I am glad you are feeling something positive happen with difficult child, 4Paws. That helps a lot.
And you know, this is a one day at a time life---but most people in the world live in the past or the future. Most people don't HAVE to learn how to live in the moment because they aren't dealing with the ongoing unrelenting insanity of an adult child who is mentally ill.
We have to.
So I am glad you are claiming the moment here, and I truly hope your difficult child continues to walk in that new direction and never goes back to the old ways.
NOW is really all we have, so let's enjoy the NOW now.
I NEVER want this to harden me to a point that I'm always in "fight mode".
I used to get up in difficult child's face a lot. I used to get up in my ex-husband's face a lot (alcoholic, now recovering). I thought I would enlighten them to their problems and behaviors and somehow, once they actually knew how bad they were acting, they would stop. I had a lot to learn. I was acting as stupid and out of control as they were, and I don't have a brain disease. What was my excuse?
It was stark terror and ignorance and arrogance and being a manager and a fixer. I thought I had the answers and they just needed to listen to me.
Over the past 8 years, I have become much more humble about exactly who the problem is, here. Today, I see there are two problems in a relationship with somebody who is addicted---the addict/alcoholic and the enabler. Each has a lot of work to do.
I am working on me, and I will continue to work on me for the rest of my life. Now, I don't get up in anybody's face about anything and try to "set them straight." I have talked calmly to my son over the past year about his life and behavior, but little by little, even that I do less and less.
As I am learning to accept him as a grown man who is choosing a way of life and with the right to do that, I am learning that there is very little to say to him except to offer my love and encouragement.
The process of getting to this place---detachment with love and a growing acceptance of him---can feel flat and distant and empty. Sometimes I wonder if it is a hardening of the heart, and maybe it is, a bit.
I am still the free-wheeling hopeless romantic in so many ways, but I have also been honed by fire, and I am more grown up today than I ever have been. I hope it is a centered, calm heart that I have now, most of the time, not a hard, teflon heart.
I definitely am not a fighter anymore---I just to fight passionately for all of my beliefs and now I don't have to do that anymore.
Until he is 18, I'm still considered responsible
Your son is still young, and I pray that this behavior of his, his decisions, his mistakes to date, can move to his past and not continue. But that is his decision.
You are just as important as he is 4Paws, and I hope you can claim that knowledge in your life as time goes on, and be ever kinder to yourself, putting yourself very high up on the list of priorities, letting go of all of the adults in your/our lives and loving them gently, accepting them for just who they show us they are, and being okay with that, as we hope they can be with us.
May the days only get better in your family!