Echolette
Well-Known Member
Difficult Child and I have been floating in a neutral zone. Every week we make a lunch date. Every week he cancels. I have become quite comfortable with this pattern (for those of you who don't know Difficult Child is a mentally ill 21 year old street person,as he has been for 4 years now). I feel like he feels supported by the idea that I will have lunch with him, and the actual event is too stressful for him, so he keeps bailing. I also find it stressful, so am secretly relieved when he postpones...although I would kind of like to see him and talk for a bit. STill, he is so dirty and smelly and awful in appearance that it is hard to figure out where to go that isn't just plain rude for the business or other customers..the more he postpones the more likely we can have lunch on a park bench which would be good.
Yestarday he called from a jail.
He was weepy and (his version) wrongly imprisoned. He asked a drunken St. Patrick's Day reveller for a cigarette, and the DSPDR took a swing at him, and now Difficult Child is imprisoned for assault.
He wanted $2000 bail.
SOme of you may remember that when he was in jail for a series of minor offenses and mostly for failure to appear in court (Dec 2013) I refused to bail him out (it was December, cold, on the street, and I had a lot of reasons). I did, however, with much consultation from EVERYBODY both virtual and in person, pay his fines so that he wouldn't continually bounce back to jail with every small offense. That was on the order of $1800. HE made up the rules around that...said he would give me his debit card to pay myself back out of his SSI, would go straight to the local program for homeless and get himself on a housing list, a few other things I didn't remember. His dad split it with me, and his only request was that Difficult Child call him from court and let him know how it went.
You can guess the rest of the story.
His dad heard from him 3 months later when he called to ask for money.
I called him after court and he said "MOM!!! its the holidays!! I just want to see my friends!" and didn't hear from him again for 2 months. He of course never paid me back (this wasn't my requirement, it was his volunteering).
So yestarday...I said absolutely not. I said...remember what happened last time. I will never help you get out of jail again. I hung up when he started pleading (he called at the exact moment that I was hosting a pot luck dinner for my younger sons' wrestling team).
He called again at midnight. The familiar "this is a call from the (local) prison system. This call will be recorded..." etc. I picked up and said "you should not call me at midnight and I will not pay your bail."
He asked if he could call me today "just so I have some one to call" which has been a fear of his...last time he was in jail he realized that several of his colleagues (echo laughs here, she thinks she is funny...colleagues...) had no one to call, that they had burned every last bridge.
I said OK.
He called his dad and begged for bail, said he could not get a public defender if he was IN jail (what? is that right? doesn't pass the sniff test), and that he was facing 7-9 months. DAd is waffling.
I will start to waffle too if he sounds miserable enough.
I don't think I'll waffle so much that I'll pay...but I'll spend a lot of time on the phone with him, let him eat my heart out, talk to his PD....waste my time, fall down the rabbit hole.
7-9 months. Assault. (he is the gentlest wimpiest ever...I believe that the drunk St. Paddy's person swung at him-lots of staggering puking people on the streets of my fair city yestarday)
He needs to stay in jail...or not, according to the courts. Right? I need to set some boundaries on the calls. What are those boundaries, anyway? I can feel the fog descending.
Echo
Yestarday he called from a jail.
He was weepy and (his version) wrongly imprisoned. He asked a drunken St. Patrick's Day reveller for a cigarette, and the DSPDR took a swing at him, and now Difficult Child is imprisoned for assault.
He wanted $2000 bail.
SOme of you may remember that when he was in jail for a series of minor offenses and mostly for failure to appear in court (Dec 2013) I refused to bail him out (it was December, cold, on the street, and I had a lot of reasons). I did, however, with much consultation from EVERYBODY both virtual and in person, pay his fines so that he wouldn't continually bounce back to jail with every small offense. That was on the order of $1800. HE made up the rules around that...said he would give me his debit card to pay myself back out of his SSI, would go straight to the local program for homeless and get himself on a housing list, a few other things I didn't remember. His dad split it with me, and his only request was that Difficult Child call him from court and let him know how it went.
You can guess the rest of the story.
His dad heard from him 3 months later when he called to ask for money.
I called him after court and he said "MOM!!! its the holidays!! I just want to see my friends!" and didn't hear from him again for 2 months. He of course never paid me back (this wasn't my requirement, it was his volunteering).
So yestarday...I said absolutely not. I said...remember what happened last time. I will never help you get out of jail again. I hung up when he started pleading (he called at the exact moment that I was hosting a pot luck dinner for my younger sons' wrestling team).
He called again at midnight. The familiar "this is a call from the (local) prison system. This call will be recorded..." etc. I picked up and said "you should not call me at midnight and I will not pay your bail."
He asked if he could call me today "just so I have some one to call" which has been a fear of his...last time he was in jail he realized that several of his colleagues (echo laughs here, she thinks she is funny...colleagues...) had no one to call, that they had burned every last bridge.
I said OK.
He called his dad and begged for bail, said he could not get a public defender if he was IN jail (what? is that right? doesn't pass the sniff test), and that he was facing 7-9 months. DAd is waffling.
I will start to waffle too if he sounds miserable enough.
I don't think I'll waffle so much that I'll pay...but I'll spend a lot of time on the phone with him, let him eat my heart out, talk to his PD....waste my time, fall down the rabbit hole.
7-9 months. Assault. (he is the gentlest wimpiest ever...I believe that the drunk St. Paddy's person swung at him-lots of staggering puking people on the streets of my fair city yestarday)
He needs to stay in jail...or not, according to the courts. Right? I need to set some boundaries on the calls. What are those boundaries, anyway? I can feel the fog descending.
Echo