Again, this is a true story. Upon reading it you will find that I have had no need to embellish.
"An answer is always a form of death." (Chapter 75 of
The Magus pg 626 in my addition) I had a confrontation with this idea that was all too real and all too literal last weekend. This is a happy story, though, despite itself.
I work at a group home for teenagers that have shitty parents. Bad kids don't go to group homes; every kid is bad; I was bad, and you were bad, and "my kids" are bad. Bad kids don't go to group homes; kids with bad parents go to group homes. Kids with bad parents and no parents come to my group home in batches of 4 to 6 and I try to catch them in moments of enlightened despair and bring them back to a world where they don't need their shitty parents because they have other people looking out for them, people who care, like I care, for the safety and well being of the kids that got a bad draw. It doesn't always work.
At approximately 7:30 pm on Sunday evening I had already been at work for 26.5 hours that weekend, and 11.5 hours that day. At approximately 7:30 pm on Sunday evening one of my kids decided it was the right night to run outside and kick angry craters into the sides of three cars. He was on his last chance, and he knew that. When the cops were called, he did not know that he was going to be charged with a misdemeanor for criminal mischief; he was thinking much worse.
My kid has been to JDC (Juvenile Detention Center) on one occasion before. The night before, he had described it to me like this: "You sit in a cell, you get a pack of cards, and everyone leaves you alone. If you are on level four you get to go outside and play basketball on a fenced-in court, and you can watch tv. If you're on level three you can watch tv. If you're on level two you can eat in the dining hall and lift weights. If you're on level one you don't get to leave your cell." Last time he was in JDC, my kid was on level two. He was allowed to exercise for half an hour, and eat in the dining hall for half an hour each meal. He was in his cell for 22 hours per day with a pack of cards, one pillow, one sheet, and one blanket. He did not have a cell mate.
This was the image returning to my kid's mind when he heard that the cops had been called. He came inside, grabbed the phone, and barricaded himself in his room. He called his favorite staff member, and let him know that he would likely be going to jail that evening. Meanwhile I was getting all of the other kids into a room away from him, where none of them would get hurt should things turn ugly when the cops arrived. Nobody else was hurt, though that's not to say the cops arrived on time. My kid ran upstairs while I was trying to calm the others down. I do not know what my co-workers were doing at this time. The child, 15 years old, 16 in early November, grabbed a knife from the drawer, only a butter knife, and ran out the door with it.
It is not easy to draw blood with a butter knife; you can't cut tough skin, you have to stab it. Your wrists, for instance, are pretty tough. The skin is supple and well fed with blood. It doesn't break very easily. You really have to have every intention of breaking that skin. My kid did not want to go back to JDC; he wanted to tear a hole in his life. He tried, but it didn't work the first time. I saw him try, and I chased him about a mile to the high school yelling at him to drop the knife. "I don't care where you go, but you're going to get there with all your blood in you god damnit." I am not easily excitable. He got to the high school and I chased him around the softball fence. He climbed on top of the dugout and began trying fervently to cut his wrists. Thankfully he is not that bright, he left off stabbing to try to slice through his wrist with a butter knife.
Most people don't know the difference between the two major flexor tendons in the wrist, and the blood vessels that lattice around them, but one hurts very badly to cut, and the other, when cut, gives one a terrifying sensation of warmth. This warmth is not peaceful, it feels like the end, like the freedom one feels when cliff diving, but with the knowledge that there will be no water at the end, or maybe there will be, but not in this world. It makes one think "I am going to die. In less than three minutes I will never feel warm again. This is all my life leaving." My client started crying, and I thought for sure he had felt that warmth, seen his body leaking crimson. Do you know how deep the red is when you bleed from a major artery? I am color blind, but that much red is overwhelming; I see it just fine. I can also see the pallor of a dying face. His face was not dying. I thought he had cut his tendon. then he held his face and said "Everything is over. I'm not going back to jail. I'm going to kill myself. It's over."
I thought it was a curious thing to say, because it had seemed to me like he was trying to do this all along, but I didn't want to waste the opportunity to try and talk him out of it while he had his face buried in his hands, the knife laying by his shoes. "It's not over. Nothing is ever over (I said his name here, but that is confidential). Just give me the knife and you'll-"
"No! Nobody even cares about me!"
"If I didn't care about you I wouldn't have chased after you while you were holding a knife. Do you see how that is not a smart decision? But I made it anyway, because it is not over until I leave you alone. When you are alone, then you can say it's over. Just give me the knife (I said his name again, because it lets people know you care when you use their name)."
"Why do you even care?"
"because..." An answer is always a form of death. That was in my mind, not as a sentence on refrain, but like a pulsing awareness. It was more a sense of knowing a noun than a sentence. It was all one thing, beating in my head over and over. Imagine what a lighthouse looks like: the beam sweeps over you all at once. You're thrust into illumination. You cannot escape knowing, if only for a second before it swings away, and you are only aware of it sweeping the edges of your consciousness again. And this keeps happening over and over. I looked at him, with what eyes I don't know. Pleading eyes? Solemn eyes? Eyes wild with fear? I don't know if my look was threatening or if it was tranquil and reassuring. I hope it was the latter. It was raining, and it was not easy to feel any warmth. I would like to think that maybe he felt just a little bit secure, a little bit warm when I looked at him. I doubt it. "...just give me the knife."
He threw the knife down on the grass. I checked it and there were no blood stains. His skin was sawed up when the cops came to get him. He had tried very hard, but he hadn't done any real damage; it was virtually all surface level. It did not look like a proper testament to the fear I felt when I saw him stab and carve at it only a few minutes earlier. Then again, he had luckily only grabbed the butter knife in his haste. Of this I had been previously unaware. In this age without myth, even our dramas are terribly watered down. Still, the cops didn't want to put cuffs on him, because the skin was clearly not in perfect order. It looked like bedhead, disheveled locks of skin sticking up everywhere, with only the tiniest stains of blood on them. Hardly enough to dot my i's with.
He came back to the group home an hour later. I stayed overnight until he woke up. at approximately 7:00 a.m. on Monday morning, after 23 hours at work, 38 hours for the weekend, he came upstairs to eat french toast. I buttered it for him, and I asked "Did you sleep well?"
He barely even murmured "Yeah" but I heard it. "I wish last night was just a bad dream," he said.
"Yeah, I bet you do. But last night you thought you were going to go to jail or die, and this morning you woke up in your own bed, you have your breakfast, and I'm going to give you a hug before you leave for school, so things have already gotten better. Things always get better." We hugged, and he cried a lot. I'm glad he cried. People really need to cry more often, if only to show that they are conscious to what life is, and what it could be, for better or worse.
