Back in Time: Allusion

Night terrors are a traumatic experience to say the least. The mirage in our mind's eye doesn’t make it any less real. They carry a punch that’ll knock you disparately senseless; desperately gasping in search for air. As I attended to my son’s convalescence to this condition, I felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness. I’m sure my wife felt the debilitating vulnerability as well. He was falling apart before our eyes;suffocating before my eyes; suffering from self inflicted damages survivors eventually embrace over time.

Before long Kevin would raise himself to sit upright, as the frozen washcloth warmed, leaving the remnants to streak eerily down his face. “Xanax?” he tentatively inquired with a qualifying lilt in his voice. “Can you form an entire sentence?” I staggered with my query. He nodded which prompted me to defer to my wife; “What do you think Jen, good idea the Xanax… or not so much?” She was at the ready, having consumed one as well, nodding as she handed me the object of our son’s affection, the remedy if you will.

Giving pills to anyone deemed having an addictive personality is a really bad idea. That’s why I always keep a healthy supply of St. Joseph aspirin on hand; for those times when you may think you need a hand from ‘mother’s little helper,’ but a placebo will do the trick. I extended my cupped hand to the ‘sick bay’ patient, as he reached for the miracle cure. I closed my hand in typical fashion to pause for the cause, to deliver a lecture on my distain for pills…The hypocrisy of the sermon I was about to deliver gave me pause for the quandary I recognized it to be.

“This is not the solution toward your problem son; actually it’s the problem toward many solutions. I’ll spare you the lecture for now; except to say; not a big fan of pills Kevin, not a fan at all.” I extended my hand offering him the pill I cradled adding, “Do you want to talk about it, the dream or…” Kevin retorted “I just wanna sleep is all,” popping the ‘Big Pharma’ emancipation sensation down his gullet; then requested another. God help us all.

He would be asleep in less than an hour. I wouldn’t sleep a wink as I pondered and peered at my boy. Kevin would need to talk with someone; a professional. Some wounds heal in time, only to remind us by the visible scar left behind. My concern was the wounds which paint no visible scar; the ones which warriors carry around for their ihaunted abridged lives. Still the lingering question of hypocrisy preoccupied me. The phrase which encapsulated my thoughts persisted, ‘if one makes me feel good, two will make me feel better’.

At times, as parents, we think we are so clever; big mistake! This trial by error parenting made me who I am today. I often wondered if there was a parenting test, whom and how many would make the grade. I then realized my mind had gone off on a tangent of internal conflict; A departure from my primary focus. In times like these I had come to realize it was best to let it run its course. The alternative was pointless.

My casual lecture on the danger of dependency was merely a grand illusion. My actions had spoke volumes in contrast with my words. I fell into the trap which states a legal drug is acceptable over an illegal drug, that very notion is ‘just someone else’s fantasy’. The prey is systematically penalized by using ‘the consequences of breaking the law’ rationale; thereby transforming ‘criminals’ into productive members of society via funding of your Industrial Penal System. The entrepreneurs on the street corner and the doctor in the white lab coat both have comparative incentive to be drug dealers. The illusion in itself was an allusion