It's no secret that one of my brothers--whom I'll by his childhood nickname of George (he always seemed like a George to me, and after he starting playing baseball he hit home-runs like Babe Ruth and soon everyone was calling him George)--smokes pot, and has smoked pot, consistently, since he was 14 years old. He's 21 now.  He's spent a night in jail for it. He has what is called a "wet reckless" on his record, which means he was driving under the influence of marijuana, but that the judge was a nice guy and gave George another chance by giving him a "wet reckless" instead of a DUI--which means 10 years probation, and if he's pulled over for anything remotely reckless, he automatically gets 2 DUIs (which also means he goes straight to jail, car impounded, etc.). He continues to smoke pot. And he continues to drive. He's done weed for so long the THC is in the fat in his body, and he can't properly pass a piss test for jobs (being clean 3 days/a week/whatever does not work for him now). When he was 19 and on a camping trip with friends, two friends disappeared for a while and everyone worried. George was the only one who had a car (a truck to be exact). He was too wasted and high to go look for the missing people, so he let his friends drive. It had been rainy, and the friends who had been missing rolled their truck and the people driving George's truck (they were the least wasted/high of everyone there) rolled his vehicle, too. For a year, George didn't have a car. For a year, George's friends conveniently disappeared. As soon as he gets another truck, suddenly everyone is buddy-buddy with him again. Last year, George's friends started dealing heavier drugs, and he met a 15 year old coke addict who has been in rehab three times and now her parents have given up. She's one of those girls that gets "passed around" at parties in exchange for cocaine. Yeah, this is my 21 year old brother's "soul mate" (his words). In the last two months, George has had two friends die in car accidents (driving while high), and a friend of his has been caught counterfeiting money across three states. Oh, and his girlfriend has open sores all over her body from crystal meth. At least she's 16 now? Oh, and now he's doing coke and meth, too.

Yeah, this is another reason why I'm pissed at my mom: she allowed this to happen.

When we found out that George was doing pot at 14, my mom allowed it because at least it was only pot. She allowed it because she was too scared to lay down rules that prohibited that kind of behavior. She refused to deem it unacceptable. She was afraid that if she forbade him from doing it, he'd just hide it from her in the future--and then that would resort to him sneaking around and stealing. At least it was "only pot."

Seven years later, my brother has lost every job he's ever had because of his addiction. I say "addiction" and not marijuana because, generally, weed mellows people out. But obviously, he's done other drugs in the past and recently he's been doing the harder drugs on a regular basis (my mom found a perfume tester tube of hers emptied and the end severed to make a tube for smoking meth--you don't go to that amount of trouble if you're only doing it at parties), and his addiction makes his behavior erratic to the point where he was fired from his most recent job because his co-workers are afraid to work with him.

Wednesday, my mom found plants growing in the house. Thursday, she came up to visit and everything came out. Apparently, I'm the only one strong enough to do anything about this. At first, I tell my mom to swallow her fucking pride and call my dad and ask him for help. George always listens to men--he has a "daddy" complex--and so I say let's use it against him and call our dad. My mom won't do it.

I tell her this job is bigger than one person. If she won't call him, then I'll swallow the pact I made with my husband to never speak to my father again and plead for his involvement on George's behalf.

And then it occurs to me: this job is bigger than one person. It's bigger than two people. This fucks with us all. Especially in light of the fact that he's progressed to not just dealing (which he has done from time to time, selling parts of his stash for quick money) but growing: endangering the lives and livelihood of everyone with whom he lives (which includes my mom, my other brother, our grandmother, our uncle and his kid). And it doesn't fucking occur to him that this is not okay.

And it doesn't fucking occur to my mom to do something about it.  All she said was, "Get the plants out of the house by the time I get home!" What the fuck?? How about, "Get the hell out of here! You wanna throw your life away, don't take us all down with you!" Dude, if there are plants growing, California will waste no time seizing the house and assets and ask questions later, if you're lucky.
Jesus Christ. Just writing this is making me pissed all over again. But I need to get it the fuck out.

Friday = inter-fucking-vention. For George AND my mother. I mean, I let it rip on Thursday night and Friday on the way down to San Diego. The main points I try to get across: "You enabled this behavior. That means you have to make clear and firm boundaries about this. He either chooses drugs and his lifestyle or his future and his family." She keeps flipflopping around, "I can't kick him out. If he leaves, he won't be able to come back. Nonna won't let him come back. [Her brother and his kid who are currently living in the living room and have been for the last two years] will take his room."

"Then that's his choice," is what I say.

We all write him letters and put them in a notebook. He refuses to come home--he's on the phone with my mom for an hour screaming at her about how he refuses to come home unless she tells him what she wants. I was appalled that he talked to her like that. He spoke to her in a way that we would never allow anyone to talk to her. He finally does come home with a friend. And for a few hours, we systematically tell him what we feel. He gives up the plants (we disposed of them), but he refuses to say he's going to stop. And I look at my mom and say, "You need to say it. He needs to hear you to say it." And she won't.
Does my mom put down firm boundaries? Does she make him make a choice? Nope. What the FUCK??

Confronting George was the saddest and hardest thing I've ever had to do, because I wasn't just confronting him with his behavior, but I was confronting truths about my mom and myself that I have allowed to go on for seven years. I made a huge stink about George doing pot at 14 and demanded my mom do something about it. But she refused, and I was in DC. I was powerless. Whenever I argued with my mom about her lack of parenting, she hung up on me.

The two truths I confronted:

#1) That over the years, I have okie-doked the pot in order to have a relationship with George. We have never really gotten along, in spite of my best efforts. I have tried writing letters, calling, sending random presents, making sure birthday and Christmas gifts were awesome, and when we moved to California, inviting him up to stay with us and hang out (of which every single invitation was turned down). Nothing works. It's gotten worse since I've started a Ph.D. program and he throws that in my face. Like I could never understand what it's like to be him because "You're in a Ph.D. program. I'm not allowed to have an opinion" -- he said this on Friday. And might I just say that he had a male professor for a Criminal Justice class he took his first semester of college who said, "If you don't have a Ph.D., you don't have an opinion" which translates in my mind to, "Make the arguments I want you to make. Don't think for yourselves." Anyway, I do nothing but try to make George feel good about himself and I'm already highly self-conscious of getting a Ph.D. (it sounds snobby), so I just say I'm in grad school when people ask what I do, and I never talk about school or teaching when my brothers are around because I already know it's a sore spot to George. So I know in my bones I never gave him this impression. I emphasized male professor because George takes whatever men say as gospel and completely disregards women's opinions (and by women, I generally reference my mom and myself, but as his circle has expanded, he treats all women this way), even if those opinions are trying to boost his self-esteem. He says it doesn't count that we think he's talented. He says it doesn't count that we love him. He says we're supposed to love him because he's family. No matter how many times I have to tell him our dad is family, Nonna is family, but I don't love them. It doesn't get through.

2) I used to think "understanding" meant helping, when "understanding" really means I stand on the sidelines as I watch George's life spin out of control. This was tough to admit. Because I wanted to be liked by him, I wanted to be close to him the way I'm close with our other brother, and I thought my being cool with pot could help that. And it just hasn't. I also tried to "understand" because my mom couldn't take my criticism of the situation. I kept telling her this is not acceptable, and she'd hang up on me or freeze me out. I "couldn't understand" because I "don't have children." (See how all this shit is connected? Fuck.)

To be completely honest, my general opinion on marijuana has drastically changed. I used to think that if you did any illegal drugs, it was wrong. But as I've become more educated, I've become a moral relativist, and with the small amount of research I've done, I now find it silly that marijuana is illegal in the first place. I just wrote a whole paragraph on how I think it's stupid that pot isn't legalized, but it's a totally different post altogether. Anyway, I don't necessarily think pot is the problem. It's his lifestyle. He has no ambitions. He has no motivation. He is generally attracted to all things criminal (he's said since he was a teenager that he wanted to be in the mafia), which I understand because I am, too, but I don't live it. Well, I suppose I do vicariously through The Sopranos and The Shield, but that's so not the same. But no matter how moral relativist I am, I cannot condone growing plants in the house because as stupid I think the law is, marijuana is still illegal and it's never cool to jeopardize the lives of others by your choices and actions. His friends are all the dregs of society that I wanted desperately to get away from in Northern California. In short, George has become my step-dad, Aaron, except with the master manipulation skills of our dad.

I don't know how much he heard. And this post sounds like I was really harsh to my mom and George, but I wasn't. They don't hear me most of the time, and they hear me even less if I criticize or if my tone of voice gets confrontational. So I had to have let my mom come to the conclusion herself that she enabled my brother (I am my father's daughter, manipulation comes easy). But after she said it aloud, I said that's why she needs to create strict boundaries. Because he's an adult now, she really has no power. Putting the boundaries down based on the simple fact that he has to follow them if he wants to live there is all the power she has, but she wouldn't do it. She's too afraid to let him go and let him rock bottom. Hell, she's too afraid of even giving the mildest hint that the next time he smokes, he's out of the house because if she says it she thinks he'll leave.

I'm so tired of pussies. I'm tired of being a pussy myself. I'm so tired of trying to be the person everyone will like. I've been able to let it go for friends, but it's harder letting it go for family. But on Friday, I did. While our youngest brother told George what he felt, I tried to stay out of George's line of vision. But he turned around and said, "What the fuck are you doing? You're family. Get over there." But I just said it, "You don't like me, and I'm trying to stay out of your eyesight so you can concentrate on what [our brother] has to say." He repeated, "I don't like you?" in a tone of voice that supposedly suggested ludicrousness to perhaps everyone else, but to me suggested that I knew the truth. And I replied, "Yeah. You don't like me." And he didn't refute it. He just turned back around. My mom recently told me that he doesn't like me because I'm getting a Ph.D. and I use big words and I try to make him feel stupid. Then she said not to take it personally, and that he makes himself feel inferior and that it's not me.

I wondered why she told me that, though. I understand that my mother tagged a disclaimer on the end, but really... I think it's because she likes the fact that he likes her and doesn't like me. I think she told me to hurt me, because why else would you tell your child that their brother doesn't like them?

Anyway... I just needed to get that out. Life gets harder when I confront truths about myself that I had previously left unexamined. I need a drink. Or maybe a joint. I know... how about some sleeping pills.

G'night.

Labels: california, marijuana, parents, pot, power, real life, stupid laws, uncomfortable truths

( 2comments )

at July 9, 2007 9:36 AM  jezebels said...

Oh, girl. I have no comforting words or anything of wisdom. My brothers are still so small, not even out of high school, I can't imagine. It would be impossible. A hard hard place for you. I'd say I'm sorry, but it's not sympathy, I'm not sure what it is. I guess it's just family.

 

at July 12, 2007 7:36 PM  Lindsi said...

I guess this what you were talking about on the phone the other day... why you couldn't make it up north. I'm sorry it had to come to this. I see why you don't care much for his GF. Hope it gets better. Miss you!