Echolette
Well-Known Member
I'm taking difficult child to lunch today. difficult child has been respectful. He has been working doing food delivery for a take out shop (we'll see if he still has that job..they usual only last a few weeks).He has not been calling as frequently, and not late at night. I asked him to call me yestarday to confirm today...and he did, and then got off the phone because he knew I was at work.
All this makes me feel...wow, he is trying! he is doing great!!! which says a lot about perspective, huh? and it says a lot about how muddled I am. I don't want to get sucked into the old habit of smiling and saying "thats great!" when he says he has somewhere (yucky) to stay, and a (below minimum wage short term part time) job, and plans to go back to school, or move to another city, or start a band...but if I don't say what I always said...what do I say? And there is the white elephant of two stints in jail, retail theft, property damage, skipped court dates...total disrespect for our society and our courts...huh. How do we order dessert with that space between us?
He still essentially lives on the street. He still chooses unstable and drug addicted or using people to hang out with. He still has no plan or desire for self improvement....how do I have lunch with some one like that, who I happen to love, to have a connection with? What is there to say?
But if I choose those things as topics (poor choices of friends, failure at life, ethical and legal chaos..) well..we all know that that is pointless, a waste of breathe..why have lunch at all?
I loved Child's car-talk with her son. I'm going to go back and find that post, and try to channel it. I want to be lovingly detached..to radically accept..I want to keep that dumb smile off my face, but also keep some sort of connection between me and my oldest son.
Echo
All this makes me feel...wow, he is trying! he is doing great!!! which says a lot about perspective, huh? and it says a lot about how muddled I am. I don't want to get sucked into the old habit of smiling and saying "thats great!" when he says he has somewhere (yucky) to stay, and a (below minimum wage short term part time) job, and plans to go back to school, or move to another city, or start a band...but if I don't say what I always said...what do I say? And there is the white elephant of two stints in jail, retail theft, property damage, skipped court dates...total disrespect for our society and our courts...huh. How do we order dessert with that space between us?
He still essentially lives on the street. He still chooses unstable and drug addicted or using people to hang out with. He still has no plan or desire for self improvement....how do I have lunch with some one like that, who I happen to love, to have a connection with? What is there to say?
But if I choose those things as topics (poor choices of friends, failure at life, ethical and legal chaos..) well..we all know that that is pointless, a waste of breathe..why have lunch at all?
I loved Child's car-talk with her son. I'm going to go back and find that post, and try to channel it. I want to be lovingly detached..to radically accept..I want to keep that dumb smile off my face, but also keep some sort of connection between me and my oldest son.
Echo