Digital Balance

“It’s all here, Mom.” My son Christopher would say, when looking up at the stars.

“What is?” I’d ask

“This. Life. The real part. You are always looking at that computer. Always working.” He’d tease. “It’s fake in there.”   

“I need the computer, Chris. We all do if we want to live in this world.”

“Nobody looks up anymore.” He said.  I’d agree, and rest my hands back onto my laptop keyboard. If the conversation ended there, I could call it balanced and normal. but it was the lack of normalcy and balance that had me forever searching for answers on a screen. He kept at it—said that I never stopped, said I was a workaholic. Hurt, I would respond, “Well, son, someone has to be the grownup.”  He told me that he wished I would stop trying so hard.  But I had a sick son that needed an advocate. He needed the right specialists. All of that costs money, and with not enough of it, connections needed to be made. I Justified my busy life—wore it like a badge—Mother on a quest to save her son.  A good mother does that.

“Mom, stop using me as your excuse to bury yourself in your work.”

“Using you?”

“You don’t know how to not be busy. Screen time is supposed to be fun sometimes.”

“I watch Tic Tok videos.” I’d argue.

“Yeah, and all the videos you watch are mothers of addicts accounts. Do like me, play Fort Night.”

“I watch other things too.” But I didn’t really. My digital world was an escape into information that led me to resources. It taught me things about Christopher’s mental illness, that I’d otherwise not have access to. My digital world connected me with people. Important people. Influential people, that could make a call to the person in charge that could soften the admission process into a treatment facility.  In crisis, I was equipped with an I-phone packed with people who could point me in the right direction—people with the power to push my son to the front of the line.  

“But mom, can you just sit and watch a movie with me?”

“Sure.  I can do that.” I’d say.   But I couldn’t. My mind raced faster than life.  My full-time job, in between running a business, was finding answers. His mania and self-medicating  would inevitably find its way to the surface, and I needed to be ready when it did.

I wanted to share in his  delusion that the girl he just met was his ticket to a normal life.  I begged God to let it be true.  But it never was. Because of all the skipped red tape, after every breakup, I’d scoop him up and place him safely inside a treatment center or program. I grew to take comfort in my eyes on the screen, because it produced the outcome I thought would save him.

One of the last times I saw my son, he asked me to go to Dorney Park with him.  But I had not planned that.  I had work to do.  Connections to make so I was ready for his next bi-polar episode, that was closing in, so instead of sharing with him the free feeling of  flying through hills of an amusement ride, I sunk deeper into my screen.   “Are you serious?” I asked.  “An amusement park?”

“Yes, Mom. Come on. We can go on the roller coaster.”

“Christopher, I can’t today.  I didn’t  plan it.”

“Right Mom.”

“Well, yeah, and  I can’t just stop everything to go on a trip to the amusement park.”

“Let’s watch, Stepbrothers then.”

“Oh my God Chris, I can’t not laugh at the sleepwalking scene.”

“I know. That’s why I like watching it with you.” He said.

“It’s just so ridiculous. Two forty-year-olds still living with their parents, sleepwalking—stuffing pillows into the oven and throwing  coffee all over the kitchen……I can’t.”

“We should watch it soon.”

“Soon.” I said.

Christopher’s phone was usually on one percent, because he didn’t like that constant connection to out there—he didn’t want to miss what was right here. I could have done that too. I could have unplugged from the electric answers all around me, and taken the time to laugh, relax, and enjoy the times in between his manic episodes. Instead, I made sure my devices were at 100 percent, and  sacrificed those moments for emails I thought I should write, texts, I thought I should send, phone calls, that surely needed to be made, hours I needed to work to earn the money that would buy him the insurance that would pay for the treatment that would save him. All of it so that he could be whole. All of it so that when he was “better”, we’d kick our feet up, look at the sky—wonder about the universe, and if aliens really exist.

It took me a year after his fatal overdose,  to comprehend that he wasn’t coming back. That I would never go on a roller coaster with him again—never watch Stepbrothers with him again. I would never get the opportunity to show him that I could close my laptop, put my phone away, and relax.  I learned too late that it would have been perfectly fine to enjoy life in the throes of it not being OK.   

Today, I used my computer to write these words. I often search the internet to find healing answers for the people I love.  But I also use the internet now to search for fun things in my area to do on the weekend. I use my phone to invite a friend to join me on a walk in nature. I look at a screen to watch those movies Christopher begged me to watch with him, and when I do, I turn off my phone, grab a blanket, and scooch over, to make room for him, imagining him there, proud of me, for using the screen for this instead of that.