Radio, Transmission: She's Lost Control Again

I met him when he was just 19. He was skinny and hungry. He'd been mugged for his winter coat just a week earlier.

His dwelling was a basement studio apartment. It wasn't even the size of our basement room at this moment.

It was small, dark and dingy. You had to walk through the mildewey basement and the laundry room to get to his front door.

He seemed hungry. Hungry for food. Hungry for love.

I loved him instantly. The second I saw his ashey, pale blonde hair. His cold, blue eyes. So longing, so hungry.

I was touched. I was touched by his poverty.

Only later would I learn that his mother was in prison, his father? Later his father would be homeless.

Nights were spent holding his skinny frame. I taught him my comfort. My comfort. He held me, I taught him that when we didn't have each other, you simply put one pillow under your knees and you hugged the other.

Pillows were the mothers that didn't want us. My nights were spent thinking of the highest building I knew that I could jump off of. Instead? I waited for his call. The call that would inevitably end with me rushing to his door.

Tonight I watched Control. A film by Anton Corbijn. Ian Curtis. A lost soul. Had no one to guide him. No one to hold him... truly.

He had people around him, but no one understood the imbalance in chemicals. The brain, the thoughts, they didn't sleep. Warm arms around you don't always mean comfort.

Sometimes the pillow under your knee can be enough. Teaching the use of the pillow can be enough.

I held a shaking, skinny boy in my arms. I knew all he needed was love. If someone, anyone just truly loved him.

Twelve years later...

Two sons.

One living.

One dead.

He knows. He knows I love him.

Isolation.

She's lost control.

Transmission.

He knows.