There was once a show called, “Fringe”. It’s quite sci-fi-y, with a lot of philosophy mixed in. As such, it appealed to me. It’s somewhat of a complicated story. It’s the story of two parallel worlds, one of which is slowly being destroyed due to the unintended consequences of the actions of the other. For a while, the two worlds are at war, the world being destroyed trying to use the other side to fix their problems, but eventually the sides join worlds and start working together.
There are two versions of the main characters, one in each world. The female protagonist in the main world is called Olivia, her doppelganger on the other side is referred to as Faux-livia. As the series unfolds, at one point Faux-livia tells a story about rainbows. One of the consequences of the destruction is that her world never sees rainbows. Faux-livia makes the best of things. She is fierce. Despite her fierceness, Faux-livia also wants to see a rainbow. As she tells this story, Faux-livia concludes, “I keep looking up.” She keeps looking up even though a rainbow may never appear.
We all have things like this in our lives, things we hope for that may never come true. I hope my son gets off the methamphetamines, although I do not, at this moment, see how this will ever come true. Meth is too hard to get off of, my son will tell you that. He’s gotten off of many other substances, including alcohol and heroin. About the heroin he said, in comparison to meth, “Mom, when I got off the heroin, I always knew that if I made it through the first couple of weeks, things would get better. That’s not true with meth.” Meth fries the dopamine in your brain, and when the meth is gone, nothing is enjoyable because there’s no dopamine there whatsoever to support it. So the effects of methamphetamines last for a very long time, it takes at least as long as two years to recover.
This situation seems kind of hopeless sometimes. How does one who had poor coping skills to begin with deal with two years of not the slightest bit of Joy?
For a long time, I always felt with all Dave’s substances that if he could just hit bottom, he would have a moment of truth and do things differently. Hence, I tried not to enable Dave so he would hit bottom. I don’t think that’s true anymore. The kid has hit so many bottoms of one kind or another that there really isn’t another one to hit, unless it’s living on the street with a needle in his arm on the verge of death. Maybe that’s the bottom he needs, but I am not willing to support it, reason being that there are bottoms you can hit that are so bad, you will never come back from them. I know this from my own experience. Love was what pulled me back, not pain.
So now I try something different. It may not help him, but it will help me. I just try to love him, just as he is. He needs something to come back to. He needs that love. The rest is in God’s hands. There is no predicting the outcome.
When I think of Dave, I think about Faux-livia. Towards the end of the series, the two Fringe worlds are about to become disconnected again for reasons too long to explain. By then, Olivia and Faux-livia have developed a grudging respect for each other, although nothing close to a fondness. But when they say their good-byes to each other and Faux-livia is returning to her world, a world with a still-uncertain future, Olivia tells Faux-livia, “Keep looking up.”
As I consider my own life, these words come to me frequently. A lot of life is about that, yes? Hope in the face of uncertainty, and maybe against all the odds that maybe something will change. I keep hoping no matter how unrealistic it seems. Sometimes miracles do come true.
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