And why not? They are YOUR reactions. They come out of history - most recently, your child's actions and reactions to YOU. Anybody with half a heart and half a brain would be reacting. You have more than half a heart, and more than half a brain, Copa. You feel, and you think. And sometimes... the two don't add up. We know. We are there, too.
Stronger in standing up for yourself? Or stronger in "taking" what he dishes out?
Which is stronger, in reality? I think you already know the answer, you just don't feel like it is the answer.
Really. Really? And how are you measuring "success" or "failure"? Could, perhaps, the measuring stick be faulty? How are YOU to determine success or failure, anyway. If you had not adopted him, he might have been dead by now, or horribly abused, or already a career criminal. You have NO way to know what might have been, no way to understand the difference you HAVE made. All we see is "what is" - and we try to make a judgement from that. And we fail - because we don't know the before, we don't know the after, and we really don't know what is going on inside the person either, so we don't even really know "what is".
A parent who goes to prison for abusing their child, may be labeled a failure. Someone who is trying and learning and in the process... is not a failure.
