The Journey Home Begins

Blake was fast asleep when I arrived at his apartment. A roommate answered the door and went to wake him. Blake, now awake, led me to his bedroom where a quick glance revealed that the young man he shared a room with was also fast asleep. Almost two in the afternoon. Seemed about right for college students…

What took me by surprise (though it probably shouldn’t have) was that Blake hadn’t packed up his room at all, except for his clothes, which were all in his duffel bag. I’d asked him to pack up everything he could before I’d arrived and he’d done very little. I was frustrated, but kept that to myself. I recognized that getting upset would most likely only delay completing the task at hand. Instead, I suggested we get to work. Blake suggested he take a shower. Sigh.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll go make some work phone calls in the car. Come get me when you’re ready to pack.”

Twenty minutes later, Blake was knocking on the car window. He didn’t seem to know where to start. I’m not sure if it was depression, being nineteen, or just plain old lack of experience that paralyzed him. Whatever it was, I began directing.

We folded bedding; we packed kitchen supplies; we sorted through his remaining food. Hygiene items had to be sorted – those worthy of the journey home and those to be relegated to the trash. I directed Blake to suitcases, to giant trash bags I’d brought with me, and to grocery bags. At some point his roommate had gotten out of bed and we had the room to ourselves. I directed swiftly staying focused on the task.

There was a quarter dollar coin on the carpet. Blake walked carelessly back and forth over it.

“Who does this belong to?” I asked.

“It’s been there a long time,” Blake answered, “ probably most of the semester.”

We loaded all his belongings into the car, two floors below. Up and down the stairs, over and over again. Finally, we’d finished and it was time to say goodbye.

“Hey, Josh,” Blake called to his roommate, who was now at the dining table, “Do you know whose quarter is on our floor?”

“Oh yeah. That’s mine. I dropped it a while back.”

Blake handed the quarter to him and then they shook hands.

“I wish you all the best, man,” Blake said as they parted.

“Yeah, you too.”

We climbed into the car.

“Ready to go?” I asked. Blake nodded. As we pulled out of the apartment complex, I saw Blake wipe a tear from his face. Then another. And another. They were flowing freely now.

“You gonna miss it here?”

“It just feels like another failure – another failed opportunity in my life,” he said.

“Hey,” I said, “there were successes here, too. A lot of them. You’re allowed to feel what you feel and I won’t take away from that. You certainly have more growing and learning to do. At the same time, please remember that there were some things you dealt with very well.”

“Thanks, Mom.” My cue to be quiet. And we drove out of the complex I silence. Onward toward the future.

“I Just Don’t Trust Myself!”

I wrote this post four and a half years ago. It is my most read post by far and continues to be. It tells a tale of how OCD can take a rational and reasonable young man and cause him to question what seem to be the simplest things in life:

OCD In The Family

Many of us who live with a loved one who has OCD have heard this familiar refrain.  It doesn’t really matter what it is about; it could be one not trusting their own eyes that their homework is in their backpack, or whether the knob on the stove is really in the “Off” position.  OCD has a nasty way of making its victims regularly doubt themselves.

“I just don’t trust myself!”  Blake uttered in defeat one morning this week.  This had followed an excruciating morning of trying to choose a simple something – anything – to eat for breakfast.  He just couldn’t do it.  He stared deeply into the refrigerator.  His angst was palpable.  I could see the wheels churning furiously in his brain.  What can I possibly eat that will be acceptable?

Blake has lots of food rules and restrictions, yet he usually finds something to eat in a relatively…

View original post 681 more words

The Semester Winds Down

One of the successes: A lasagna Blake made for himself. He likes to photograph his meals.

Blake has been at college for an entire semester – or one week shy of it anyway. It began unceremoniously, with Blake declaring that this would be the shortest college experience of anyone in our family and dreading the start of classes. I flew back home fearful of the unknown and how my youngest might fare.

It’s been a semester of ups and downs. The downs include Blake not making it to class many days, him sleeping way into the evening on days when depression made bed the only option that felt viable, MANY assignments never turned in or even attempted. It included many phone calls from Blake saying he just couldn’t do this, that he needed to drop out. And there were the tears Blake cried over not feeling adequate, losing hope, and no longer knowing what his passion is.

The ups included Blake cooking for himself, grocery shopping, keeping up on haircuts – and being the only one in the apartment to actually clean the bathroom (though that may have been prompted by OCD fears – I digress). They include Blake joining clubs on campus and even attending murder mystery special events (something he rarely did while at home, and then only with much prompting). In short, my 19-year-old moved to a new city, lived in an apartment with three others, shared a room, and took care of the basic things he needed to in order to survive. I’d venture to say that joining clubs is a step beyond the basics.

Still, college itself definitely did not go well. I don’t know how well Blake performed in any class; I don’t know if he even knows. He has decided that this is just not the right time for school for him and he is coming home. He’s not happy about that. In fact, he feels like a failure and fears he’ll only continue to fail and to suffer emotionally. He hates the idea of being an adult in his parents’ home (and cannot seem to recognize that he is certainly not alone in that status).

Late next week, I will fly to meet him. We will pack up his apartment and come home. But we won’t be flying. The hubby and I felt that being back home in a matter of hours was too abrupt a shift from what we think was a growing experience for our boy. So Blake and I will take a road trip home. We have no planned route, no place we must stop – only an ending destination of home in a time span of three days. There will be a lot of open road and empty expanses on our way. My plan is to remind my boy of the successes he had and hope that he can find a way to hold onto those, even for a brief moment.