So, some questions have been answered about his behavior and all of the turmoil over the last 5 or 6 years.  The aha moment, at last.  He hears voices, has invisible friends, sees spiders crawling everywhere.  A little boy named Max, and I heard about his new friend, "Jeff" today.  Although he's spoken of seeing him in the past, this is the first time he's supposedly carried on a conversation with him.  "Jeff" is tall and skinny with black hair that is long and falls in his face, and looks like the guy off of Blues Clues.  "So, what did you and Jeff talk about?" I ask my son...

"About telling you guys that I see him, and that I talked to him..."  Why now?  Why today?  "Because I want to cut myself and I've been thinking a lot about suicide....I think about killing myself all of the time."  We speak of the Russell Crowe movie, A Beautiful Mind.  I remind him of how Russell Crowe's character deals with his illness, his hallucinations, his delusions.  "It doesn't work,"  he says simply.

I'm afraid to leave him alone.  I try to prepare myself for the inevitable, but don't succeed, and if we do leave him here by himself, and I try to call -- if he doesn't answer the phone, I'm filled with unreasonable panic and dread.  I sleep very little, and oftentimes go see if he's still breathing. 

He spent 24 days in the psych ward.  They had him so doped up, he was a blithering idiot. He was so over medicated that another patient gave him 50mg of Methodone, and he took it because he thought she was a nurse.  He ended up in a full blown overdose, and went into cardiac arrest, and had to be resucitated.  Another phone call, another mad trip to the emergency room....another day in my life. I called the doctor and raised, well, you know.  So, they changed his medicine again, and for all intents and purposes it seemed to be working.  His voice took on some emotion, he even laughs now and then. 

Until today.  Today is the revelation that "it's not working."  Today is the revelation that, "I have no reason to live.  I don't want to live like....THIS for the remainder of my life, 'cuz THIS isn't living at all."  And so it goes....because now, I as a mother think of things most mothers never dream of.  "If he dies, where will we bury him?  We've moved so much.  Who would perform the funeral service?  Would anyone come, because we've moved so much, we have very few friends.  What would we do?  What WILL we do?" 

So, I do what I always do.  I cry, I pray....I set my shoulders and try to be brave.  Again.  Welcome to my world.