K2

 It's a long, long story, and maybe some day I'll write more parts of it.  But for now, there's this.

Maybe it was a subconscious thing, a Freudian slip, when I named DS1's wife as K2 on my blog.  I'd meant it as Kris #2, since my name is Kris and hers also was spelled with a K and our legal names contained almost the exact same letters.  What I didn't know at that time, or until years later, was that K2 was the street name of a drug that is fake marijuana.  

Maybe it was foreshadowing, then, to give her that name at this little place here.  As time went by, after we'd moved her and DS1 and kids up to MI from SC, after they'd lived with us for nearly a year and a half, after they'd moved to their own place about 8 miles away, I learned that K2 used drugs.  Apparently it had been an off and on thing for years, stretching back into her teen years.  She'd use, she'd clean up for a while, then something would send her back into it again.

She had anxiety, she'd get prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs, she'd start over using them.  She'd then also use other types of drugs, some prescription that she'd get from a different doctor and a different pharmacy than the anti-anxiety prescription had been provided by, some that were just openly available if you knew the right person.  The first few years she lived in MI, she worked at a local bar where she met some of those 'right' people.

Like I said, it's a long story.  Years went by, and she had what our family would call 'episodes' where she'd either be combative and convinced that DH and I and most members of our family were against her, or she'd take to her bed, claiming a headache, and stay there in a stupor for days.  There was a suicide threat, which CPS got involved in and took the children from the home in 2017 and they lived with DH and I for several weeks while DS1 worked and K2 was in a treatment facility.  That's when DH and I learned about her history with substance abuse. 

A month or so later, there was what we thought (and she denied) was a suicide attempt that DS1 caught her in and took her to the emergency room--and DH and I again had the children for a week. She went home, seemingly okay.  Things were calm.

Until about six months later, when DS1 and the kids came home from church on a Sunday noon (she hadn't wanted to go with them) and found her passed out, blue in the lips.  DS1 sent the kids to the neighbor's house and called 911, then called me to come get the kids.  K2 was in ICU for days and days.  She had been given Narcan in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but remained unconscious for at least 24 hours.  Tests were run to determine if there had been any brain or organ damage.  After stabilizing, and being on round the clock watch in the hospital, she was released to a treatment facility for a week's stay.  Again, the grandchildren lived with DH and I during that time period.

That was in 2018.  Over the next four years, her mood and behavior would swing unpredictably.  Sometimes she was happy and outgoing and willing to do family gathering type activities.  Sometimes she stayed in bed, not even getting the kids to school (DS1 works first shift and has to leave home at 5:30 a.m.) or taking care of them.  Our attempts, in those darker times, to help out were met with aggression and even cutting us off from the grandkids for weeks at a time. DS1 took to locking her medications up, and only giving her one pill at a time, in the spacing the prescribing doctor dictated.  Even so, she found ways to get her hands on drugs. There were a couple more instances of overdoses, most not as severe, but one last Fall that did have her in the hospital again for a handful of days as tests were run.

We all hoped she would get better.  We all hoped she would go to and stay in the assigned therapy programs after each release from her medical facility stays.  We all, in the good spells, found ourselves waiting for the other shoe to drop.

This month, that shoe dropped.  I can't say it's over, because we are still hot in the aftermath.  But K2 isn't here anymore.  No one can say if she was higher than a kite, or deep in a depressive pit at the time, but she took her own life. DS1 came home from his shift at work, found Rascal left alone in the house (K3 and Toad were still at school), and K2 deceased in the shed.

My heart is broken.  Not just for DS1 and his children.  Not just for K2's parents and brother.  Not just for my own family.  But for K2.  I feel such pain that she had a hole in her so big that it lead her to struggling with mental health and drugs.  I feel such immense sadness that she felt there was no joy, no hope, in living.

Reader, if you struggle with your thoughts, please seek out help.  Please stay in therapy if your doctor advises it.  If you struggle with substance use, please, please, know that there are people who love you anyway, and please let them help you find a program to assist you in your desire to overcome that dependency.