It is good to be 'in touch' with H. - to know he is alive. It had been six months since last contact and it was incredibly hard to not hear from him. If he were working full time, had a home and it was just business or even lack of effort keeping him from calling, we'd worry a lot less than the all-consuming worry we experienced with him out on the streets.
There are a lot of things I could write about - he has had a second court appearance this past week and there are some things in the works that we have to wait and see about - but I'm not sure I will share much of that on these pages. It's very hard to know how to express the zillion emotions we have daily and hard to know how to put into words the magnitude of the updates.
He graduated from heroin to fentanyl and that in itself is an incredibly scary thing. It's a miracle he is alive. We are grateful for that miracle while simultaneously feeling unsure of being back on the roller coaster.
He called on Tuesday and at the end of the call, as the one minute remaining was about to be declared, he inquired about when he should call again. I outlined our schedule and thought he would call yesterday - but he didn't. As I drifted off to sleep last night, I thought 'he'll call tomorrow'. It's approaching 6PM and he hasn't called. So....that weird dynamic of never knowing what to expect in terms of contact still exists.
The call process is fraught with intricacies that make it common for the call not to connect. There is about 2 minutes (almost 3) of disclosures, disclaimers, warnings, etc. - all requiring active responses via entering a number on the keyboard and then also entering your debit card info into the system for every call as well. There have been times when we've done all that and then when the call is about to connect, the system says 'the caller has hung up'. There have been other times when we are just not able to accept the call. We can't enter details into the system when we're in our car. Sure, we could pull over (super quickly) and grab the debit card from our wallets and hope to catch the system before it tells him we didn't answer, but sometimes, we just have to say 'no, we can't accept'. What H. hears on his end is 'the call has been declined by the receiver'.
We spend a lot of time reassuring all of us to not take missed calls personally. I am going to tell H. that I'd prefer he not ask when he should call next time because then when he doesn't call, my psyche and my emotions are on red alert for days and it feels really unhealthy for me. I'm going to tell him 'call whenever you can. Call when you want to. Just understand that we won't accept if we are not home - and you need to just try again until we connect'.
I'm sure there are completely logical reasons he hasn't called. Still, the waiting and worrying is exhausting and while I'm grateful we know where he is, it is tough to be 'back on the hook'.
It will get easier, I hope.
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