September 2013- A Troubled Mind and Heart
A few weeks ago, I spoke with the detective in charge of Logan's case. I needed to KNOW both the good and the disappointing. So many questions circle in my head about the day he died and the weeks leading up to it. I know what the news reports say and what Logan's step mom told us about what happened but it gives me a kaleidoscope view. It does not lead to answering the "whys." In the course of the conversation, I got some of the most niggling questions answered. The detective said my son was a very troubled young man and it was one of the saddest cases he had ever worked on. He was extremely kind and had obviously worked hard on Logan's case. He and another detective both had kids Logan's age so it hit especially close to home for them. It was obvious from what Logan's friends and teachers said that he was a well-liked kid who everyone thought had a lot of promise and was on the path to a bright future.
I had originally called about getting a copy of the letter Logan had left with his school counselor before he left the school and walked to the end of his life at the train tracks. The detective and I talked about some of the contents of the letter, much of which I already knew about just from the process of deduction and how well I knew my son.
One pressing question I had answered was that I know what he was wearing. It may be morbid but I have had a movie in my head of how it happened for almost six months. It must be part of how my brain needs to process information: I need to "see" things to understand them. Part of that mental movie was a hope he was wearing something he loved that day and to understand the process he went through to make the decision to take his own life. To hear he was wearing an Air Force shirt my mom gave him for his birthday made me feel oddly comforted but also that he had prepared for it by wearing what he wanted to be remembered in.
Logan had kept a journal for a number of years. I knew about it, had even read parts of it when he brought it along on visits. I wasn't trying to just be invasive of his privacy but wanted to compare what he was telling me of his home situation with what his diary said. They painted the same picture of a kid who loved when his dad showed him attention but felt he wasn't fully accepted at home. He felt abandoned by his dad's taking him away from me and then going away for months and even years at a time for work to be left with his step mom and her family. He wasn't allowed to tell me when his dad was gone for long periods of time for fear I would try to get custody back. His heart was wounded by the rejection he felt by his dad's family- he talked about it a lot. I will never know if it was reality that they actively rejected him or his perception of it- from most of what I saw, they appeared to be supportive and did all the things families are supposed to do to support one another. He didn't feel they truly felt that way, though.Logan felt like he didn't have either of his parents there for him like he needed; me because of circumstances and his dad because of choices. When his dad came back from Afghanistan, he was distant and removed. Logan said they never reconnected and their relationship was a shadow of what it had been. There was abuse and a double standard in the household where Logan felt he wasn't valued the same as his dad's other two children. Several of his friends made comments via social media about how unhappy Logan's home environment was in the days after he died.
The detective told me Logan made the decision to commit suicide for two main reasons: the first was that he felt like he was a disappointment and couldn't do anything right. I tried so hard to show him my unconditional love and support but it wasn't enough to offset the way he felt from other adults in his daily life. He had told us many times there was no adult in California he felt he could trust. He had gotten in minor trouble a few times since the beginning of sophomore year and we had talked about how he needed to keep himself out of any trouble to achieve his dreams of entering the Air Force Academy. He understood it was important to make wise choices now for his future. Two days before he died, he got in trouble for bullying at school with calling a girl a name in class. He was disciplined at school and at home and for Logan it was too much. It solidified his feelings of failure. We all struggle with feelings of inadequacy at times; it is a normal teenage process. Logan wasn't able to overcome the self-doubt- it overtook him. He felt alone and unwanted.
The second reason was something I didn't know, something he had kept hidden. Logan had started talking when he was 10 about a person who appeared in a lot of his dreams. He named him Milton and said he sounded like Morgan Freeman but didn't look like him. Logan said he was like a train conductor in his dreams, telling him where to go and what to do. He talked about Milton off and on for several years and it seemed to be an innocuous presence in his dream life.
About a year before he died, I asked him if the man was still in his dreams. Logan had been having some pretty violent dreams from the age of 14 and I was hoping to help him learn to control his dreams because some were pretty graphic and upsetting. I truly thought they were because of the kinds of movies and video games he was around. He played a lot of assassin-type games and liked horror movies. Many of his dreams were direct reflections of those kinds of games and movies. Logan said the man was sometimes still in dreams but had started encouraging Logan to act violently in the dreams. He even had dreams about killing people and in the dreams he had no remorse for what he was doing. I was, understandably, concerned-- it seemed like he was feeling out of control in his life and was taking control in his dreams. He had a lot of bitterness and anger and always associated it with people he felt had wronged him. We talked about trying to tell the man that he didn't want to hurt people when he made the suggestions in the dreams.
The second reason he gave in his letter was because he couldn't live with the person he had become. The voice of the "man," Milton, was something he had started hearing outside of sleep. It was becoming part of his waking life. The voice was telling Logan to hurt people and feeding his feelings of anger and injustice. Logan had started becoming really angry when he felt something was unjust or someone disappointed him. As far as I know, Logan didn't tell anyone that the voice had transitioned to his conscious life. Logan would have known the voice wasn't real and there was something wrong with him. I truly think he was afraid of the rejection by being labeled with a mental illness. He ended his life before the voice would compel him to hurt someone and he couldn't resist.
It is so frustrating to know that with counseling and medication Logan could have been helped. I admire that he was noble and didn't want to hurt others. I admired Logan in life for his perspective and will continue to admire my son in death as well for being a wise beyond his years and having a tender heart. He made a hard choice that was more selfless than you would expect from someone his age. Logan had a strong sense of responsibility and felt people relied on him to do the right thing- sometimes that was hard for him. A new layer of grief has been added by the knowledge that he needed help and didn't reach out because of stigma and fear of rejection. I wish he had had the courage to say something instead of assuming more responsibility than a 16-year-old kid should take. I wish he had had the courage to say something to me and let me take the responsibility of action as his mother. He would never have gone down that dark path alone- together we would have found the light.
There is a harsh reality of knowing the stigma of mental illness shadows my son's memory. I made the decision soon after he died that I had to be transparent with both the expected and unexpected if his death was going to have meaning and good come from it, so I am laying it bare in the hope it will bring discussion forward about something as stigmatized as mental illness. We should be helping the helpless, not stigmatizing them. If someone sees themself in how Logan felt or in someone they know, GET HELP. Don't ignore it or sweep it aside. Mental illness is more than being "different." It is not a choice, much like no one would choose to get cancer. It should be looked at just like an illness anywhere else in the body that should be treated and understood.
