(Un)comitted

I may have given up everything and moved home with my mother, but Scott continues to haunt me. He called me with threats of suicide, which I ignored. Then he called his father with the same idle threat. When that didn't work, he told me he called 9-1-1 and was taken to the emergency room for a severe anxiety attack and he was diagnosed with a heart murmur. They told him he took such poor care of himself that he has the body of a 40-year old. I'm not sure how much of this is true. I've kept in touch with his father since I left and I'm only beginning to find out that Scott's lied about everything to me. Even insignificant things like living with his ex when he didn't or why he dropped out of high school.

He lost his job shortly after I left. They declared him "mentally unfit" to work. When they found about his violence against me, they told him he had to undergo counseling to keep his job, which he didn't. Then he told his work all the tales he told me, like being resuscitated back to life after his heart stopped from the anxiety attack. And in one final act, he showed up to work stinking of alcohol. Scott drank so much that it came out of his pores and after I left, he had no reason to play around with pretenses anymore. The night he got fired, his scooter was stolen. And he never put the power bill in his name, so one lonely Friday night Scott sat around in an apartment devoid of furniture and lights with no place to go and no mode of transportation to take him there. And I feel bad about it. I do. It's not the life I wanted for him. And I certainly feel like the catalyst that made so many things go wrong so very quickly.

I've tried to balance his distinct ability to make a bad situation worse while dealing with my own inadequacy issues, starting a new job, and starting life over at 28. But it's wearing on me because Scott's bad-situation-gone-worse is now even worse.

His father and I knew that Scott had to be on his own to make any meaningful changes, but his mother coddles her son and told Scott that he could move in with her instead of looking for a new job in the city near his apartment (and oodles of public transportation versus the boonies where she lives). Everyone knew it was a bad idea for him to move in with her, but no one could convince his mom otherwise. I predicted it would last two weeks before Scott would be busted drinking in her home, but Scott nailed it in three days flat:

The story I heard is that Scott walked to the store, bought and consumed an entire box of sleeping pills and then went to a bar and drank while his mother was at work. That night Scott started hallucinating--

This is harder to write than I thought. I am very much feeling my own pain disclosing this to the world. Why the horrific acts done to me were easier to write than this story, I don't know. Maybe it's me not being there and having to imagine it. Or the things he does to himself are equally horrific. Or that I can't make it better like I tried so hard to do in the past. I still care about him; I didn't want this for him. When he called me the morning all of this transpired, I didn't answer nor did I call him back, and now I desperately want to know what he had to say to me. Whether it would have made a difference or not. Whether I could have prevented this.

He started hallucinating. Seeing people. The boy had a drug-induced psychotic break. He spent the beginning of the week suffering from foaming-of-the-mouth seizures and DT tremors from sudden alcohol withdrawal and now that he had it back in his system, his mind couldn't handle it. He spent the entire night pacing the hallways of his mother's house and screaming because he thought furniture was falling on him. He broke into his mother's bedroom and started yelling at her about the party going on downstairs hosted by demons.

His parents went to work on Thursday. When his step-father came home from work Thursday night, he found Scott sitting on the floor in front of the love seat, slicing the length of his arms with the parts of the watch I bought him for Christmas. He told his step-father Ezekiel told him he had five minutes to kill himself and he took the watch apart to do it. He was rushed to the emergency room and he's been committed in mental hospital ever since.

They say he's suffered brain damage. They aren't surprised he's attacked me nor are they surprised to learn he's not able to control his bowel movements. They said he's a severe alcoholic and a very skilled manipulator. Apparently Scott admitted that he has an alcohol and drug problem. Drug. That's news to me.

I'm sitting here wondering exactly how stupid I am to be living with someone on drugs and not even know it. Some hours I oscillate to "naive" instead of "stupid" depending on how forgiving of myself I am, but right now it's stupid. I am stupid. How in the world did I get into this mess? Somehow somewhere along the way I wanted to protect myself and I didn't fight with Scott about a situation and I transitioned into an enabler without even realizing it. My god, even when I was unemployed and Scott was working, he still borrowed money from me. He said my unemployment was so hard on him, but unlike both of his unemployment stints, I had unemployment insurance and a sizable savings account to carry my own weight for the rest of 2009 if needed be. All Scott had to do was pay his own bills on time; never once did he have to do anything but emotionally support me. And he didn't. Part of me feels bitter about it because I did everything for him in that exact situation and I don't feel like I got a return on my investment. He couldn't even be there when I had my surgery.

But none of that is important now because he's in a mental institution. I spend hours on the phone every day with his father and step-mother obsessing over every minute detail of the situation. Going over the tone of his voice and the complexion of his skin. When he will be released.

His family has cut him off and told Scott not to call them. He is on his own should he get evicted from my old apartment and goes homeless. Him asking for help isn't enough. They want him to seek and get help on his own and only with a note from his doctor will they ever talk to him again.

I'm on board with the plan and have so far avoided the calls from the mental institution. He doesn't know that I know and part of me wants to tell him off on my own, but the other part of me knows I can't put myself in that situation without being manipulated so I'm staying away.

It's starting to negatively affect me. Today at my new job they had a company luncheon and I had to fight back tears over the thought of meeting strangers and having to talk to them. I've become morosely shy, afraid of opening my mouth and the dirty truth about my life falling out while watching the horrified look on their faces. What they must think about someone who allowed all this to happen to her. So as long as I don't get to know them, they won't find out about me. It's become paralyzing.