Thank you for your kind words........
There was a time a few months ago,.........I went through the agonies of the damned as you are now, the horrors of "what ifs," the middle of the night heart pounding fears of my only child out there and what kind of a person, a mother, lets her kid face those elements when I have a warm and cozy home she can come to.............as I've said many times here on this board and to my friends, never had I experienced the kind of pain in my heart, in my mind, in my life, as the suffering I went through detaching from my difficult child. I know exactly how you feel, as I imagine many of us do. You have to go against every instinct you have, every feeling that you've known to be real and right, and essentially abandon your child when it 'appears' they are the most needy and vulnerable. It is absolutely horrific and crazy making and puts you through a nightmare of monumental fears.
Run to that phone tomorrow and call your psychiatrist and get yourself some help to do this. I really can't imagine coming out the other side without an army of help, information, support, guidance, care, nurturing, and a lot of hand holding. I am about to complete a one year program for codependency which fell into my lap when I needed it most. I learned so much to give me the strength to go on, to go through, to make all those hard choices you're right in the middle of making right now. Having lived through what you're describing makes me have a sense that anything is possible............you can separate yourself from another human being, even your own child and let them go to wherever they go............and be alright, in fact, fine, in fact you can live your life in a peaceful and happy way. I didn't think you could get from there to anywhere else, but you can. And, what it takes is one choice at a time............one choice.......each time he makes a move, you counter with a loving but detached response, exactly the way you did today.
I don't know how it works for others, perhaps you might ask them, but for me, it was a moment where my difficult child just stepped over that line for the millionth time and something inside me just broke, I could feel it, not me breaking, the program, the unhealthy enabling connection, the false sense of control, the rescuing, the fear, the belief I could change it, the hope I would change it, the hidden knowledge that I couldn't change it, the "if only I did this or that it'll all be better" script, the pervasive and extremely false notion that I as a parent, I am all powerful and should know what to do and just do it...............the whole system just broke. I said it to her, "it's over." And then I made some bumpy new choices for awhile getting used to being liberated from this chaos that is my difficult child's life. I didn't trust it, thought it would all come flying back, but it hasn't. And, that's where the therapy, the counseling, the outside support comes in, you need that to stay out of your own need to control, to help, to enable, to fix, to make better. You need it to learn how to parent your difficult child differently then "normal" parenting. We don't know how to do this, and we are forced to learn.
He'll be fine, it's you I worry about............go get yourself some help................you're doing all the right things and it still hurts...........(((HUGS))))
