that was not laughter; I call that hysterics. But how interesting that we both revert to giggling and uncontrolled rolling-on-the-floor laughing when faced with feelings of total helplessness (though I'm sorry I called your cat, husband and boss "stupid," when in reality only your husband and boss are stupid. Joke. I'm just still mad at Ben for taking you away from Idaho). I also think it's interesting both of us feel we've walked through most of the garbage trials life can offer--not with much grace (on my part anyway), but we've faced these trials and are still breathing and even still in love with living. I mean after brushing up against deaths, suicides, drug addictions, prison, divorce, prolonged illness, abuse--whew, never mind; I'm depressing myself; you know the rest--we actually thought ho, ha, famine, earthquake, terrorist attacks? Big deal. We'll be fine when those types of trials come. But, how could we have known that we'd smash up against another experience so far over our heads that we're craning and straining our necks looking into the heavens for understanding. I do not understand Beau.I know hell. And I know you know what it feels like, looks like, etc also. We've visited there and know for sure we never want to go back. But Beau's particular kind of hell is one that's beyond me. His problems are surreal. I can't grasp them; they float in between neurotransmitters, deep in his hypothalamus, around dopamine levels, which reach out to circle the moon. But, I've got to believe that somewhere, somehow God's provided answers or that He will provide a way to ease some of his pain--even though, right now, it's a path that's invisible to me. This is more than simply changing, simply repenting. When he's driven by biology and mental illness, how much free agency does he have left? You are reading my words now, and my words are real to you; to Beau the voices he hears are just as real, only he has no reference point in his life to handle them. Can you imagine that kind of madness? His whole life, he's been brilliant, and now he's trapped in the very mind that was his greatest asset. And his thinking has betrayed him. On some level does his feel this? He must. Yet, when I talk to him, he justifies and slips between ideas so quickly--back and forth, up and down--that I feel like I'm listening to a thousand philosophers (every writer he's ever read) talk all at one time. I want to open his head with a knife and while it's open, quickly slide in this idea: "You are ill, Beau; You need medical help before you get worse. And you've got to help us because we don't know what to do." He jumps on a plane because the only thing he knows how to do anymore is travel, but he's lost track of where he's going and even where he's coming from. Has he told you yet he's in San Francisco? (I still can't figure out how you lost him when he lives right next to you; it's not like you're busy or anything. Another joke.) But I don't think he's going to Las Vegas. He's so slippery. Though I know this: things have to be very bad for him to call me for money, and last night when he called me to wire him $15.00 (Megan, even the amount shows his humiliation), I just sat there. I know he could sense my feelings through the satellites. "Never mind, Mom. the voices are just really loud today, and I wanted to get back to the airport." And I still had to say, "Beau, . . . I can't. I know you'll drink to get numb, to stop the noise in your head, and I don't blame you, but I'm more afraid of the alcohol.?" "No, Mom. It's OK. I can just run to Corey's; he's working, but he gets off soon." Then he just clicked off in humiliation. I felt so sick. You know the feeling: your throat tightens up, your head gets thick and heavy, you know you're going to throw up, then you want to rip the phone out of the wall, or scream and scream and scream, or jump in the car and drive all night to California to pluck him up off the streets yourself before some other person as crazy as he is finds him, before something irreversible happens, but you know it won't do any good because he'll just sneak away again to England or NYC, because nothing we do can help him, Megan. Nothing.
Later he texted me: Sorry. Phone needed charged. I texted him back: I will pray to God that He will send someone to help you get through this night because u r too far away to feel how much we love you. Then, I can't sleep again, Megan. I'm so stinking tired. I haven't slept in months, years. Somewhere, sometime, I'm going to find the softest cloud and sleep for a couple hundred years--like RumpleStilzSkin (msp)
In my life, Beau's always been this bird flying somewhere above my head. He's like a constellation I can't grasp. He was born thirty years old, much wiser than I, always sensitive to my every feeling. At Christmas or Thanksgiving, with a room full of people, he always knew exactly what I was thinking. I've never met anyone as sensitive, as beautiful, or as bright (except you, of course of course). To walk with him through an art museum, through China town, along a beach, to talk with him about Herman Hesse, Zen meditations, or any book (he's as widely read as you are), to hear him talk about India, Europe, Egypt, or Israel was to have a total involvement in a total experience. I don't know how else to say that. He lived so intensely. And now he works just as intensely to numb his pain. When he talked of swimming in the Thailand sea late at night, or running madly with Katy through the Himalayan mountains to shake off leeches, being attacked by the monkeys that guard temples in Cambodia, I was there with him. He's been a great gift to us. And now we want to give back to him in the worst way. We love him. But, like I said last night, this one is way beyond me, Sweetheart, way beyond the dark hall you just walked of also. This one we have to leave in God's hands now. Yet, more than anything else, we have to live so that if God whispers some idea to us, we hear Him. And we will not hear Him through worry. Worrying about Beau is too loud for us to hear God.
I'm so glad I have you. And, again, yelling about your stupid cat and your stupid husband and your stupid boss was me yelling at the whole stupid universe. In fact, "stupid" is my favorite word right now. In fact, if Beau comes back alive this time, if he isn't killed on the dark streets of San Francisco, when he gets back, I think I'm going to kill him myself. (Never mind. I can't find the keys to my locked down gun.)
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