Confrontation

When it comes to confrontation, there seem to be two kinds of people in the world.  There are those whose mouths burst wide open at the first opportunity, spitting their feelings and/or opinions onto anyone who happens to be in the same room.  Then there are those who “hold their tongue to the death (to quote a friend of mine).” 

My husband tends to be in the first category.  The sweetest man in the world in most respects, he seems to actually switch personalities when presented with an argument.  And once Mr. Hyde has surfaced, it’s usually no longer about the issue at hand.  It’s about the arguing.

On a debate team for years during high school, Shane can skillfully argue both sides of any issue.  I’ve seen him fill the minds of conservatives with libertarian ideas, and fill the minds of libertarians with conservative ideas.  I’ve also seen him convince meat eaters of the health benefits of a vegetarian diet, and then turn right around and convince vegetarians of the health benefits of eating meat, etc.  It’s kind of fun to watch, actually, until his mother, the only person in the whole wide world who can stop it short, says, “Shane.  Knock it off.”

He has his limits of course, because he does have a conscience.  He used to teach debate to high school students when he was a teacher.  And some of his former debate students showed up to one of the district board meetings that I was at one time (these meetings were being held to determine whether or not the district would close down the alternative high school that I was teaching in at the time).

I recognized these as Shane’s former students immediately, not because I knew what any of them looked like, but because of the way that they argued.  The problem, however, was that they were young and not very skilled yet (or that their then current teacher was letting them present a distasteful argument), so I’m afraid that they came across as little assholes rather than as articulate debate students.

They presented the argument, with intense feigned enthusiasm, that since they were the future taxpayers in our town (the implication being that my students were not), the school district should spend its money on keeping them in football attire and other extra-curricular equipment, rather than spend it on keeping my school, the place where the “drug addicts and future convicts” were being educated, open. 

These students presented this argument right in front of my students, who had felt it important to show up and share their many success stories with the board, to talk about our school’s contributions to these, and to share the fact that our school had, in some cases, actually saved lives.

It was a tacky situation at best.  In fact, the board was so mortified that they had allowed such a coming together to take place at all, that they apologized to everyone in the room afterward.  But it was small comfort by that point. 

We ran into one of these former students of Shane’s at Target a few weeks later, after the district had, indeed, decided to close down my school (It’s a Walgreen's now.  In fact, I just bought stamps there this morning).  This boy actually came up to Shane and bragged, “Mr. Spears!  We went to the district board meeting!  And you should’ve heard our argument!  Blah, blah, blah, blah.”

“Oh NO sweetie, DON’T,” did cross my mind, but I’m afraid that my maternal instinct didn’t spontaneously inflate big enough, for some odd reason, for me to complete a verbal jump in between this boy and my husband.

I don’t remember exactly what this boy said, because I somehow managed to check out mentally for a moment.  I don’t remember exactly how Shane responded either, but I do know that he slipped into that familiar tone of voice.  And I heard the words, “my former students” and “bunch of rich kids who’ve clearly never known any real problems in their entire lives” and “so disappointed” and “I must’ve failed you as your teacher.”

Shane talked to this boy for a long time.  And the boy eventually left us, not only with his tail between his legs, but also with a thorough understanding of his own personal contribution to a possibly very detrimental, community wide mistake.  Ouch.  It did hurt to watch.  But I must confess that I also enjoyed it immensely.

What?  I’m not bitter.  I was moving to Arizona shortly after that.  And, little did I know at the time, I had two Autistic children to look forward to adding to my already high maintenance family, so I wouldn’t have been able to keep teaching anyway.  But I am bitter for my former students.  And I probably always will be. 

“Enjoy your football equipment!” I didn’t call after him.  No, I really didn’t say it.  I had the perfect opportunity and everything.  Yet I held my tongue.  And this brings me to my point.        

While I tend to be in the same category as Shane under most ordinary circumstances, I tend to dip more thoroughly into category number two when it comes to actual confrontation.  I have hundreds of these examples – all of these little moments that I can remember, in which I wish that I had said something that I didn’t say.

Why is this?  Is it that I want people to like what comes out of my mouth more than I want to express my truth?  No, that’s certainly not it.  Is it that I don’t want anyone to dislike what comes out of my mouth?  That’s closer, but not quite it either.  Maybe it has more to do with my truth needing to be very important to me before I’ll take the risk, and that intentionally hurting somebody’s feelings is almost never an important thing for me to try to do.  Yes, that’s probably the closest.

I’ll probably never be the one who’s going to tell you that your toilet paper roll is on the holder backwards, or that the meal that you’ve prepared isn’t absolutely fantastic, or that you look fat in that dress.  If a friend of mine needs an on the spot clothing critic, then I’m the exact wrong person to have around.  If a friend of mine asks me for an honest opinion, however, and is dead serious about it, and gives me a few minutes to think about it (I usually have to switch mental gears big time to get into a critical state of mind about clothing), then I can be honest.  But the God’s honest truth is probably that you look absolutely beautiful to me, no matter how fat you look in that dress.

Now, if you ask me if I think you’ve been a bitch to your husband, or to a friend, or even to the lady behind the counter at the bank, then brace yourself for a real, live, objective opinion.  That’s important stuff.  But also know that I’ll probably never, ever tell you that opinion if you don’t ask me directly for it. 

My tendency is to care more about your feelings than about whether or not you’ve been a bitch, until you ask me directly if you’ve been a bitch.  Then, since I really cannot lie to you and still live with myself, I’m forced to care more about the truth than about your feelings.

This sort of makes sense when it comes to friends, doesn’t it?  But why am I like this with people who clearly aren’t friends?  Why would I care about the feelings of these people at all?

The answer is that I don’t.  I do, however, care about my own feelings.  And I struggle to go to sleep at night if I’ve treated somebody badly that day, no matter what they’ve done to me.  This usually has very little to do to with them, however, and more to do with my own awareness of how mean I can be.  I really like to like who I am when I lay my head on the pillow at night, but I don’t like myself when I’ve been mean to somebody.  

You see, I’m not like my husband, who can use his growing anger to fuel the quality and speed of his own articulation, arguing somebody to death in an appropriate manner.  I’m the exact opposite.  My growing anger eats my rational words (and thoughts) one by one, getting bigger and fatter with each and every bite, until I’m left a speechless idiot who’s literally holding back the beast.  Then you get to win the argument while I focus exclusively on not wrapping my hands around your neck.  And later, I regret not saying the things that I should’ve said (or I regret the inappropriate way in which I said them).

Since having children with Autism who scream like they’re dying and slam their heads into things in public places, I’ve gotten lots and lots of practice with appropriate confrontation in small situations.  I can now look directly into the eyes of the crabby old lady in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, who has no experience with Autism, and no compassion for a mother who’s doing the very best that she can, and who has just told me that I really need to make Cale shut up, and say to her, “Listen honey, I have to listen to it twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.  I think you can survive ten minutes of it.”

When it comes to real confrontation, however, (when someone is genuinely wrong, and has not asked my opinion about it, yet I still have to be the one to point it out to them – an incredibly rare and unusual situation) I still tend to practice avoidance.  

We have to take Cale back to his psychiatrist – the one who prescribed the drugs that put him in the hospital, and then didn’t call, or return our calls, afterward.  I have some compassion for this person regarding the effects of these medications on Cale, as I think that psychiatrists (all doctors actually) are just guessing most of the time about what might help (and/or not actually hurt) people.  And I’m sure that this woman feels just terrible for putting Cale in the hospital (or, at least, I would’ve thought so).  But she didn’t call after he got home from the hospital to see if he was okay (even though the hospital doctors let her know what had happened).  And she hasn’t returned any of our calls (we left messages for the next three days in a row) either. 

Are we considering a lawsuit?  No.  Unfortunately, there have only been two people (that we could find anyway) who have won lawsuits regarding Serotonin Syndrome.  One of them actually died from it, and the other was able to prove that the psychiatrist had been negligent.  When it comes to psychiatric medications, I’m afraid that they get you to agree to a certain amount of risk before they’ll treat your child.

We do plan on confronting her though, because this is one of those times in which, even I have to admit, to not say something would leave me awake at night more than saying something (even inappropriately) would.  I’ve tried and tried to find a way to produce some compassion for the psychiatrist for not calling.  But there’s just no way around it (that I’ve found anyway), because it’s just plain fucked up is what it is.  Not only that, but it also seems like Cale’s world (and sometimes Isabel’s too) is filled to the brim with people who want us (and sometimes them too) to just go away (the insurance company, the state DDD and Medicaid people, the schools).  Therefore, we never just go away.

Shane finally got a hold of somebody in the psychiatrist's office, on the fourth day in a row of trying, who told him that we should just bring Cale to his next scheduled appointment.  So I figured that Shane and I would go to the appointment together, that Shane would appropriately and politely paint the psychiatrist a detailed portrait of her own inadequacy as human being, and that we would leave and never go back. 

Unfortunately, our next scheduled appointment was this week, during which my primary verbal weapon, Shane, was in Phoenix for work.  Therefore, I had to face the idea of going to the appointment and confronting the psychiatrist alone.

I spoke with my spiritual adviser of sorts about it.  And I told her that there was really no need for me to go, because it’s not like we’re going to continue taking Cale to this psychiatrist anyway.  “The appointment,” I told her, “is really just about confronting her on her apathy, that’s all.  And I won’t be able to be polite about this the way that Shane would be able to.”

Do you know how you can generally tell when somebody probably shouldn’t do something?  It’s when they want to do it just a little too badly.  And do you know how you can tell when somebody probably really should do something?  They don’t want to.  It’s uncanny how often this little rule of thumb turns out to be the actual case.

I don’t believe that there’s any right or wrong answer about these things.  Instead I think it has more to do with motives.  What is it that is motivating me to say something or not?  Saying something simply because it feeds my ego (to make me “right” and make you “wrong”) is the wrong motive for me to say something.  But if I don’t say something only because it protects me from what might happen if I do, then that’s just the flip side of the same coin.  It’s still about protecting ego. 

A good rule of thumb, I’ve found, when trying to make a decision like this, is to ask the question, “If I was to look back on this situation from my death bed, would I wish that I had said it?”  The cool thing about asking myself this question on a regular basis is that I find that I tell people that I love them a lot more often than I ordinarily would’ve too.

“I think you should go,” my spiritual adviser of sorts said to me, “I think you need the closure.”

“But I won’t be able to be appropriate about it,” I said.

“Just pray before you go.  You can be honest with her without being mean,” she replied, “Just say that you’re very concerned about what happened, and that you’re disappointed that she didn’t call afterward or return your calls all week.  Then tell her that you’re in a lot of fear now, because not only is it going to take you three months to get into a new psychiatrist, but that you feel all alone in trying to figure out what to do for Cale right now.”

“But I won’t be able to be appropriate about it,” I repeated.

“Yes, you will,” she replied.

By the day before the appointment, I bet I had played out fifteen different scenarios in my mind, each using some variation of what my spiritual adviser of sorts had suggested to say, and each still ending with my hands around the psychiatrist’s neck.  I really didn’t want to go.  But I had known for a few days that I needed to be willing to go.  I just knew that this was a test.  And I knew that if I failed it, I’d somehow find myself taking it again.  So I had prayed a lot.  And I had become willing to go.

It seems that the moment that I actually became willing to go, every roadblock that could’ve possibly popped up to keep me from going to this appointment, started popping up.  Shane, like I said, was out of town for work.  And my mother-in-law’s sister-in-law passed away, so my-mother-in law (my primary source of help with the kids) was out of town.  And my cell phone had died.  And I mean dead.  It was a touch screen, and it had stopped responding to touch of any kind (believe me I tried them all).  And I don’t have a land line, so I had no way to call anyone, receive calls, check my messages, or text.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  But I ask you this – have you ever actually seen a child with recognizable Autism in a Verizon Wireless store with one lone adult?  No you have not.  And there’s a reason for this.  You’d have to pay me $100,000 to take Cale into a Verizon Wireless store, because after he got done destroying everything, that’s probably about what our tab would be.  It’s kind of amazing how restricted Autism parents can be.  Something like a dead cell phone can takes weeks to deal with.  And regular people take for granted, I think, ordinary things like being able to run errands.

I had asked some friends of mine for babysitting help that week so that I could go and get a new phone, but most of my friends work during the day, and my spiritual adviser of sorts had gone out of town, so I hadn’t found anyone who could help me.

“Oh well,” I figured the night before the appointment, “I don’t need to call the psychiatrist.  I just need to show up at the damned appointment.”

My plan was to drop Alden and Isabel off at bible school that morning at 9am, and have my grandma pick them up when it was over with at noon and take them to her house until after the psych. appointment (my grandma is 82 years old and can handle Alden and Isabel, but not Cale).  After I dropped Alden and Isabel off at bible school at 9am, then I’d go and buy a new phone, get Cale off the school bus at 11:15am (it was his last day of summer school, now I’ll have him home twenty four seven until September or whenever the hell school starts up again), and get him to the appointment by 11:40am.  Then I’d pick Alden and Isabel up from my grandma’s after the appointment, and the whole damn thing would be over with.  Then it would be ice cream from the Dairy Queen drive through to celebrate a job well done.

It was a good plan.  In fact, I had laid my head on the pillow that night rather proud of myself for having gotten it together, because it had taken some real finagling to put it together without a phone.  So I knew that I must be willing.  I was going to be confronting this psychiatrist alone come hell or high water.

“Mom,” Alden woke me up, “I don’t feel very good.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” no I didn’t actually say that to him.

He threw up all night long.  And, by the next morning, he was having diarrhea every few minutes.

I already knew that nobody could babysit, not that I had any way to call anyone and double check, and not that anyone should babysit a puking child anyway.  I also had no way to call my grandma to ask if she could come and watch Alden and Isabel so that I could still take Cale to the appointment.  And I had no way of leaving the house (to go to my grandmother’s house and ask her if she could watch Alden and Isabel, or even let her know not to pick them up from bible school at noon) because Alden couldn’t be away from a toilet for more than a few minutes at a time.

I thought, for a moment, about taking all three of my kids to the appointment.  “Sorry,” I would say, “but I literally have no help today.  And, since our lives really are this damned complicated, I would greatly appreciate you not putting Cale into the hospital with your drugs anymore.  And if you could at least pretend, just a little tiny bit, to give a shit about Cale, I would greatly appreciate that as well (oh, maybe I really wasn’t ready).”

It would’ve been fun.  But, again, Alden couldn’t be away from a toilet for more than a few minutes at time.  I didn’t even have a way to call the psychiatrist to let her know that we weren’t coming.  All I could do was email Shane and ask him to call and reschedule the appointment, and ask him to call my grandma and let her know not to pick up the kids at noon, and hope like hell that he got the message before the appointment and before noon.  It was absolutely ridiculous.  He did get the message in time, by the way. 

I guess that it just wasn’t meant to be this week, but I do fully intend to keep my “big girl panties” securely fastened for our next scheduled appointment.  And I think that I’ll even have a little talk with Shane and let him know what I’ve been through with all of this.  That way I can say to him, “Let me do the talking, will you?”  But, to be perfectly honest with you, it will probably still all end with me leaning back in my chair and saying, “Oh, just sick her sweetie.”