Copabanana
Well-Known Member
I waited to respond to your thread. I felt pain and dread and was unsure why. I am going to rearrange the order of your comments so that I can gain some clarity, and perhaps, be helpful, too.
First, going to jail, for him, will be a good thing. The psychiatrists there will be able to enforce medication, if he is a danger to himself, others or gravely disabled. They will not allow him to run around in a mania.
Your son sounds highly intelligent. There are many, many high-functioning people who are bipolar. There is one who wrote a famous book about being bipolar who is an esteemed professor of psychology. I will look for it. Of course, there are many people with bipolar who are not high-functioning who commit crimes, for example. I work with them in prisons. Many are delightful people who even in this difficult environment find some contentment, self-acceptance and meaning.
As I see it there is a reason that the gene for this mental illness persisted through the eons, and this is because it is associated with highly advantageous and even coveted traits that can be adaptive for society if not for the individual. I am not advocating for bipolar disorder, I am saying that bipolar people can be highly creative, brilliant and innovative--as well as nutty.
My son has a mood disorder. While he believes himself to be bipolar, that diagnosis has not been confirmed by anybody with professional qualifications.
When your son is medicated--a light bulb may go on. Or it won't. The thing is, who knows?
In this quote you are speaking to your dread that you will lose him:
A couple of months ago I read a wonderful book that changed my life, called The Denial of Death by Ernest J Becker. He argued that whole civilizations are arranged (let alone lives) so as to protect us humans, from having to face the eventuality that we die. (As I was typing, I found myself writing, the possibility that we die.)
You see. I am still trying to find some alternative. To dying. To nothingness. To never again seeing my son or helping him. Or what?
We in this society, maybe most every so-called advance society, live based upon narratives of redemption, of progress, of a life story heading towards some triumphant end of getting better, more capable--when the reality is something completely the opposite.
Not only is it that our kids will not get better--we will not either. Unless we change our thinking.
Those of us with difficult and dysfunctional kids--how much of our grief stems from their not meeting our own or society's expectations--of what normal developmental looks like--milestones, expectations, norms. Let me tell you a secret: normal is an abstract construct.
I am not minimizing this. What I am trying to do is to get some perspective on how I feel and think and how this thinking affects my relationship with my son and with myself, and makes me suffer.
If I can accept that my son is not some machine that can be improved upon; he is not some third world country that needs to improve standards of healthcare, or adapt more efficient modes of production.
He is a sentient being in relation to a creator and to himself. As am I. No more. No less. A creature on the way to his own death and making meaning along the way.
Now these quotes are mother-bashing:
Because you did not fail. Do you recognize what you have done? Your son knows he is loved, unconditionally. Do you know how few people know this? Not many.
This is hogwash. In my language of origin, it is dreck. It is as if because you fear his death, you anticipate it at any possible moment, so as to protect yourself. And to protect yourself--you sacrifice your son in every single phone call.
He is absolutely correct. G-d Mother, get a grip. Can you please allow me the possibility of living? Can you please give me the possibility of hope? Can you please have the confidence in life and in yourself that the absolutely worst thing in the world will not happen.
Because, of course, you are right:the absolutely worst thing will happen, always, inevitably. We die. That your son will, too, is news to nobody. But there is the possibility, too, he will live. And even at some point, work something out for himself. Not according to some development narrative, but something magical that we cannot know and may not understand.
I really liked your letter to him. Not because of what you told him, but what you told yourself: Your manifesto. Where you stand.
Now is the time to turn to yourself. Clearly you are highly intelligent with real gifts. Your thread captured our imaginations and our hearts. Where will you go with them? What will you make of them?
Let your son be. His destiny is already unfurling. (I feel good he is going to jail. It is a new start for him.) Where will you take yourself?
First, going to jail, for him, will be a good thing. The psychiatrists there will be able to enforce medication, if he is a danger to himself, others or gravely disabled. They will not allow him to run around in a mania.
Your son sounds highly intelligent. There are many, many high-functioning people who are bipolar. There is one who wrote a famous book about being bipolar who is an esteemed professor of psychology. I will look for it. Of course, there are many people with bipolar who are not high-functioning who commit crimes, for example. I work with them in prisons. Many are delightful people who even in this difficult environment find some contentment, self-acceptance and meaning.
As I see it there is a reason that the gene for this mental illness persisted through the eons, and this is because it is associated with highly advantageous and even coveted traits that can be adaptive for society if not for the individual. I am not advocating for bipolar disorder, I am saying that bipolar people can be highly creative, brilliant and innovative--as well as nutty.
My son has a mood disorder. While he believes himself to be bipolar, that diagnosis has not been confirmed by anybody with professional qualifications.
When your son is medicated--a light bulb may go on. Or it won't. The thing is, who knows?
In this quote you are speaking to your dread that you will lose him:
All of these things are possible, even probable. But there are other possible outcomes too.
A couple of months ago I read a wonderful book that changed my life, called The Denial of Death by Ernest J Becker. He argued that whole civilizations are arranged (let alone lives) so as to protect us humans, from having to face the eventuality that we die. (As I was typing, I found myself writing, the possibility that we die.)
You see. I am still trying to find some alternative. To dying. To nothingness. To never again seeing my son or helping him. Or what?
Well, I hate to give you the news but nobody, not even you, will be OK. Every single one of us is on our way to decrepit decay.
We in this society, maybe most every so-called advance society, live based upon narratives of redemption, of progress, of a life story heading towards some triumphant end of getting better, more capable--when the reality is something completely the opposite.
Not only is it that our kids will not get better--we will not either. Unless we change our thinking.
Those of us with difficult and dysfunctional kids--how much of our grief stems from their not meeting our own or society's expectations--of what normal developmental looks like--milestones, expectations, norms. Let me tell you a secret: normal is an abstract construct.
I am not minimizing this. What I am trying to do is to get some perspective on how I feel and think and how this thinking affects my relationship with my son and with myself, and makes me suffer.
If I can accept that my son is not some machine that can be improved upon; he is not some third world country that needs to improve standards of healthcare, or adapt more efficient modes of production.
He is a sentient being in relation to a creator and to himself. As am I. No more. No less. A creature on the way to his own death and making meaning along the way.
Now these quotes are mother-bashing:
OMG. Are you really saying here he would have been better off abused than loved by you? Do you believe this or is this one more way to beat yourself up for having failed?
Because you did not fail. Do you recognize what you have done? Your son knows he is loved, unconditionally. Do you know how few people know this? Not many.
You are writing here about fearing that each conversation could be your last. And that you cannot set a limit, lest it be.
This is hogwash. In my language of origin, it is dreck. It is as if because you fear his death, you anticipate it at any possible moment, so as to protect yourself. And to protect yourself--you sacrifice your son in every single phone call.
He is absolutely correct. G-d Mother, get a grip. Can you please allow me the possibility of living? Can you please give me the possibility of hope? Can you please have the confidence in life and in yourself that the absolutely worst thing in the world will not happen.
Because, of course, you are right:the absolutely worst thing will happen, always, inevitably. We die. That your son will, too, is news to nobody. But there is the possibility, too, he will live. And even at some point, work something out for himself. Not according to some development narrative, but something magical that we cannot know and may not understand.
I really liked your letter to him. Not because of what you told him, but what you told yourself: Your manifesto. Where you stand.
Now is the time to turn to yourself. Clearly you are highly intelligent with real gifts. Your thread captured our imaginations and our hearts. Where will you go with them? What will you make of them?
Let your son be. His destiny is already unfurling. (I feel good he is going to jail. It is a new start for him.) Where will you take yourself?
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