Star, yes, your story helps a lot, thank you for taking the time and the energy to write that whole story down, it was very compelling to read. You did a difficult and wonderful thing by letting your son go, and you got a positive response. I commend you for your courage and your loving commitment. Well done.
My saga is long and incremental,each step of the way has it's own mine fields. Let me say this first, when my beloved granddaughter came to live with me when she was 11, she spent two years imitating her mothers bad behavior, that's all she knew. After that amount of time, many warnings, many lies, much heartache, therapy, and her insistence that she could always go to her other grandmothers home to live, (who by the way is an extremely unhealthy and controlling, unpleasant woman) I let my granddaughter go to another state and live with them for what turned out to be one year. In that time, my granddaughter had what she described as an epiphany and it changed her life. She asked to come home and on her own had realized that life with me was loving, healthy, appropriate boundaries were set, and she was safe and cared for. She came back a different kid. My letting her go, as you did with your son, precipitated her own learning and taking responsibility, something I could not have taught her. She remains a rather remarkable, insightful, mature, funny, loving young girl with great potential to be everything she desires to be.
Ok, so then her mother, who has been essentially lost in space for 20 years, resurfaces after a number of years of estrangement. She is homeless. Then she gets arrested. In an effort to give her one more chance I offered her a place to decompress and hopefully begin to make better choices. That was 3 1/2 weeks ago. Along the way, I enrolled, (in November, when I could see this was heating up), in a very intense, year to two year long codependency therapy program where you meet once a week for group therapy and educational classes, along with CoDa meetings and private therapy. It has been amazingly helpful.
My daughter exhibits signs of bi-polar, narcissism, borderline, post traumatic stress, depression and maybe more, mental illness runs in my family, father, sister, brother, niece, nephew, all diagnosed. I have set such stringent boundaries for my daughter because she really doesn't understand anything else, it has been difficult. We set a date for her to leave for March 1st. I am getting good at the boundary setting and detaching from her strange life of simply becoming accustomed to the next lowest rung of human existence. I've gone through all the worry, fear, anxiety, anger, distress, embarrassment, shame, resentment, you name it, I've felt it, and for 20years. The other day we, (my granddaughter, daughter, fiancee and myself) had a family meeting. It went great. Everyone expressed how they felt, mostly about my daughters presence. My granddaughter was brilliant, she said everything to her mother about what she was feeling, my favorite being, "I'm 15 and I make better choices then you do." And, my other favorite, "you need to elevate your standards, in life and in people." When it was over, my granddaughter confided in me that she had said everything to her mom that she ever wanted to say. That is very freeing and she felt good, I acknowledged her for her courage and communication. She really is an amazing kid.
I felt similar and told my daughter how I felt. My fiancee said one thing, and that was to keep her "friends" these low life guys who look like drugged street people away from our home, he felt protective towards all the women in the house. She said she understood. The next morning we spotted a bike on the front lawn, one of these creeps had stayed the night in the tent with her, the very one my fiancee had asked her to keep away. She had some lame excuse, all of which didn't fly, we said she had to leave by Sat. now. We had another meeting with her, just my fiancee and I, and I really said, not in anger, but in a very clear voice, how I interpreted her behavior and how it impacted me and how I was finished having it impact me. She looked stricken. Usually she is defensive and arrogant, makes it clear that what you say is really not that valuable. We took the house key saying she had made it very clear to us that we cannot trust her. I guess I never said that to her before, she appeared visibly shaken by it too. I said, you can stay in the tent and use the bathroom and eat when we are home and can let you in. Last night I told her she could come in now and eat something and use the bathroom about 4 times between 7 and 10. She kept saying she would come in and then didn't, she was likely sleeping, she does a lot of that. At 10 I said, we're going to bed now. By 10:15 I heard nothing so I turned out all the lights and went upstairs to bed. So she had no food and no bathroom facilities all night. This is all very different for me. My fiancee and I were talking about this, and it's wonderful that he can see all of it, usually I've been alone and it's impossible to describe it to someone else, it's very, very bizarre behavior. I was telling him that for most of my daughters adult life it felt like I was without power somehow, that she had it all. Now, that has shifted, for the first time in my life with her as an adult, I have the power and I know it and so does she. Her behavior does not dictate my life, my home, nothing, I just contain her more and more until she is hardly there. This feels very, very healthy.
After my granddaughter told her mother all her feelings, and then the following day, after I did that, I began feeling that this time with my daughter spending with us, is less about her and more about my granddaughter and I. It seems she and I have completed something with my daughter, detached, disconnected, moved on. I love my daughter, but I cannot be a part of her disastrous life. I am still willing to give her the next two weeks, since we said we would, but I have little hope that anything will change.
I told her yesterday that I had talked to a therapist about her actions last year and was told that my daughter had no ability to "future think," and I explained to her how this is one of the many things which keeps her stuck in not handling her life, then creating a drama which she drags others into and then on to the next drama. I said, I no longer respond to your dramas, and what's happened is you have now started to connect with the lowest life forms around who will tolerate you. That is how I see it, unpleasant as that is.
Each day I get better and better at setting boundaries around her behavior and detaching from her. My guess is that in 2 weeks she will go off to live in her car and then be re- arrested for vagrancy and returned to jail where I imagine she will live in and out of for the rest of her life. The difference for me is that this stay with us has driven the point home that there is nothing I can do, I didn't cause it, I can't control it, I can't fix it, it's not my fault and it's her life. I hope and believe that when she leaves, my granddaughter and I will be free. There is nothing more I can do, this was the last shot I was/am willing to give her and it doesn't look good for any change happening. But, the big change is in me, I've changed in huge ways. It's a gift to have my fiancee there acknowledging those changes all the time, he is a gem and was willing to go through all of this with me, so that I could detach and move on, and with his love and his support, and the support of the therapists in the program, my friends and all of you, who REALLY get it, I have been able to move through this and move out of it.
I loved the part in your story where your son comes to realize the truth of who really loves him and then he changed, that's beautiful. That's what happened with my granddaughter and I am so grateful for that. I am not sure my own child can make that leap, she has two weeks to begin to see the truth, or not.
Thank you Star for your words and your support. I'm happy that your son turned it around for himself, it's good to hear that.
God Bless.