Finding Your Way

I have said before that spending time with teen addicts has helped me think things out. Not always sure what direction the thinking is going, or of what use it will be, but the thinking is still happening. Most often it is in the middle of the night. I awake thinking about some image or comment made at a teen meeting.

Last night it was a glimpse of a girl (14 or 15). Sweet, open expression on her face. Somewhat like one of my granddaughters. Eyes wide open; mouth relaxed, body stiff in her chair with her legs and feet thrust straight forward.

I don’t recall what was being said at the time but I know she was engaged. I got a cue from her that the line of discussion was good, helpful. Next to her was a fellow who has a horrible relationship with his parents – mother absent for 10 years or more; father horribly judgmental and demeaning to his son; the boy now lives with his grandmother, his father’s mother; both grandmother and father do not get along either – so the young fellow casts about for some life model to follow. He loves his grandmother; she is his de facto parent. And she protects him somewhat from his dad.

Another kid is smart and earns top grades. He has his heart set on a good college education and looks forward to the freedom away from home and the attraction to the books and intellectual adventure. But he is different from his peers and I think he feels that apartness acutely. Perhaps that was the doorway to drugs? I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I sense a cause and effect relationship here.

And others in the room. I could go around the circle. From 5 last week to an eye popping 11 this week! Unexpected growth in the group. Is this the season of experimentation and getting caught with drugs? The years do witness an ebb and flow of patients, sometimes a response to seasonal pressures. But who actually knows and understands these things? Certainly not I.

I found myself wondering what I was feeling and thinking when I was their age? I had so little outlet to drugs or even booze. My great attraction was to cigarettes. That was the huge taboo in our home. Both of our parents were adamantly against smoking and the hideous moral decline it represented. And of course all three of us kids became smokers! Naturally!!

Back to the issue at hand. What did I feel and think at the age of these kids? I struggled with this until the middle of the night. And then I viewed a partial image of the answer. It was – is – ‘I was finding my way.’ I was looking for who to be and what to do with my life. I didn’t have a firm sense of what it would be like but I knew education would figure into my plans. I knew I wanted to accomplish something; I just didn’t know what. Although I loved music, art and thinking, I didn’t feel music or art would be my career. The thinking part held promise, though. Just didn’t know what the particulars might become.

I remember wondering about sex and biological function. I knew that being with another person was somehow very important and the models provided were always couples made up of a man and a woman. I watched young teens couple up with one another – always a guy and a girl – with arms entwined, dancing together, and just passing time away together. I imagined what a sexual encounter between them might be like but had no facts to go on. So that was a dud to think about.

And I never quite got comfortable envisioning myself in such a couple scenario. It just didn’t fit. But then I thought that would come in time and I didn’t worry too much about it.

No, what I worried about was getting along with other people. Who would become my friends? Why would we be friends? What did each of us need that would make for a relationship in the first place? Questions. Always questions. And very few answers.

In my journey to find my place I relied on my parents steering me in the right direction. So school was a big thing. Honor Roll was a desired goal. Doing well at church and choir and other areas of interests, too. I liked biking in wooded New England areas. And I liked photography, lugging the camera with me on my bike trips. It was an idyllic time. Not a lot of people; a tranquil New England setting with open meadows, woods, lakes and beautiful scenery all for the taking. I explored classical music and loved it. We lived in an area of abundant musical culture – summer home of the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood – summer stock theater seemingly everywhere with nationally known actors and actresses living in our midst for the summer months – and so much more: Jacob’s Pillow Dance Theater, South Mountain Music Theater (Burgundian Court, Medieval music and instruments, etc.). An encyclopedic wealth of cultural talents to choose among.

So I followed my nose into college, university and careers related to same. And I did find myself. But I took up smoking and eventually, as a full fledged adult, became addicted to both cigarettes and alcohol. Beat both of them out of my life in time but I do recall seeking their calm and peace in an otherwise complicated life with too many questions and not enough answers.

Is this what my teen addict friends are feeling? I think yes.

Of course they are each on their own journey and experiencing different phases of that trip so as we work with them in group the playing field is anything but level. It is natural though, isn’t it?

And so the glimpse of meaning and partial answers forms a partial understanding. I will attempt to use this to connect with and engage the teens. Bit by bit we will find a bridge between our generations. And then maybe to their return to health?

June 7, 2016