Fell off the wagon big time
- Thread starter Payla
- Start date
Thank you! A weekend with dear girl friends is the best thing you could do, have a wonderful time! I will be setting up my "sanctuary" this weekend, my chaise lounge chair/sofa comes today, I am so excited! Next time you hear from me I will be writing from my very own little space, yay!
DammitJanet
Well-Known Member
Payla, Im sorry I havent responded to your post before now. I simply missed it somehow.
You say your son is 33 right and has some sort of mental issues like ADD? He also is using drugs? Honey, its probably the drugs that are the real issues. I have a son who is 28 with ADHD, entered the Marines at 18, served 4 years, got out in 2007 and has now worked with the sheriff's dept since then and is married, bought a house and has two kids.
I also have a 26 year old who has had more severe mental and behavioral disorders most of his life and has been in trouble legally since he got old enough to be in trouble. He has finally turned himself around and is no longer smoking pot and he is now in a long term committed relationship and has two little girls. He doesnt live with me.
I also have bipolar, borderline personality disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD and a myriad of physical disorders which have disabled me since 2001. None of us got handed a get out of jail free card when they gave us our mental health diagnosis. Lord my youngest son would have loved to have had a few of those! He needed them. He did a ton of stupid things when he was younger. It has only been in the past couple of years that he has decided he needed to turn his life around.
By the time I was your son's age I was already taking care of 3 kids. Heck, I had already had 3 kids by the time I was 24. At 33, I was already dealing with one son who had been diagnosed with learning disabilities and one who had been diagnosed with ADHD and one who had been diagnosed with ADHD/ODD.
Your son is well old enough to learn to get his life together if he wants to but right now he has you to fall back on. If you give him the wings to fly on his own he will. It will also give him the inner pride of being a man which at this moment he is lacking. A man takes care of himself and his family when he has one. Depending on Mom (and or dad if he is in the picture) cannot leave him with any sense of self pride at all. He has to feel like he is still somewhat like a perpetual teen.
I agree that wintering homeless in the Northeast is not a good place to be. My suggestion would be to buy him a bus ticket to either FL or CA and ship him there. Maybe look in the paper for a boarding house you could pay a week or two on and then let him go. He can either make it or not. His choice. He will at least be warmer. You wont have to worry as much, he wont be close, you can sleep better.
You say your son is 33 right and has some sort of mental issues like ADD? He also is using drugs? Honey, its probably the drugs that are the real issues. I have a son who is 28 with ADHD, entered the Marines at 18, served 4 years, got out in 2007 and has now worked with the sheriff's dept since then and is married, bought a house and has two kids.
I also have a 26 year old who has had more severe mental and behavioral disorders most of his life and has been in trouble legally since he got old enough to be in trouble. He has finally turned himself around and is no longer smoking pot and he is now in a long term committed relationship and has two little girls. He doesnt live with me.
I also have bipolar, borderline personality disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD and a myriad of physical disorders which have disabled me since 2001. None of us got handed a get out of jail free card when they gave us our mental health diagnosis. Lord my youngest son would have loved to have had a few of those! He needed them. He did a ton of stupid things when he was younger. It has only been in the past couple of years that he has decided he needed to turn his life around.
By the time I was your son's age I was already taking care of 3 kids. Heck, I had already had 3 kids by the time I was 24. At 33, I was already dealing with one son who had been diagnosed with learning disabilities and one who had been diagnosed with ADHD and one who had been diagnosed with ADHD/ODD.
Your son is well old enough to learn to get his life together if he wants to but right now he has you to fall back on. If you give him the wings to fly on his own he will. It will also give him the inner pride of being a man which at this moment he is lacking. A man takes care of himself and his family when he has one. Depending on Mom (and or dad if he is in the picture) cannot leave him with any sense of self pride at all. He has to feel like he is still somewhat like a perpetual teen.
I agree that wintering homeless in the Northeast is not a good place to be. My suggestion would be to buy him a bus ticket to either FL or CA and ship him there. Maybe look in the paper for a boarding house you could pay a week or two on and then let him go. He can either make it or not. His choice. He will at least be warmer. You wont have to worry as much, he wont be close, you can sleep better.
It is the hardest thing ever. Who would of thought that the age over over 30 we would still be dealing with parenting at this amount. i feel your pain. I am learning alot about detaching and I do not think it is something I will get. I always want to offer the last one help time. Mine is in jail at the moment and I found it was the hardest thing not to bail him out until I realized I bailed him out 2 times this year already. I always seem to forgive and forget. Not this time. He is safe in jail as long as he minds his business and I am safe in my home without him. I am sorry we are in this mess.
I am still helping him occasionally, then being in a constant battle with myself as to was I wrong, was I right, will I be able to stand knowing he is homeless in cold if that happens, etc etc... Just tired of the whole thing. Going back to my counselor this week. It has sort of turned into a slow detachment process where over the months and weeks he asks for less and doesnt call as much, but he is going downhill with no indication of getting himself together. I hope it somehow ends and however it ends I can accept it. This is just TOO MUCH some days! Although i work, I have good times, I enjoy my other children, my hobbies, my friends, my husband, but it is a constant drain on me and always in the back of my mind as a big unresolved awful thing.
It goes that way, up and down and sideways.............that's the nature of detachment...it's hard. But, you're doing a very good job. Little by little, you make the very choices you're making and then one day you say, "geez, I'm okay, I haven't felt bad in days/weeks." He is asking for less and calling less, that's progress! And, yes, it is TOO much on some days, I sure remember that. Good that you are enjoying parts of your life because this can really drain you and you need to keep yourself well nourished on all levels. I'm glad you're seeing your counselor this week, that will be helpful. Hang in there, it does get better!
Got a call today from my difficult child crying because the apt he is staying at is under investigation because someone who lives there sold dope to someone who OD'd. He is over his head and who knows how involved he is. He said he doesnt want to stay there anymore. I told him don't call me anymore and to go to a homeless shelter. It wasnt hard to do at all, but now I am trying to steele myself for the next chapter. If he gets arrested we will have to go get his dog. If he goes to a homeless shelter we will have to go get his dog. I dont want to see where he lives. It is so depressing. Everytime I think he might stabilize at some level he can handle, he falls further down. Watching this and waiting is just awful. I just know there will be several voice mails waiting for me at work in the morning. I will work on strength to not listen to them.
Well Payla, in the world in which you and I reside, I would call that a victory. If he wants you to take care of his dog, he can bring the dog to you, if you want it that is. You probably don't want to see where he lives. Or have a friend pick up the dog. Geez, I know exactly what you are saying about steeling yourself for the next chapter. My difficult child is amazingly successful at adapting to the next lowest level ..........when I think the level on the top of that was the lowest possible level I could imagine. But, she lives on that level by her own choices, no one holds her there, that's what I had to come to realize. I can't drag her out kicking and screaming, she doesn't want to do anything to get herself out of where she is. So, what is left, for me, is acceptance. I had to accept her where she is. And, oddly, we're both better off now that I've done that. Little by little he will come to realize you are no longer there and then he will make his own choices and he will not involve you. Getting there for us parents is pretty gruesome at times, but you'll get there. And, so will he. Hang in there, you're doing a really good job every day! (((HUGS))))
Thank you Recovering, but it still feels bad when he asks for help. It feels bad because I am so sick of him asking me, then I am so so tired of him not showing any signs of taking some measures that actually improve his circumstances, and then, I have a gut reaction that he can't help himself and feel bad about that too. But I don't think I should be helping him, this I know. Now I am worried about how involved he is with all of this drug business; it is just more bad news every week, and will it ever end????
I know, I really do. I was in that place and then my difficult child went to jail. I thought I would not be able to survive it. Then she made more bad choices and ended up in jail once again. I went into overdrive doing EVERYTHING for her while she called me collect nightly three or four times to cry. I broke down in the car one day after leaving the impound lot trying to get her car out for the 3rd day in a row, only to be told we didn't have the correct paperwork, again. I cried as if my heart would explode, my SO pulled the car over and just held on to me. I couldn't stop crying, I don't know that I ever cried like that before, it really felt as if a big piece of me had actually broken. We then continued on our crazy journey, paying for the impound, paying her lapsed registration, paying for the car to be repaired, paying for old tickets, paying for her jail account, paying for the phone calls, paying and paying in every possible way. I was getting more and more depleted, resentful and plain old worn out. Then one day on the phone, she just treated me so shabbily after I said her car wouldn't be ready to be picked up at my mechanics yet, the repairs I was paying for.........I heard something in her voice, something that made me very angry and I just said, "I'm done now." And that was the end. I didn't know it then. Time went by and I never felt the same way again. I had reached critical mass, I had jumped to a new level of awareness, and you can't go back. That was almost 4 months ago.
Your son may go to jail Payla, he may. And, you can't control that. He may be heavily involved with the drug issues. And, if that's true and you get that news it will probably knock you over. But, you will get up and learn to live with even that. And, some of us here are actually glad when our kids are in jail, because they are safe. They are protected from themselves, their own bad choices and their unsavory associates. They are fed and warm. I know it's weird, but it's true. And, while they are in jail, you can stop worrying about them and get some peace. That's not always the case, but it often is. Then you will learn to live with even that.
You're on this road now and you've begun this process of detachment. You've made all the right choices and it still feels bad. And it may stay like this for awhile, I don't know, but he will land somewhere, sometime and then you will learn to live with that too. It sucks I know. I'm sorry, I can empathize. But, as the saying goes, .................the only way out is through....................
Just for a lighter note, when I am in a quandary, my SO always says, " we have to go with what Stymie (of the old Little Rascals) said, we don't know where we're going, but we're on our way." You're on your way Payla.............just hang on...........
Your son may go to jail Payla, he may. And, you can't control that. He may be heavily involved with the drug issues. And, if that's true and you get that news it will probably knock you over. But, you will get up and learn to live with even that. And, some of us here are actually glad when our kids are in jail, because they are safe. They are protected from themselves, their own bad choices and their unsavory associates. They are fed and warm. I know it's weird, but it's true. And, while they are in jail, you can stop worrying about them and get some peace. That's not always the case, but it often is. Then you will learn to live with even that.
You're on this road now and you've begun this process of detachment. You've made all the right choices and it still feels bad. And it may stay like this for awhile, I don't know, but he will land somewhere, sometime and then you will learn to live with that too. It sucks I know. I'm sorry, I can empathize. But, as the saying goes, .................the only way out is through....................
Just for a lighter note, when I am in a quandary, my SO always says, " we have to go with what Stymie (of the old Little Rascals) said, we don't know where we're going, but we're on our way." You're on your way Payla.............just hang on...........
