Childofmine, I am having a lot of trouble with this. I am learning to not enable, to some extent.
I cannot let go of wanting things to be better for him. That he not think in terms of better people, worse people; go back to school; not use people; not act the martyr; following through on necessary medical treatments.
Each of these wants is a hook. When I speak with him on the phone...the absence as a priority of any of these, crushes me. In fact, it feels degrading. It is as if I feel abused by my son.
It is if I cannot bear the person he is choosing to be. My love for this child, now a man who almost, I do not like, was the strongest thing in my life.
I cannot point to one thing that in fact is an objective reason to cut him out of my life. But, I want to. Because I cannot bear the pain.
Nothing makes it better. Only worse.
I think the professional I see (who has not met my son) wants me to accept that my son is the way he is because of profound personality deficits or other psychopathology. My SO who is not a professional but knows him well thinks my son is choosing his behaviors.
Limited by choice or by pathology, which is better? Almost, I envy those of you where drugs are the main problem. At least a person with potential is there if the drugs are stopped.
Almost, I think my life will never get better, that I will die like this: in chronic pain, despondent, in bed.
I was a high-functioning woman. Living in foreign countries. A demanding and respected profession.
A life, atrophied, because I cannot reconcile living with my son like this. As I lose hope for my son, I am losing hope for myself.
I can see that as long as I was enabling, I could protect myself from this devastating hopelessness. There was the illusion of control, I guess.
Is there a bottom to this?
SWOT talks about her family of origin, FOO, who marginalized her because they did not like how she lived, the choices she made. Is wanting to NOT feel this way, because of my son, the same, cruel choice?
If my son is not capable of living differently, who can I, the only person in the world he has, distance myself? I chose him, adopted him. To me that is an eternal covenant.
I do not know a way out.
