Suicide threat

[Tiredof33]

My 34yo difficult child just can not get his life together. He had asked me for money to get back to Fl after he said the truck they were using for their job broke down about a month ago. He said as soon as he was back at his friends house he would reimburse me. I knew that was a joke.

Now he is texting me for money saying he is in another city - when I started asking questions about what is going on I find he has lied about the truck breaking down - the friend violated his parole and is in jail.

When I asked about him friending the girlfriend from hell on FB that I had to call the police to stop the harrassment he gets snarly. She was supposedly going to kill him after they had another drunken fight and she came after him with a knife.

I told him I only hear from him when he wants money - of course he is very hungry and needs it for food. I am not so sure he is not back with the girlfriend. He really got nasty when I questioned him. The town where he says he is at is really close to her mother's where they were living.

I am tried of having no way of contacting him, worrying about when he obviously doesn't care enough about me to let me know where he is and if he is alive or dead.

This is part of the next he sent when I didn't jump to his request for money:
but thanks for nothing. thanks for not letting me have a dad who would probably help me in a time of desperation. its good to know that i am truly alone in this world. i gotta go, i have a suicide to plan
He also said he wished he had never been born - sadly sometimes so do I!

 

[DammitJanet]

Do you actually know where he is? If so, call the cops and send them to where he is. He told you he plans to commit suicide and that should be taken seriously. I would copy that text and fax it to the police in the city he is living and tell them you truly believe he means it and have them pick him up for a psychiatric hold. That should keep him from threatening you.

 

[Tiredof33]

Janet I do not actually know where he is. The only way I have of contacting him is FB. That also really ticks me off! I have a very immature 34yo son that doesn't show any signs of being able to support himself.

The only time I hear from him is when he wants money! I am truly tired of this as I know the other members are.

 

[DammitJanet]

Darned. I wish you could send the cops to pick him up. That would serve his rear end right. He was just trying to make you feel guilty. Whine whine whine. You should text him a picture of a piece of cheese and ask him if he wants that to go along with his whine.

 

[BusynMember]

That's the sad sickness of addiction, but only he can get himself off of drugs and on track. I have one son, age 35, who isn't a drug addict (although sometimes I do think he drinks too much, but he's home most of the time so I know where he is.) He rarely called me when he was married and stable. Now that his wife ran off with somebody else and he's afraid every day that his son won't like him as much as he likes her new honey (yes, he really does ruminate over this), I hear from him sometimes three times a day. He doesn't ask for money because he knows we don't have any lol, but he does ask his father to help out with, say, legal fees and child support although he is gainfully employed. He says he's broke because of the divorce. I realize this doesn't sound as dire as your situation, and it probably isn't, but I do understand how annoying it is for a grown man, my child, to be unable to take care of himself the way most 35 year olds can. And I also know how it feels to only hear from that adult child when he is needy.

I have no answers, but I did want to offer...my empathy.

 

[Tiredof33]

Thanks Janet! I know he is just trying to manipulate me and make me feel guilty. After having 2 male cousins committ suicide it does worry me BUT I if I continue like this I will still be giving him money for 'emergencies and food' when he is 100yo.

Plus all of his lies! It's so sad when we dread hearing from our children. He has to learn to take care of himself, he is also very spiteful, so who knows what he will do. He says he has a place to stay until the end of the month so he needs to find out where the soup kitchens are.

I have relatives that still have sons his age living at home, unemployed, I refuse to do it!

MM I watch my sister get very stressed over her children's requests for money - she worries so much about the grands doing without. For some reason this generation has no guilt (pride) about asking for handouts. Thank you for your reply.

 

[recoveringenabler]

Oh Tired, I'm so sorry, I know how it feels, we have certainly both been there done that, haven't we? I had to just tell my difficult child that until she had a job and was in some kind of counseling, I did not want to have contact with her. I hope she changes, but I don't have any evidence that that will be the case. It drains the life force out of you. His awful threats are just so selfish, to threaten suicide and drag his angers up from the past and throw them at you, that seems selfish too. You don't deserve to be treated that way. I wouldn't take the suicide threat lightly but at the same time, you have no power to even find him let alone talk him off the cliff. I don't know, it sounds manipulative and it also sounds as if he uses you when he runs into his final wall. Geez, and these are our children................sigh................I'm sorry...........Big hugs for you Mom, I know how hard it can be...............

 

[elizabrary]

Like your son, my daughter does not or will not learn from her mistakes. When she goes into rages I literally cut off all contact with her. I shut off the phones and block her from FB, etc. I have had to call my parents and tell them NOT to do anything to help her. Believe me it is the hardest thing for me to do, especially because she has my granddaughter. But for my own sanity, health and well-being that is what I have to do sometimes. After she calls repeatedly screaming she gives up in a day or two. Then I get a couple of weeks of no contact and then she calls and talks to me like normal. It's bizarre, but trying to understand these kids is impossible. This might be an option for you if you are at your wit's end and need to save yourself. Good luck!

 

[Star*]

Tired,

I wasn't going to sign in tonight and I was headed to bed.....Then I read this post and your thoughts especially your last thought and your sons' post and I sat here thinking of times past in my life with so many people I've loved, and some lost, and some I wonder if I'll loose and how I've had to deal with the threats, the actual suicides and the "but what if's", and I thought if you didn't mind I'd share my ramblings. At best they are ramblings because after working at 911 and dealing with life and death every day? It tweaks your perspective a little on just how stupid we as a human race truly are about wasting our gift of life. We spend MORE time arguing, and loving to argue rather than loving, we spend MORE time being sad and looking for pity and sadness, than we do in looking to give to others and thus making ourselves feel better. We spend NO time thinking things through, being impulsive, and doing idiotic things for 15 seconds that will cost us our freedom, our years and our very lives. Some days after a really difficult and long day I think about ALL the kids here in our "family" I truly do. It makes me worry to the very bone about my own son when I hear some of the STUPID things that people are out there doing, committing crimes.....and self harming. Then I think about the damage control that is always left behind from first responders to family members. When you hear parents on the phone crying, and screaming......and can't reach out? It's hard, and it makes you wonder..."IF I had the chance to say something.....if I had been able to say anything to that Mom who said "I keep letting him come back and nothing changes', or 'I am so tired of his attitude towards me and his threats'..what would I say?"

Well? What I would say I what I did say, and it wasn't easy, and trust me if there were a show of hands of how many of us who were single Mothers got the "And thanks for not even having my Dad around" guilt trip card?? I bet there would be enough cards for several full decks. At 33? He's STILL angry. And the only person he SHOULD be angry with is ......(fill in the blank) Is it you? I can't answer that. You sound like you were a really good Mom. So no blame there. LOTS of kids are raised without one or the other parent. Doesn't mean that they have to go out and continually wreck their life and blame the OTHER parent and constantly rub the nose in the dirt.....HOW ungrateful. And at 33? I'm telling you he's got mentally stunted growth in his brain. From whatever time in his life he got angry about all of this? He's never gotten older....he's just built and built and built on his anger.....and if that age was 7? Then he's got the mentality of a 7 year old in a 33 year old mans body. This is why you make the statement you wish he was never born sometimes......because instead of growing up.......you've essentailly been raising a X year old for XX years. Sounds funky but ask ANY good thearpist if I'm not about ( _) much correct in the arm chair diagnoses. His mapping went haywire from there too. He can't process things right - not any emotion, not anger,,,,,,not love, not hate, not anything. He's emotionally stunted.

IF he were to loose contact with you for treating you poorly......it MAY make him seek help. It may drive him over the edge. It's a chance we take when we tough love our kids. BUT the question that was put before me with my son when he was 15,16 then finally 17 when things got to a point where one of us was really really going to get hurt (and I'm not talking just emotionally) was......HOW many years do you think you can survive this; you just had a stroke....and it was put to me bluntly. ONE of you is going to die most likely you. If you put him out now, IT MAY have a chance of straightening him out. AND you will no doubt survive. So that would be a win win for your both......it's a chance you have to take. BECAUSE the alternative is.....You both stay here, enjoy arguing, hurting, crying, and being emotionally enmeshed.......and ONE of you dies.....and if it IS you? He's not going to ever recover and will most likely end up in jail because you're the one that he depends on to fix EVERYTYHING for him. He's never going to know if he can do things on his own, stay out of trouble on his own, support himself on his own, and fix his own life messes and learn from them on his own.....if youre there to do it. BUT out. And let him experience life.....and it's hard knocks.

So I did. And it was he double hockey sticks.....and then some. I didn't hear or see from him hardly for nearly three years. And he was living with or near or around my x who is a psychopath/sociopath, and a monster. HOWEVER......monster ended up in prison...and the boy had it rough enough to start making statements like "I wish I had listened, You're lucky your mom is here.....I wish I had a Carpy macaroni dinner." things he never admitted-----and was now all of a sudden THANKFUL for." He nearly died a couple of times, He got tangled up with drinking.....he got into a felony situation......and now is a Father. NOT what I would call perfection of tough love.....but you know what? HIS life ........HIS mistakes.......HIS choices.....and yes there were all the many MANY I"m going to kill myself suicide therats along the way.......he is for all intents and purposes a self-proclaimed bipolar person. I've never really thought so.......but I have thought he was a person that never learned from his mistakes and made himself DEPRESSED and miserable......

NOW he's in school, on probation....has good people around him......he calls and he's working on getting a job.....and going to college. ALL .......done......on his own. He loves his daughter and keeps in touch daily.....and calls me twice a week. This week for the first time since he was "put out" he called his "step dad" .......and they talked. It's been 5 years. All I could do was cry happy tears.....FIVE years. That's a long time to heal and 1o mins seemed like an hour on the phone.

SO I guess my question to you......is the same question I asked my x mother in law.....years ago when her son was 34.......and doing drugs and messing up his life. Bcause after 13 years of a horrible marriage......I left. I tried so hard......and she just kept enabling him to fail., bailing him out......always handing him money, sending him things....and allowing him to come home, bring his girlfrineds.....it was crazy. I asked her.....WHEN is he ever going to be old enough.....for you to stop? Because when you're in your 70's THIS is going to be really old......Fortunately for her? One of her other sons ran her over with a van and killed her, because my x is now 56 and still smoking crack, and his prison record is extensive, and he's not a nice person, and still couch surving, and hurting women....and if she were alive? She'd be nearly 80......trying to deal with this junk. What a life........or not life. Fifty years of putting up with junk like that. Never knowing happiness......with or without your kid. There has to be something else for you because we all make our own destiny. And I'm happy to say that for us? It was a gamble and it worked out. (Stopped holding my breath) You don't know my life, or how bizzare it's been - Just trust me we got a double dose of blessings.
Maybe once your son thinks that you're not that ALL accessible, ALL worried, ALL bank of Mom......and he could loose that? He'd start to treat you like you should be treated. If not WHY then (ask yourself) Do you entertain such a person with your time and talents? You certainly wouldn't allow a stranger those privledges..And I also understand about having that feeling of wanting to connect and make sure he's okay.....Trust me sending your only survivng 17 yo son to live near Satan wasnt a walk in the park either.

Hope something in that ramble helps you......

 

[witzend]

I think that you have to tell him that you love him and you can't let him kill himself. Explain that he's a grown man and he has to learn to get along on his own. You will take any threat of suicide seriously and will call the authorities for a safety check on him if he threatens it again.

I honestly believe that he is most likely saying this to manipulate you, and it's a terrible thing to do to you. But, it's not far from manipulation to desperation, and he needs to know that you will do the responsible and loving thing if he does it again.