Mini update, difficult child now living out of state

S

Signorina

Guest
We had Easter Brunch with difficult child yesterday. He told us he is moving to another state for work. He left today. Surprise!

He decided he didn't like his current summer job (yes, 3 years post dropout he still works a "summer" job) and that he & 3 of his buddies decided to take a job doing menial labor with a commercial excavator fulfilling a major utility contract in another state. Supposedly, the contractor is paying all of their housing, travel & transportation costs. I checked out the contractor & they seem legit. Who knows if difficult child is really working for them? I can't imagine a business of that nature wouldn't do drug testing. I worry that this is some harebrained independent contract scheme he & his buddies cooked up. He came to say goodbye this morning & told us they are starting on the border of Colorado. That is the only thing that doesn't surprise me.

I am just bothered by it all. I know I need to let go, but he is my kid - even at 22. And I am only expressing my feelings to you guys, I sent him off with a smile.

I just can't get used to or accept that he isn't making any progress. He isn't maturing at all. He's moved on from hanging out with older peers- who have now graduated & settled down- to hanging with younger peers; his own age peers have left him & their own "summer jobs" behind. The 3 guys he is working with are 2- 3 years younger than he is and taking the gig for tuition money. It's like difficult child is still stuck at age 19 or something.

He has no direction, he isn't working toward anything. He's still keeping the college student charade up to himself. Pc17 is taking AP exams in a few weeks and difficult child explained some of the chemistry questions to easy child over brunch. Sometimes, I forget how academically smart he was and difficult child clearly still prizes it, yet he did NOTHING with it.

I know I am not expressing myself clearly. It's just that he is so out of touch with reality - classic burnout style - and it rubs me the wrong way. Floating from job to job, nothing to show for himself, not creating a future for himself or laying even the tiniest foundation for a future. He's 22, I hoped for some progress or direction by now and there is none.

I am afraid for him, I worry about this utter lack of motivation/ambition and I worry about his safety. And I am sad. I don't think he will change.

Sorry for the Monday morning pity party.
 

Nancy

Well-Known Member
Sig is he still using student loan money to live on? What makes me nervous is that is going to catch up with him in a big way and there will be no oway he can repay it. I know how disappointing this is for you. One day hopefully he is going to wake up and see he is too old for this, the young kids are no longer interested in him and vice versa. What makes me so sad about my difficult child is seeing how she is struggling now because of all the opportunities she gave up, and I'm sure you worry about the same thing.
 
S

Signorina

Guest
No, he doesn't have any student loans outstanding afaik. When he moved back home last year, he worked to pay off his outstanding balance with his former university so that they would release his transcripts so he could attend school in the fall. He paid them monthly & they seized his state tax refund (state school) until it was paid off. We paid for his fall semester at community college. Since he's now failed out of a state university and a community college, he isn't eligible for admittance anywhere & I don't think he is eligible for student loans. He was getting overdraft notices from his bank here in January & Feb - about the time he moved out -- until he changed his address. He spends it as quickly as he earns it which is sad bc he earns a decent wage, I think he earned close to 20k last year and he lived at home.

He just has nothing to show for the past 4 years of his life. No transportation, no savings account, no long term employment plans, nada. It will catch up with him someday and I feel like he is running away from reality, buying time.

That's what bothers me the most - I know it sounds like I won't accept him for who he is - but that's not it. If he loved the work or the life, I could deal. HE refuses to accept himself for who he is; he is still posing - as a college student or a young man with great prospects ahead- talking glib, while living hand to mouth with no ambition, a dismal credit history and no plans for the future. He isn't owning it, he isn't even trying to grow, he isn't even taking small steps to get ahead; he is just meandering in circles and pretending to be someone else. That can't be good. He's pretending to himself even more than he is pretending to us and I'm scared for him.

And I mourn the loss of potential.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I actually think you make perfect sense to most of us. We all know drugs impact maturity.

Another one of my true life stories that bore people to death lol: I went out with a guy who was 35 after my divorce. He had a really good job and had been at his job for four years. Before that he had been a carny worker. You know...the only thing he did was travel around the country starting and stopping carnival rides, traveling with the carnivals, using drugs, mainly just pot. I asked him what changed and he said he after his daughter was born he knew he had to quit the pot, but that it was incredibly hard for him to quit because of the psychological addiction. That surprised me as so many people try to say it's not hard to quit because it's not physically addictive. But he said otherwise. He had to go to therapy for a year and he still thinks about it. Anyhow, as soon as he stopped the chronic pot smoking, he got an office job and worked his way up and is doing great now. He did not seem immature at all so maybe you catch up after you stop. So there is always hope. Sometimes having a child is the magic ticket...it certainly was for this man.

Your son is still young enough to turn his life around, but he has to want to do it and he has to drop the mindset t hat pot is harmless, which is hard to do in our current environment. Maybe recreational, once-in-a-whle pot is harmless to many people, just like drinking is. But it is not harmless to everybody and I'll bet it turnsj out that some people are more prone to overusing it than others are.

One thing this 35 year DID admit was that his memory has been affected forever from the pot. He had once had a great memory and now he had to take lots of notes and use calendars and has never recovered the good memory he'd had in his early teens, before he started using pot every day for years.

I wish your son good luck and a wake up call. And you did a great job. All of us, I think, have to bite our tongues a lot. Goes with the territory.
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Sig, he is still very young. Sooner or late he will probably decide he has had enough of this and get serious about getting on with his life. A friend of mine had a brilliant son who graduated from a prestigious university and then decided he didn't want a real job so he substituted at my school for three years and used the money to go off on adventures each summer.

Then, suddenly, he decided to join the military and go to flight school so he signed up for the Air Force. The military paid for him to get his master's degree in economics and then sent him to flight school. He is now a jet fighter pilot.

So you never know what will happen.

~Kathy
 
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