If this is the road to hell, let me get out here.

After a difficult weekend last week, Guy and I have had two serious rows this weekend already and it’s only Saturday night. I’m so tired.

Getting off this rollercoaster with William would be nice, but how to do that? I’ve been coping with having him at home again every day this week by helping him get a job but now I’m feeling wrung out and empty. We made a list together of what needed to be done, which included signing on to get jobseekers benefit, and sending off as many applications as possible to get a temporary job while he is still doing what has turned out to be a one hour weekly class at MPW, the sixth form crammer in Kensington he began in September last year.

You will remember that a new DVD had gone missing and also Alex’s mobile phone. We had yet to discover that Jack’s iPod had also been taken from his room. Will arrived home late on Sunday afternoon. I had put on my DVD and begun tackling the overflowing ironing basket whilst I watched it. I ironed most of the day. It always makes me feel calmer if I’m ironing, I find it grounding and soothing. When I’m feeling upset putting washing in the machine or ironing always helps. I do a lot of both as a consequence!

Guy had been working upstairs most of the day. He was about to begin a three week fraud trial in Sussex the next day, and had preparation to do. As usual when things are blowing up at home he is about to be in a black hole, out of town, leaving me at home with Will. It’s happened too often to be coincidence; we’ve both remarked on it, and it worries Guy. I guess he must remember well the day he came home to find me with my arm in a sling, after Will had shut my hand in the front door whilst I was trying to escape from his raging.

With Will back from wherever he’d been, Guy came down and asked me if I was ready to talk to Will. Nodding, I looked over at Guy and could see he was tense and uneasy. I’d begun being both things the moment I heard Will come into the house. Guy called upstairs to ask Will to come down into the kitchen to talk to us, like we’ve done scores of times before. I could hear Guy asking him to sit down as we had things to discuss.

Walking into the kitchen I hadn’t realised quite how furious I was with him.

‘Where have you been for two days without letting us know and why did you steal my DVD? I found it in your bag. How dare you help yourself to my stuff? I guess you were going to take it back to HMV to get the money back, were you?’ I said, feeling my breathing go out of synch.

Most of the time I can find a loving space within me to deal with my son, but just then that seemed securely blocked. Looking over at Will I could see he had tears in his eyes, and his face was going red like it always used to when he was little and about to cry. He was looking down at the floor, arms and legs crossed. I wanted to be something else with him, yet all I could feel was anger verging on hatred, and utter frustration that we were having yet another conversation about stealing.  All I wanted then was for him to leave so we didn’t have to do this anymore. He said he had taken the DVD to play at a friend’s house. I said I didn’t believe him.

‘I’m so hurt you could do such a thing, after all the other things you’ve taken of mine over the years. You’ve had my jewellery, you’ve forged my cheques. You knew I was looking for that DVD, I asked you if you’d seen it, do you remember, when you were doing ironing to make some money and you said you hadn’t seen it? I just don’t understand how you can do that!’ I was definitely in my whining lower self now.

‘And what about Alex’s mobile phone, where is that? You know how precious that is to him, he’s only just got it. He’s been looking for that all over the house. I will not have my other children upset because of you, do you understand. Do you?’ Guy was yelling.

He said that he had replaced Alex’s phone, back in Jack’s bedroom where he’d borrowed it from.

‘I just borrowed it for a text, and then realised I’d taken it with me later on. I didn’t steal it, I just borrowed it. I don’t have one so I borrowed Alex’s’.

Guy explained to him it wasn’t borrowing, it was stealing.

‘You go off yet again not telling us where you are, not letting us know you’re not coming home, not even giving us the courtesy of a call when you had a phone.  How can we go on living together if you’re going to start behaving like this again? Can’t you see we’ve all had so much of this. I’ve told you before, this family comes first, there’s four of us and one of you, if you upset your mother and your brothers you’ll have to go.’ he said.

I looked over to see that Guy had started to peel vegetables for dinner, he was going at them vigorously and shaking the potato peeler at William as he then went on to explain his view that when he’s on dope he steals, and he’s got to stop smoking. I join in saying that he had been smoking since he was a very young boy and we’re seeing long term effects here.

‘It’s ruining your life – can’t you see?’ I say.

‘That’s right, I’m useless, here we go again, you two bringing me downstairs to tell me what you think of me, great parenting that is! I’ve had this since I was fourteen. You telling me it’s all down to cannabis, when can’t you see it’s the way you treat me that’s the problem. You’re always threatening to throw me out, great that is - makes me feel really wanted. I’m happy with cannabis now, it just isn’t an issue. I hardly smoke at all so it can’t be the problem, but you can’t see that. If you knew just how much everyone else smokes and they don’t fuck up like I do, but you won’t accept that. I won’t sit here and hear you blame cannabis’ he yelled, walking out.

I went upstairs to see him later, after I’d calmed down and ironed every garment in the house. I felt able then to put my arms round him and give him a kiss. He told me how confusing it was when I’d said only the week before that I was enjoying having him around now that his behaviour was so much better, saying that I obviously hadn’t meant any of it. I explained that I meant that, of course I did, but now I was angry because he’d taken my stuff yet again.

‘It’s and…..and, William. Yes, I was enjoying having you around, your behaviour has been much better and I was happier with that, and now you’ve stolen from me and I’m angry but it doesn’t mean that what I said before was untrue. It’s both things – and……and. Can you see that?’ 

He said he could but that his life was just so awful he couldn’t see the point of any of it. I explained to him that we need to get him to see the drugs counsellor the next day, that we could send lots of cvs off and really make a stab at getting a part-time job if that was what he wanted. (‘You know it is, mum.)

The next week was better, despite Jack realising on Monday morning as he was about to leave for school that he thought his iPod had gone. (Oh no, surely not that aswell). Jack asked me to check in the safe where he thought his father had put it for safety. When I told him it wasn’t there he told me that he thought it had gone, but that he would have a better look for it later, he had to go to school.  Will was still in bed and didn’t get up until midday. I went in to his room to ask him about it, telling him that we needed it to be returned if he had taken it, and could he replace it please if he taken it. It turned up in Jack’s room later that day.

I spent most of the day on Monday, the day after our showdown with Will, trying to talk to the psychiatrist that we had seen the week before, with no luck. I wanted to update her, and see if we could get some urgent attention for Will. Guy and I had also decided that we probably needed to try and sort out somewhere else for Will to live - that maybe we could look to him moving out and into a flat by the end of March, so we needed to get things moving now.  The psychiatrist had told me that I could speak to the social worker attached to the clinic at any time, and they could help with finding Will accommodation if we needed it. But now that I wanted to enquire about exactly that, I couldn’t find anyone to help me. I spoke to a nurse at the clinic who told me that I should try to get a social worker for the family, and to ring the town hall to arrange it.

How depressing. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, believing anyway that they probably have much worse cases and wouldn’t take seriously a middle class family living in a nice neighbourhood, where the father was a lawyer and the children attended private schools. Instead I encouraged Will to make an appointment with his drugs counsellor, Donna, which he did, making it for Thursday. Today was Monday. I phoned her back and said we had had a difficult weekend where things had been stolen from the house and that Will needed to see someone urgently. She said she could see him later that day, and I drove Will over there.

Will did not want to go, telling me that drugs weren’t a problem so why did he need a drugs counsellor. I told him that stealing other people’s belongings was not normal behaviour and he needed to get help with this.

As we drove over there I began reminding Will that he needed to talk to Donna about the stealing – which he had once told me was like kleptomania, and a ‘sort of schizo thing’ with him.  We had had a good conversation that day, it was when he was in rehab at the Priory last summer. I was visiting him, which I did every day. He had a room overlooking the gardens at the back of the hospital, and I was sitting next to him on his bed looking out at other patients who were walking round the grounds. There was a young man with headphones kicking a football by himself.

I’d been telling Will about the research that shows that teenage cannabis use often leads to schizophrenia, and he had nodded saying that it was happening to him in a small way already. We talked about the party we’d given at our house for his grandma’s 80^th birthday, to which he’d been invited. We’d all been pleased to see him. (He was living in a flat with a friend then, for which we were paying). Whilst we were singing happy birthday, Will had been upstairs stealing jewellery from my room which he later pawned.  

Almost a year later here we are again, talking about the same problem.

‘I take things because most of the time I don’t feel alive at all. And when I take stuff it’s only then I feel alive. Nothing goes right in my life, I just muck everything up. I’ve messed up college again for the third time, I can’t get a job, I’ve been trying for three years and no one wants me. What’s the point.’

I glanced over at him. His eyes were closed, his head resting on the door of the car. Oh God, what do I say here? I feel wretched that my own child should feel this way about his life, and I can’t seem to help him. I know he needs to get help, and Donna is all we have at the moment. At least he is agreeing to go, so that has to be a positive. He’s so vulnerable and yet so difficult to deal with, there’s an aggression there. It’s like he’s a stranger, yet he is my eldest son, there must be a way through this if I can remain strong.

© Debra Bell 2007