Denial

Memoir Excerpt:

“Nearly a year had passed since her disappearance from the psych ward in Baltimore. There was no word for a year—nothing. I assumed she was dead; I was sure of it. My daughter, once upon a time, was the most faithful and loyal child any parent could wish for. And even though this memoir has shown numerous instances of the drug-induced change in her personality, I still believed, needed to believe, that my daughter would never torture her family without any word for a year, not unless she couldn’t contact us. She would never be that cruel. Therefore, she must be dead. This is when I wrote her eulogy. I was just waiting for the end to come. The only thing missing was the body.

Ah yes, the body, that tool, that means, to fund her habit. How could I forget what had happened not that long ago? I was wrong. I was wrong and still unbelievably naïve about the power and the cruelty of drug addiction. There was a living, breathing body living just outside of Baltimore. Only now she called herself Anna.”

Memoir Excerpt:

“After Angie’s arrest, I felt myself start to dissolve. I was a sugar cube with hot water poured over it, and I was melting. It was January 2008, and I started to feel my insides harden, or soften; I’m not sure which. I could barely swallow food, my taste buds had totally changed, everything in me changed, I couldn’t watch the shows I used to watch. I would lie in bed for hours at a time staring at the wall. I lost a ton of weight. At school, I watched in horror my hands uncontrollably shaking. I would space out in the middle of teaching a lesson. One of my students noticed and asked me if I was OK. What the hell was happening to me?”

I spent the long holiday weekend up in Massachusetts with my mother in her nursing home. “How is Angie?” she queried. Bless her heart, for the past three years we all lied to her, told her that her granddaughter was living in California. How could I break my mother’s heart and tell her the truth? What was the point now of disclosing to my mother truths that would only further break her heart and open a can of worms she wasn’t well enough to deal with? My mother was ninety-eight years old, and was soon to meet her Maker. Leave her to her illusions, we all agreed. During my time with her, I sat on her bed and did the strangest thing: I wrote the first twenty pages of my life story. I felt driven right then and there to write down things I had been putting off for years. It was an incredible adrenaline rush.

Then I flew back to my life and my job and admitted to myself that I was having a nervous breakdown.”

Memoir Excerpt:

“I guess none of us knew at that point what we were dealing with, but we were soon to find out. In January my birthday came and went without a word from Angie, and I felt that same familiar cloud descending into my carefully protected space threatening my well-being…

Doc called that weekend of the 12^th, telling me that Angie and Joe had taken off without a word. I’ll never forget how I felt when he told me this. That same familiar hollowness returned, as if I’d been gutted on the spot. And as to Doc, I was speechless with shame, after all he and his family had done for them. A couple of days later, Angie called from Richmond, asking me to pay for one night in a hotel before they went back to Doc’s to apologize.

They went back to Doc’s all right, but not to apologize.

Doc called to tell me that someone had broken into his house, stolen his credit cards, and taken his truck. Apparently they had been sleeping in the chicken coop, in January, waiting for the best time to make their move. ‘Sleeping in the chicken coop?’ I moaned to myself. Oh, God, what had she come to? He called the police, and they were picked up pretty quickly in Baltimore.

The policeman who arrested them told me that Angie tried to get away, screaming, “I’ll kill myself if you arrest me!” They were both taken to the jail in Baltimore. Joe was locked up on the spot for grand larceny/car theft; Angie was released to the psych ward in a nearby hospital. She had no priors and got off the hook. The very sympathetic policeman who arrested my daughter gave all this information to me over the phone. It was a Tuesday night, and I needed to get to my parents’ Al-Anon meeting. I was leading that night. I’ll never forget how I was feeling: hollow again, but wooden; it was almost surreal, sort of an out of body experience.

This wasn’t happening! My daughter was getting arrested? I kept saying to myself.

“Mrs. Romero? Mrs. Romero? Are you still there?” the policeman

asked.

Then he advised me, “Let it go, Mrs. Romero. There’s nothing you can do for her now. Let the legal system handle her.”

Sure, but they’d have to find her first.

I didn’t have time to go into rescue mode. After one day in her second psych ward, she called a friend who lived in Baltimore to come get her out. Poor, hapless friend, she had no idea that she was releasing Angie to the wind. This time my girl truly was gone with the wind: no word—no contact—nothing. “

 

Early in Angie’s illness, I flailed around in denial, sometimes strong, as when I handed her logical consequences for being abusive. I felt like a moth turned into a butterfly then, but I later added, “Oh how this butterfly would flutter and die in the years that followed, as I backtracked over and over again, trading in my courage for equal does of martyrdom.”

Memoir Excerpt:

“Rehab was an old converted motel out in the middle of nowhere. Good thinking; patients could leave but there was nowhere to go. What a desolate place it looked like, with grass that hadn’t been mowed outside, crumbling asphalt walkways, peeling paint, and a screen door that was falling off its hinges. This is what I got for looking in the phone book and making a hurried decision.”

“The ride was quiet. Xavier played a lot of tapes so we wouldn’t be able to talk much. And what could we say? All I could think was that Angie would snap out of this. She would get it right away; I was sure of it. How could this be happening anyway? I was certain I had been dreaming and would wake up from this nightmare. This sort of thing happens to other people’s children, I assured myself…”

“Angie was a Foreign Service brat.  She was born in South America and moved easily from country to country, or so it seemed.  When we lived in Greece, she competed in England with the gymnastics team. When we lived in Rome, a scout picked her to be in a movie. She was a shining star, and her outward accomplishments duped me into thinking she had a bright future. Oh boy, was I ready to take the credit! Ten years later, when she was twenty-one, I was completely unprepared when she started tumbling into the hell of drug addiction. I should have, but I didn’t see it coming. Oh boy, was I ready to take the blame.”

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Angie got through childhood and adolescence pretty well, and not unlike many other young people. But there were signs of the coming storm. Here’s an early excerpt:

“If I was surprised by my daughter’s drug addiction in 2001, it’s because she appeared so functional and went out of her way to hide herself from me.  Later on once her addiction had taken hold of her, I would be incredulous at the dysfunctional behavior I was seeing. It’s as though she had become possessed. She had problems, but I thought I was helping her deal with them responsibly. There were no visible red flags. She didn’t stay in bed every day and pull the covers over her head. She diligently saw her therapist every week, facing every day with discipline and good humor. She never missed her classes and she never quit her jobs. Her grades were excellent. Maybe—and this is important to recognize now—this was the beginning of the denial that would hamper me throughout Angie’s addiction, preventing me from dealing with her illness intelligently and effectively.

Angie was a good daughter. But please, beware of the complacency in those words.  Clearly, she hid her pain very well. Clearly, much was lurking beneath the surface that I did not see. And if I ache with the vacant promise of all the “woulda, coulda, shouldas,” it’s because I know that even if I had known what was coming down the road, I couldn’t have stopped it.”