And here comes the guilt.
Right on schedule.
Usually sets in about 12 hours after the initial shock of the latest drama wears off.
I am praying that my tough love will help my difficult child.
I can't believe it went from that back to this in the blink of an eye.
These events are often more traumatic for the parent than for the difficult child. Have faith that your son knows how to take care of himself, that he knows where to land and how to land on his feet. While he isn't doing what you want him to do, he is as fully grown as other 18 year olds who are enlisting in the military or becoming police or firemen, who are fighting to get into the colleges of their choices, who are choosing to marry and support their families however they can.
At 18, your son is a man.
Have faith that he knows what he is doing.
Really, the only thing he DOESN'T know is how much support he can expect from you when he is going a wrong way.
That is what you are teaching him, now.
It's like when he was little, and you felt bad for putting him in time out. Just like now, you were teaching him the rules.
He needs to get it, in no uncertain terms, that whether he takes it seriously or not, you do. He should not be on the streets using whatever he is using. He is darn lucky the half-way house will take him back at all, after what he has done by breaking the simple rules set up to help him reclaim his life.
I know about that feeling that comes twelve hours later. I think guilt is part of it, but I think it has to do with adrenalin and denial (at least, for me it does). I watch myself dealing with horrifying things ~ and I feel nothing. I fix things. I make a thousand phone calls. I shake like a leaf sometimes, but I feel cool as a cucumber in my mind.
Until 12 to 24 hours later.
But I don't know whether it is guilt or rage or self-pity that I am awash in. I do know that when it goes on long enough, I slip into depression.
I just wake up one day (after lying awake all night) and realize I am depressed, after all.
And my difficult child is almost 40 years old.
Who would ever have believed the mother of a 40 year old would still be subject to the tantrums of her difficult child child?
Thank goodness you are self-aware enough to realize what is happening.
I never do know what to do to stop those feelings.
Getting out, seeing people who don't know a thing about it, that helps. Seeing a movie (or watching Beverly Hills Housewives for hours).
Oh oh.
What else have I found myself fixated on this winter.... Egads!
Millionaire Matchmaker.
Million Dollar Listings.
Anderson.
The View.
Vanderpump Rules.
And you know what?
I DON'T USUALLY WATCH TELEVISION.
When I think of the hours of my life I have wasted trying to keep my head empty enough, to keep myself distracted enough, not to feel the pain!
That's what I like about posting here. I knew I was doing that? But I didn't really
get it that I was doing it until I wrote it out for you.
I'd better take a serious look at that.
Ew.
I haven't accomplished anything worth mentioning since difficult child came home last summer.
So much of my brain is taken up with difficult child's business.
Rereading this, I realize the name for what we feel is post-traumatic stress, right? Where the emotional response is so much more extreme than the crisis of the moment would dictate.
Hmmm.....
Barbara
I am about to pour my first glass of wine this evening...cheers!
