news.

“No news is good news.” I’ve titled this post “news,” so you can catch my drift as to where this is heading.

E-Niner has had homework this week for the first time in his life, and he’s handling it about as poorly as anyone can handle homework. He says he’s nervous about it before we start, and as soon as his fingers grip the pencil, he’s yelling, crying, and trying to negotiate his way out.

Last night it took him an hour and a half to do his homework. Tonight it only took 45 minutes for approximately the same amount of work. He was an anxious mess doing it — screaming, crying, scribbling out the directions as hard as he could, flinging the sheet across the table with such thrust it flew three feet past the table before it floated down ever so gently and slow enough for him to catch it and crumple it.

It was awful. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst of it — and what scares me most — is the glimpse of psychosis he had tonight. I thought we were done with psychotic episodes. I thought we ruled it out as something within him but rather a reaction to medication. After the hospital visit in the spring, psychosis seemed to have been driven the hell outta dodge. Psychosis must have legs because tonight it came knocking back on the door.

After homework was done and after he had a bath, E-Niner sat down to the table for a snack before bedtime. I asked him if he wanted to talk about what happened with homework. He said, “I was scared. I was really scared. I was scared of all those ones.” (He meant the numeral one. Part of homework was math.) When he said “all those ones,” he was pointing at the blank wall.

“What ones are you talking about?”

“The ones all along the wall. Can’t you see them?”

Nope.

“And they were talking to me.”

Great.

“What were they saying?” I asked.

“They were saying ‘be careful.’”

Oh, no. Hearing voices is not a good thing. Hearing voices is a marker for schizophrenia. Oh, no.

“And remember that thing behind the tree the other day?”

He did mention something behind the tree the other day, but I blew it off.

“That thing behind the tree was looking at me, and I don’t like it when it looks at me. You hafta tell it to stop.”

I just felt like things have been going so, so well. And now I see in a very heightened state of anxiety, he reverts into psychotic mode.

After the bedtime snack, his anxiety started reeling again. “Mom, stop my mind. Please make my mind stop!” he was saying to me. “You need to take me to the hospital right now so they can fix my mind again.” My heart broke. Jonathan held him close while I warmed a buckwheat wrap in the hopes of settling him down. He calmed down.

He calmed down, and then I ramped up. Why is this happening again? Could this please not happen. I will not let this happen and escalate. Is this even something I can control? Probably not. But I can influence it. I can influence it greatly.

The only way to stop psychosis like his — psychosis that stems from a highly anxious mind — is to stop the anxiety from increasing to that level. I can do this. I can help him. We’ve been doing it. A new school year and homework has thrown him for a loop. He just needs to get back on track. Maybe ease into things a little more somehow.

It’s not escaping me that earlier this year he was admitted to the hospital three weeks after starting school. Next week will be three weeks into this new school year.

Truth be told, I feel much better equipped to handle this than last year at this time. Tomorrow will be phone calls to school — teacher, psychologist, social worker and his own private art therapist and psychiatrist. We need to come together pronto.

News.