Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
So, between difficult child son and difficult child daughter, husband and I have been at this for a really, really long time. I was responding to a thread on homeless adult kids this morning. In responding, I revisited where husband and I were, last summer.
And the summer before that.
And the one before that too, stretching back into time.
This summer, we are in a better place...and it has nothing at all to do with where the kids are in their lives. Part of this is that I don't think there is anything we haven't already tried and failed at. (Maybe it wasn't a failure ~ who knows what this would all look like had we done nothing.)
Anyway, because we won't go back and redo things that have been failing all along, that desperate sense of needing to do something has ~ it feels like anything desperate hits a brick wall.
Nothing worked.
Might as well let go.
Just...let it go.
The worst thing happened. Every single time, the worst thing happened, and it came roaring in on our blind side.
We are in a strange place, right now. That keening, living, excoriating sense of loss has softened around the edges. It is what it is. There is some sadness at that, still. Looking back this morning at difficult child daughter's spectacular dive into homelessness, into mental illness and drug addiction, I truly do see that we really did do everything we knew to do.
Well, except the one thing that might have changed everything. There is a real cost to the decisions we make regarding our families.
Same with difficult child son...with a bullet.
I did not take my grandchild, who had already run away from two relatives.
I might have done that.
I might still do that.
But that is the only thing I didn't do.
Well okay. There is one more grandchild, but she is 21 and on her own, already.
It has been very hard to learn to say "no". I don't feel like a very nice person, most days.
I'm letting that go, too.
Sometimes, I feel like crying for the me that was lost. I believed...I don't know. Believed I could make a difference, believed I could change things, not just for my children, but for everyone ~ maybe just a smile, maybe something special for someone in the day we were both in together. Especially after the beating, I am really starting to get it that people do not change.
They do what they want to.
I can be really nice if I want to, or really nasty if that is what I want...but the only thing that changes is me and whoever I am rude to or mean to, when I might have been kind, instead. I will probably continue to choose kind, but I wonder now whether it matters, whereas before, I believed that it did matter.
Sometimes now, it seems to me that my decision to choose kind, to believe for the best, laid me open to be taken advantage of and that is exactly what happened.
I am not talking just the kids here, I am talking about what is real, about what really happens, and what is just a dream.
I think I understand that once I am through this phase, I will begin reclaiming my life, will begin putting myself first and hardly thinking about the kids at all. I would say I will be a wiser woman than I would have been, had these things never happened.
How have your experiences with your difficult child adult kids changed you?
Cedar
And the summer before that.
And the one before that too, stretching back into time.
This summer, we are in a better place...and it has nothing at all to do with where the kids are in their lives. Part of this is that I don't think there is anything we haven't already tried and failed at. (Maybe it wasn't a failure ~ who knows what this would all look like had we done nothing.)
Anyway, because we won't go back and redo things that have been failing all along, that desperate sense of needing to do something has ~ it feels like anything desperate hits a brick wall.
Nothing worked.
Might as well let go.
Just...let it go.
The worst thing happened. Every single time, the worst thing happened, and it came roaring in on our blind side.
We are in a strange place, right now. That keening, living, excoriating sense of loss has softened around the edges. It is what it is. There is some sadness at that, still. Looking back this morning at difficult child daughter's spectacular dive into homelessness, into mental illness and drug addiction, I truly do see that we really did do everything we knew to do.
Well, except the one thing that might have changed everything. There is a real cost to the decisions we make regarding our families.
Same with difficult child son...with a bullet.
I did not take my grandchild, who had already run away from two relatives.
I might have done that.
I might still do that.
But that is the only thing I didn't do.
Well okay. There is one more grandchild, but she is 21 and on her own, already.
It has been very hard to learn to say "no". I don't feel like a very nice person, most days.
I'm letting that go, too.
Sometimes, I feel like crying for the me that was lost. I believed...I don't know. Believed I could make a difference, believed I could change things, not just for my children, but for everyone ~ maybe just a smile, maybe something special for someone in the day we were both in together. Especially after the beating, I am really starting to get it that people do not change.
They do what they want to.
I can be really nice if I want to, or really nasty if that is what I want...but the only thing that changes is me and whoever I am rude to or mean to, when I might have been kind, instead. I will probably continue to choose kind, but I wonder now whether it matters, whereas before, I believed that it did matter.
Sometimes now, it seems to me that my decision to choose kind, to believe for the best, laid me open to be taken advantage of and that is exactly what happened.
I am not talking just the kids here, I am talking about what is real, about what really happens, and what is just a dream.
I think I understand that once I am through this phase, I will begin reclaiming my life, will begin putting myself first and hardly thinking about the kids at all. I would say I will be a wiser woman than I would have been, had these things never happened.
How have your experiences with your difficult child adult kids changed you?
Cedar