. I am smack in the middle of mourning the loss of my son to years of addiction, and now, incarceration.

This guilt is part of a grief journey. It is a kind of survivor’s guilt. This is the biproduct of going on with living my life while someone I love cannot.

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I have been someone’s mom longer than I was a free-bird in the world, and I will be near 60-years-old when our youngest child leaves home. My default setting has long been to order the needs and realities of other people ahead of my whims and wants. As moms do, I have packed and carried someone else's stuff for as long as I can remember.

Many years ago I purchased a Story People piece of art that says, “There are lives I can imagine without children but none of them have the same laughter & noise.” Indeed. I have been gifted nearly 3 decades of laughter (and soooo much noise) because of my 4 beautiful, talented, active, intelligent, unique, and hilarious children. I would not trade one single day.

OK, maybe I would swap out one or two but on the whole….

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Our laughter aside, the sensitivity and responsiveness required to be a “good” mom in this stage of parenting is a delicate walk. With a son in prison, it is a tightrope performance.

In the private conversations within my Moms-of-Incarcerated-Children groups (yes, there are such things), other moms concur. Ours is a unique misery, one that is hard to discuss and harder to describe. Our children in prison are not physically dead, but they are stuck on pause while life's routines and freedoms and evolutions keep going on without them. There is grief. And anger. And sadness. And anxiety, and helplessness, and regret. It can be all-consuming, if you let it be—

The sun streams in the morning window. He won’t be able to go outside today. I meet someone new and make conversation. Oh, my oldest isn’t living near home right now. A hot plate of food is delivered to the table. He is living on ramen. Holding my spouse’s hand. Will my son ever be able to meet a good woman and truly be happy?

Once, while I was sitting in a salon enjoying a few quiet “me” moments, I overheard the careless opinion of another patron jabbering beneath the clippers, “There is no such thing as a good inmate.”

Yes, that really happened.

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Opening a fully-stocked refrigerator

Driving with the window down

Waking from a good night’s sleep

Turning the heat up on a thermostat

Missing his last phone call

Gut punches.

I carry my phone, room to room, all-day-every-day as if I am on call. Because I am. His calls are never scheduled nor guaranteed. He waits, on random days at random times in a line in the yard at one of the few non-affiliated phones to talk to someone. Gangs control much of prison life; phones are no exception. Not being available for every call is a reality, but I hate, hate, hate it. The rest of that day is always a little sad, my sense of loss compounded.

While it is an hourly endeavor to keep on the sunny-side, it is conversely quite difficult to know how to talk to him about the good things happening in life—

I don’t send him pictures of holidays. I don’t tell him what I’m making for dinner. I don’t give him details about our plans, our travels, our fun in the wind and the water— because it feels like telling a diabetic all about the vanilla buttercream cake topped with colorful sprinkles that I made for everyone else.

In fact, I will not be sending him this post. He can read it someday when he is safely home, if he chooses.

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When therapy doesn't work, other things have helped a little:

I have practiced enough to kinda-sorta give up all of this fretting in the stillness of meditation, a few minutes at a time anyway. I have yet to find a sustained state of bliss but I can be here now on occasion.

Exhale the bullshit.

Other times, I attempt to barter with God, a silly little “quid pro quo” offered up from my end. The God of my understanding smiles often at my toddler-like attempts to hold things which are much too big for me to manage on my own. Through prayer I have found resolve: I am not meant to make sense of everything on this side of the grave and also, just for today, I can let a power greater than me know all and be in all places.

And then, there is this page. The purging and ordering of my twisting, turning thoughts right here before your eyes. Writing, for me, is recovery work, revealing truths and ordering the chaos.

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I can honestly report that my son has never asked me to feel any sort of way, nor has he requested that I feel sorry for him. Well, there was one time.

Early in his incarceration my son got angry enough to pen a strongly worded JPay message and fire it off in my direction. Ironically, it followed a vacation that I had taken. He inferred, in a not-so-subtle way: Must be nice that you can afford vacation but not $20 for my store.

The subsequent series of exchanges between the two of us was one of our lowest points along this journey.

The truth, from my perspective, was that this had been his 3rd request for money that month. I felt worried and overwhelmed and frankly, pissed that I was being put in yet another position of sacrifice. The truth, from his perspective, was that he was being initiated into the sub-culture of prison exchange, barter, and extortion; and he was scared.

The outcome was a stalemate that lasted several days before the guilt kept me up at night and I finally gave in (which I have a history of doing). I sent the damn money if for no other reason than to be able to sleep without envisioning him getting shanked in the yard over $20.

Then the cycle spiraled on:

“I should help him, he has no one else. ”

“I should stop worrying so much.”

“I should have created better boundaries from the start.”

“I should know better.”

“He should know better.”

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I did then, and I do now live, perpetually, in a desire to make everything okay for everyone.

Hi, I’m Bridget and I am co-dependent.

The emotional bond with each of my children is a tether, thick and sturdy from many years of weaving. I relate to each of them differently, and they to me, but the bond secured to my oldest has existed the longest. It has also, unlike the others, been strengthened by decades of hypervigilence. He was everything first and every thing was a big deal: first pregnancy, first words, first steps, first school day, first school dance, first graduation, first arrest.

It has taken a long time to admit but I think I'm finally getting somewhere— for all of my parenting successes and failures, I am not the line leader anymore. I am not in charge of them. Perpetuating the idea that I could have or can now prevent any of my grown children’s choices is magical thinking. It is also selfish and futile and ruining my vacations.

📷: Drew Collins

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The truth is, like any grief, I cannot fix this. I do not need to “do” anything except go on this vacation and find a small container of joy to bring back as a reminder that, in spite of some crap circumstances, it is not all bad.

And anyway, if it is true that I still carry fragments of all of my children's DNA within my tissues, then he is with me where ever I go. Along every vista, on every mountaintop, on the beach, in the wake of the boat, in the sunset— he is there. Even if only in spirit, even if only for a moment, I can set him free.

Closing Note: Before posting, I edited this piece this morning, on our vacation— after a sunrise whale watching tour. As we pulled into the marina and docked, the boat moored next to us was, of course, named the Black Sheep. I laughed out loud and I swallowed down some forming tears.

He is always with me.