Fearing that they couldn’t keep their teen safe, Hannah’s parents make the agonizing decision to send her to a wilderness program, and then to residential treatment. Off the Rails tells the story of the two tough years Hannah spent in three separate programs―and ponders the factors that contributed to her ultimate recovery.
Written for families facing challenges and those that wish to support them, Off the Rails is an inspiring story of love, determination, and a last-resort intervention, as a mother and daughter lose, and then try to find each other again.
Fearing that they couldn’t keep their teen safe, Hannah’s parents make the agonizing decision to send her to a wilderness program, and then to residential treatment. Off the Rails tells the story of the two tough years Hannah spent in three separate programs―and ponders the factors that contributed to her ultimate recovery.
Written for families facing challenges and those that wish to support them, Off the Rails is an inspiring story of love, determination, and a last-resort intervention, as a mother and daughter lose, and then try to find each other again.
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Overview
Fearing that they couldn’t keep their teen safe, Hannah’s parents make the agonizing decision to send her to a wilderness program, and then to residential treatment. Off the Rails tells the story of the two tough years Hannah spent in three separate programs―and ponders the factors that contributed to her ultimate recovery.
Written for families facing challenges and those that wish to support them, Off the Rails is an inspiring story of love, determination, and a last-resort intervention, as a mother and daughter lose, and then try to find each other again.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781631524677 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | She Writes Press |
| Publication date: | 08/21/2018 |
| Pages: | 312 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
An award-winning author, Susan’s day jobs span fifteen years in advertising, eight years teaching in the college classroom and another ten years training professionals in organizations how to communicate with each other, an irony that was not lost on her as she struggled to reach her addicted daughter.
Susan currently works with a team of high achieving young adults in Admissions at the University of California Santa Cruz, where she ponders the question of teen success on a daily basis. She writes about the strength and determination of troubled teens and special needs children.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Mom
I watch the ugly bruise form on my upper arm, while I struggle to keep driving on the narrow rural road. Hannah remains poised for battle in the passenger seat, her pale porcelain skin flushed with anger, her lovely, long-fingered hands still clenched into fists. Her pretty cherub's lips, in a permanent pout these days, part to scream at me, "Fuck you, you fat cunt, eat shit!" Spittle sprays from her mouth to water the bloom of black and blue on my arm. There's nowhere to pull over, nowhere to run, no way to escape this cage of a car. I'm trapped, just me and this wild creature, and though I look for my sixteen-year-old daughter, I can't see her at all. Who is this child-woman, and where did she come from? If she's willing to hit me, what else is she capable of? Will she steal? Will she kill? Am I the mother of a monster?
Hannah
She gets me in the car, and I'm her fucking prisoner, and she thinks she can torture me as much as she wants. She is driving and lecturing me the way she always does when she has me captive. It's as though all my pissed off feelings roll down from my head into my hand and form a fist, and I hit her. Stupid, right? I almost kill us when I hit her. She swerves into the other lane on our wanky little road out in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, and I know the look on her face isn't fear of an accident, it's fear of me, and that makes me feel good. I watch the bruise form unevenly on her arm, like a map of the terrain we've just crossed, and I know that bruise will divide us forever.
Mom
The fact that Hannah was struggling was clear a long time before she ever hit me, before she turned angry, before she started tenth grade and decided that she didn't want to be anything like the person she was in ninth grade, and way before she became what she called a "therapy kid."
It seemed that every day of the summer between ninth and tenth grade Hannah was more distracted and less interested in her old activities. She asked me to drop out of our daughter-mother book group ("All bitches," she said), she tossed out her beautiful carved and gold-leafed gourd projects ("Crap," she said), and she gave most of her books to Goodwill ("They're just cluttering up my head," she said. "I need to think.")
I place the books in a box carefully, remembering how we read the alphabet book Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom over and over again, Hannah so serious as she traced the brightly colored illustrations with her pudgy fingers, later making awkward paper cutouts to express her own alphabet. I run my hand over the spines of the cheap set of classics we bought her — well-worn volumes of Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, and E.B. White. "I want her to be able to really read them," I told my husband Paul, and she did, the pages dog-eared and the margins full of doodles and notes. Hannah doesn't want her newest books either, and I tuck Sharon Creech, Barbara Kingsolver, and David Sedaris into the box, along with her book club books, the school books, the books that she bought with all of the gift cards, the books she found in used book bins, the books that made her laugh and think and, most importantly, connect with me and Paul over all these years. I pack away the laughter, the adventure, and the connection and seal the box.
Hannah
It's hard starting high school at fourteen. My birthday is in early October, right at the cutoff, so I'm always the youngest person in my class. I'm almost a full year younger than some of the other kids. I guess my parents talked to my kindergarten teacher about waiting, but they thought I was too smart. Then why do I feel so fucking dumb about how to act in high school? Ninth grade was a nightmare. It was a new school, and I didn't know anyone or anything about the "right" clothes or the "right" books or the "right" movies. I was just wrong. And there were plenty of mean and nasty people who were always looking for the chance to point that out. The only place I felt safe in ninth grade was the art studio, cuz I could hold my own there. Tenth grade is going to be different. I won't let those cows make me feel bad any more.
Mom
I don't know how to help Hannah. I don't want to be one of those helicopter parents. I can see she doesn't have a lot of friends at her new school, but she loves the art teachers and the beautiful, naturally lit studio space. I'm relieved when she finally makes some friends. She tells me that they are nice, and that she has been going out to lunch with them regularly. She tells me one of them is a writer, and that the other wants to be a doctor. I relax into the driver's seat as she talks. It had just taken her a little time, that's all. Everything will be fine now.
Hannah
Tenth grade starts off okay. I meet some cool kids that aren't part of the mean girl club. I like them, but by the time back-to-school night comes in October, they're all hooked up and coupled off. They're still pretty nice to me, inviting me along when they go downtown for lunch and asking me if I want to go to the park after school. I do go downtown with them once in a while, sitting in the backseat alone, or crammed in with another couple. I don't know where to look sometimes. I feel like some kind of perv, watching them squeeze and tease and do the kissy thing over lunch. It helps when I get a little high with them, cuz then I don't care as much that they're at each other, and I'm alone. I like being a little high at school too, because I've landed in some crap classes with a bunch of Mean Barbies. After school, my friends rush outside to get rides from their boyfriends. I'm left waiting on the steps, my little sister climbing and snaking through the railing waiting for Mom to come. I don't understand why she's late so often. She quit work to be a pudgy, frizzy housewife. How long does it take to clean toilets and cook dinner? It isn't all bad to wait though, cuz I really don't like to be seen in Mom's BMW — a relic from her old life, a pretty phony ride for the person she's let herself become. Just kill me, I think as I slide into the passenger seat, if I ever let that happen to me.
Mom
I am often late picking up the kids. The drive to school is pretty long, but that isn't it. I think I slow down, anticipating the bald hatred waiting for me in that parking lot. Hannah is always alone when I get there. I guess she didn't get into the same tenth grade English class as all her friends, so she doesn't see them after school. She gets a new teacher who specializes in Jane Austen, and I am filled with dread when I meet her at back-to-school night.
"This year my students will become familiar with the world of Jane Austen." My heart sinks as I watch the teacher wave her blunt hands over the imposing stack of novels that the teens will be expected to read. Especially when she starts reviewing the scholarly body of work that she herself has written about Ms. Austen. Hannah's favorite books that summer had been Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti and Nudity by our mutual favorite, David Sedaris. Given the fact that her friends are studying contemporary literature while she slogs through Austen with a self-proclaimed expert concerns me. Hannah asks me to go to the school office with her to help her transfer into the other English class. I am open to it, but the vice principal says no. "It will be a great lesson for Hannah," she says. "It will be an opportunity for her to expand her reading." Finally, she gets to the point, leaning back in her big blue chair and looking down at her desk. "We don't have seats available in the other class." I watch Hannah purse her lips and look to me for support, but I look away. Maybe it will lead to new interests. Maybe she'll meet new people.
Hannah
You'd think that when I finally meet Dylan, my friends would be happy for me. They aren't. Suddenly they're, like, relationship experts.
The minute I see Dylan, I decide that he will be my boyfriend. I'm still lost and self-conscious at my school after a whole year, but on his very first day, he strolls down the hall sneering at the Barbies and dropping into his desk like it's a Barcalounger. I make eye contact with him, and he smiles and moves his long blond bangs out of his eyes to get a better look at me. He is definitely less of a geek than most of the boys at school. He's a transfer from a military school, my little group of friends whisper, kicked out for having a knife. "I know that sounds bad," he tells me, leaning against my locker later that day, "but it was a fucking pen knife, and I borrowed it to open up a stuck trunk." He growls the words as he leans in towards me, and my heart races, and I think for a minute that he's going to kiss me — my first kiss — but he doesn't, and I am disappointed. I find out over the next few weeks that he's pretty pissed about the way he's been treated. He's pissed about his Mom's new husband, he's pissed about his bio-dad's indifference, and he's pissed about the attention his new little sister is receiving. Dylan's just pissed. All the time. Pretty soon he's pissed at me all the time too, always expecting me to prove to him that he comes first to me, and I guess he does.
Mom
I first find out about Dylan at 2:00 on a Tuesday morning in September. I wake up to a steady buzzing. Thinking that I'd left my cell phone on vibrate, I jump out of bed and fumble to answer a call that, in my mind, can only mean someone has died or disaster has befallen a family member. But my phone tumbles off my nightstand, silent until it cracks on the hardwood floor. By the time I follow the sound downstairs, the buzzing has been replaced by soft flirtatious murmurs coming from Hannah's room. "Hannah," I hiss in my best stage whisper, pushing her door open, "get off the phone."
"I have to go," she says into the phone, rolling her eyes towards the heavens. "My mom."
Hannah
I have no privacy. But I have a boyfriend. Now I just have to figure out how to get some fucking privacy.
Mom
I let myself think that Dylan is the problem. In a way, it's a relief to have something outside of the family to focus on, to lay blame for Hannah's increasing surliness. I ask Hannah to invite him over. "He's welcome here, Hannah." I smile, trying to salvage our relationship. "I'll make dinner."
As it turns out, Hannah doesn't want anyone to come over. "Please," she drawls, "middle class, middle politics, middle of the woods." She rolls her eyes to make sure I understand her deep shame at the bourgeois family we have become. Evidently our conventional lifestyle is hipster death. I bite back my retort as she pulls her $28 watercolor pad off her $175 easel. Is this what Paul and I have worked so hard to achieve? I turn away from Hannah's disdain, trying to remember her as a little girl, climbing on the tractor Paul rented to work on our big property every weekend, to make a home for us. In my mind's eye, she is wearing his sweat-darkened hat on her curly head and smiling at him with love. But on teenage Hannah, the fedora has turned into a grungy, gray knit cap, and the smile has turned into a sneer.
Hannah
They want me to "bring my boyfriend to dinner." Hah! I can hardly stand being with them and their middle-class morals, so why should I torture Dylan? Why should I let them judge him the way they judge me? Why should I let them into my life any more than I have to? Why doesn't she get it? I don't want to spend time with her. I try to imagine what we would talk about, sitting at the dining room table over steaming plates of the immigrant slop she cooks. "Dylan," she would no doubt say, "tell us about yourself."
Then Dylan, in my imaginary discourse, answers politely. "Oh yes, Mrs. Burrowes, I enjoy music and movies and blow jobs, especially when I'm high as a kite." No, I think I'll just keep Dylan to myself.
Mom
Finally, something Hannah and I can enjoy together. It's October, and that means Open Studio time in Santa Cruz, when many of the artists who live in town throw open their doors to visitors. As an "Arts Intensive" student at her high school, Hannah is required to visit studios, to sketch and interview artists. I am looking forward to the day. Art is the place where Hannah and I come together. I love art; it feeds and calms me. Hannah, well, she's special. Ever since she was a toddler, she has expressed herself through her art. I walked around for years with her sketchbook and pencils in my bag, and it seems as though every family picture includes our little Hannah stained with markers or spattered with paint. I first noticed her unique viewpoint in kindergarten, when the teacher tugged me over to the bulletin board. There, twenty-three children's drawings of an alligator adorned the wall. One child, our daughter, had rendered only the gaping mouth, teeth, and tongue at the forefront. "Cuz that's the part I'm scared of, Mommy," Hannah had explained. By third grade, the school asked us to find a private art teacher for her because she had "outgrown" their program, and so we did. I have loved watching her work through the years, her focus complete, her mouth moving as though chewing on all of the possibilities. Even now, I can get close to her without rebuff when she's working, as everything falls away for her except her art. Her long, pale fingers wrap around the brush as though it's an extension of her right hand, her left hand a troupe of brightly colored fingers that periodically have to dance on the canvas, making contact with the emerging image.
Hannah
Open studios are really interesting. As usual, there's a bunch of crap, but there are also some pretty cool pieces. I look at them and wonder if the artists were high when they made them. I know that my art is a lot better when I'm high. Dylan is helping me experiment with a bunch of different shit to see what kind of buzz works best.
Mom
The studio tours are great, and we end up going to more than the required three. Our last stop is Bruce Telopa, our favorite local artist. I wander around the garage studio, admiring his work while Hannah sketches for her homework assignment. It is lovely and peaceful, but only for a moment. On the way home, an angry fight flares. I am confused, not understanding how it snuck up on us — I didn't see it coming, not at all, and I don't know what we're fighting about. Suddenly at a stoplight, the car door opens, and Hannah jumps out, disappearing into the small but busy downtown area of Santa Cruz, a haven of oddness that masquerades as hip. Her homework assignment will remain unfinished, joining the heap of her paintings — half worked and abandoned in a graveyard of canvas in her room.
Hannah
Ha! Somehow I make it through the morning with Mother-person. I slip out of the car when we get close to downtown. I know Dylan is down here, and my girls too. I know where they hang. I should be able to find them with no trouble.
I almost don't answer the phone when it rings, but I know she will be a fucking robocaller until I answer, so I pick up. She's crying and can't push her words past the sobs. Is that supposed to make me feel bad? I tell her that I won't get in the car with her, but she can send Dad to get me later. Her hurt is a wave, and it feels good washing over me.
* * *
Mom
I find myself wondering if I could have helped my girls get along better. If I had, maybe they would still be living in the same room, upstairs, near Paul and me. But Hannah and her sister Camilla didn't get along, and Hannah moved downstairs when she was thirteen, to a room that opens on to our deck, setting up a corner studio and pinning up her finished pieces in a private show by and for herself. It becomes her haven, until Dylan becomes her haven. Now she thinks of it as her jail, and Dylan as her destination.
Hannah
It's easy to get out at night. The "Brady Bunch" family I live with goes to bed before 11:00, and our dogs are totally useless. All I have to do is walk out of my room as soon as I hear the snores, across the property, and up the long drive where Dylan is waiting. He can't always borrow a car cuz his buddies freak out about him not having a license. On those nights, I just walk into our little mountain town and meet Dylan there. It's a dark five miles through a fucking forest, but sometimes I get lucky and someone stops and gives me a ride. One time a dude even gave me some Oxy, dropping the pills into my palm with his sweaty hand, smiling at me with his nasty meth teeth and stinky breath. Okay, I think, rolling the little pills between my palms. Why not?
Mom
People start telling me they "think" they might have seen Hannah out late. I have to know, so after Paul goes to bed, I wait on the deck outside her room, leaning against the wood railing, feeling silly and unsure of myself, like some terrible TV show detective. Before long, the door slowly cracks open, and Hannah's lovely, long, painter's fingers curl around the door's edge, followed by her slender body. Her other hand holds her little black ballet flats and, not seeing me lurking in the shadows, she walks off barefoot, a small smile playing about her mouth.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Off the Rails"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Susan Burrowes.
Excerpted by permission of She Writes Press.
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