...and it all falls apart.

JKF

Well-Known Member
I still give my son help here and there when I feel the need to. There is nothing wrong with that. If he asks for $20 occasionally, no problem. If he asks for $580 for him and his girlfriend to get across country for the 3rd time the answer is (and was) a firm no. He was angry at me but he figured it out on his own. To me detachment doesn't mean cutting off your son. It just means setting up firm and healthy boundaries. It means stepping aside and having him take control of his own life. It's not going to be easy for him but he'll learn. My son is 22 and he's still struggling but slowly making progress at this point. I've stepped back and allowed him to figure it out on his own and it's the best thing I've ever done for him.
 

AppleCori

Well-Known Member
I still give my son help here and there when I feel the need to. There is nothing wrong with that. If he asks for $20 occasionally, no problem. If he asks for $580 for him and his girlfriend to get across country for the 3rd time the answer is (and was) a firm no. He was angry at me but he figured it out on his own. To me detachment doesn't mean cutting off your son. It just means setting up firm and healthy boundaries. It means stepping aside and having him take control of his own life. It's not going to be easy for him but he'll learn. My son is 22 and he's still struggling but slowly making progress at this point. I've stepped back and allowed him to figure it out on his own and it's the best thing I've ever done for him.
JKF,

How are things going?

You haven't updated in a while!
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
Thanks all.

He actually asked me to mail him a sleeping bag, his e-cig vape thing, and some warm socks (meaning - buy warm socks). I told him NO! and asked if he had ANY idea how expensive it would be to mail him a sleeping bag! Seriously, it would be cheaper to go on WalMart.com and buy him one! And I also told him I wasn't mailing anything when he might be gone before it got there and that I might consider sending some small things once he was settled. He said, Okay...Thanks again and I'll let you know when I'm settled.

I'm not planning on giving him everything he wants. I hope that he actually gets back where he wants to be. I wonder, as now the people who were happy to come get him if he had gas money to get back - keep in mind, it's 45 miles or less - say the car is in the shop. Maybe...maybe not.

Only time will tell.

@SomewhereOutThere ::hugs:
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
Well, checked to see if he had been on Facebook...he was trying to sell something, looking for $ for a bus ticket home. :sigh: I'm sad for him. He hasn't called or contacted us. I'm not sure how to feel.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Lil, best, especially with his financial situation, that he gives up vaping. With the new laws about to go into effect, extremely high taxes will be applied to vaping equipment and e-liquids. I'm thinking of giving it up when the tax increases hit.

Basically Big Tobacco, and Big Pharma (who makes nicotine replacement therapies such as gum, lozenges and patches are fighting competition from vaping, which as a nicotine replacement, has a MUCH higher success rate of getting smokers off cigs than do Big Pharma's products.)
 

A dad

Active Member
I hate the government keeps butting in dude its not you business what we eat if we do not bother other past a certain limit. Hey everything we do bothers someone that is the harsh truth. Some are bothered by how we walk by our fashion sense by the color of our eyes or skin or nose or mouth you can not live you life without bothering someone so let us live our life.
 

Jabberwockey

Well-Known Member
So son is heading home? Now what?

These are the million dollar questions, aren't they? We have NO idea if he's heading home or just doing a sympathy play trying to get a bit of money. Not to us mind. To the best of our knowledge he doesn't know that we know how to access his FB posts.

As to now what? No flipping clue. Not enough information to begin to make a decision and we are both very conflicted at the possibility of him coming back.
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
As to now what? No flipping clue. Not enough information to begin to make a decision and we are both very conflicted at the possibility of him coming back.

What he said.

I love my son. I don't love his lifestyle. I don't love dishes in his room, refusal to bathe, absolute laziness and stubborn refusal to help us with anything. (Grass needs mowed? Jabber (or I, but usually Jabber) does it. Bushes need trimmed? I do it. Snow needs shoveled? We do it. Dogs needs walked, fed or otherwise cared for? We do it. Trash needs taken out? VERY VERY RARELY, he'll do it and 9 times out of 10 (19 out of 20?), we have to ask.) I don't love wondering what his mood will be like day to day. I don't like that he keeps hanging out with people like J, even when he knows they are using him and no real friends. I don't love that he feels, however it is he feels - friendless and useless and alone. I don't love that I don't know how to help him. I don't love that he wears us out...the worry and the stress and the disappointment.

I hate not knowing what to do. Do you toss your son out because he's a slob? Really? Do you toss him out to be homeless because he's lazy? If he's gone, you're still the one mowing the lawn, after all.

I don't want him to fail, not at life and not even at this adventure. I don't want him to give up so easily. He's always given up easily. I want him to succeed or at least I want this to have taught him that the life we expect from him, working and staying away from these losers - even if that does mean being alone - is better than the alternative.

Magical thinking. This time it will all be okay.

I hate that we're stressed out over this when we don't even know if it's doing to happen! We don't even know for a fact that he wants to come home. We don't know if that means to our house or someone elses. We don't know anything and I'm afraid to ask. I'm afraid to contact him because that will start to cycle of calls and texts and begging and sad stories.

A parent should not be afraid to contact their child. The whole situation is just so damn frustrating.
 

Jabberwockey

Well-Known Member
We don't know anything and I'm afraid to ask. I'm afraid to contact him because that will start to cycle of calls and texts and begging and sad stories.

A parent should not be afraid to contact their child. The whole situation is just so damn frustrating.

No, we shouldn't have to be afraid to contact him but that is the situation. If you choose to contact him I would keep it to a simple How are you doing versus actually asking if he plans on coming home.
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
No, we shouldn't have to be afraid to contact him but that is the situation. If you choose to contact him I would keep it to a simple How are you doing versus actually asking if he plans on coming home.

Oh Honey, I have no attention of contacting him. He can call us. I'm just tired and kind of sad. Like you, I lay awake half the night wondering how to handle it if he wants to come home...and then when I did sleep I had weird dreams...so yeah. Sorry, just not much good today. :(
 

RN0441

100% better than I was but not at 100% yet
So sorry guys. I am in constant worry too and it sucks.

My therapist said that it is anxiety. The fear of the future. The fear of the worst. It helped me a little that there is a name for it I guess.

I worry about my son too. 1300 miles from home. Still no job. Active warrant here so only certain jobs are even worth applying for. UGH. Hate it all.
:notalone:
 

mof

Momdidntsignupforthis
Lil,

Prayers..I think I have been praying all wrong..now instead of paying my son will grow see and be enlightened..I think I need to pay for myself! That I can disengage....be ok...and non stress!

Praying for you too!
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
paying my son will grow see and be enlightened

Wouldn't that be nice. I too just keep holding out hope that one day the light bulb will go on.
:fantasysmiley:

But you know what? I just read and answered Sam's post....and was slapped right upside the head that things could be SO much worse than my stupid-head kid blowing his money and getting stranded in Colorado.

So much worse and so much sadder.

There's a lot of the "it's all about ME" attitude in my posts too. He isn't alone in his ego I guess. So I'm shutting up now.
 

Weary Mother

WEARY MOTHER
Hello MOF, I have a 48 year old addicted son, who has spend years in this kind of living. He is currently in jail serving his 2nd term for manufacturing meth. He has lost all his teeth, his family, his job and his drivers license. Not to mention what his mind is now. I just visited him for the first time and was pleasantly surprised, not only at his demeanor, but the prison was a nice clean place (at least what I saw) and the visit was handled quickly and all staff was respectful. I have spent years dealing with how to handle matters. Long ago, when he was in the early years of addiction and married, he would spend all his money on drugs, then his small children had no food so I would pay him to mow my yard, my mother would pay him to do hers and that is how we kept the kids fed. Then I joined an online group for family members of addicted people and realized that the money I gave him was only enabling him to continue affording drugs so I stopped. He was on the run from the police for a year before he was arrested because he was making meth in the basement of his grandmothers house with his addicted girlfriend and the house caught fire due to an explosion and she was badly burned. He ran and for a year he hid. He is now doing his prison sentence and I told him recently that I would no longer visit him in prison, feed him or take his calls if he doesn't get clean this time. I know it is hard to draw lines, I have had many bad days trying to know what to do and what is right and what may be wrong. I am at the point that I will give compassionate love to my children, but if they use, or do not put an effort into making their own lives work, I am not an option to them. And I do expect that when they are in my home that they behave in a manner that is respectful. I don't have to put up with lazy people who won't work, I don't have to support them and put up with them having no respect. I have days when I agonize and days like today when I don't , but through this forum I am getting stronger and feel that I have to help myself at this point. During my son's year of hiding, I would not let him come to the house and it killed me to do that. He was living in a shed and it was below zero. But I also knew that he was still making drugs and was not ready to change and the effect it could have on me would have been devastating if he was in my house with drugs or his druggies wanted to hurt him, and he was at my home so I stuck to my guns as I did not feel safe, as long as he was into drugs. So MOF I understand where you are and how hard defining your boundaries are, it is a killer to have to do so with your children, we did not want it this way. Hang in there!!
 

Childofmine

one day at a time
Lil and Jabber, I am so sorry for your stress and pain.

I just finished an amazing memoir: Love Warrior. It is about a woman's life through dealing with her own addictions and what she discovered about life and how hard we work to avoid pain and protect our loved ones from pain and the trouble that causes. You might appreciate it. It is really worth reading.
 

Weary Mother

WEARY MOTHER
I still give my son help here and there when I feel the need to. There is nothing wrong with that. If he asks for $20 occasionally, no problem. If he asks for $580 for him and his girlfriend to get across country for the 3rd time the answer is (and was) a firm no. He was angry at me but he figured it out on his own. To me detachment doesn't mean cutting off your son. It just means setting up firm and healthy boundaries. It means stepping aside and having him take control of his own life. It's not going to be easy for him but he'll learn. My son is 22 and he's still struggling but slowly making progress at this point. I've stepped back and allowed him to figure it out on his own and it's the best thing I've ever done for him.[/QUOT

I like this and need to remember at times that is doesnt have to be black and white. Either all or nothing. I can help at times but not enable, how simple but how hard to learn!!
 

Jabberwockey

Well-Known Member
During my son's year of hiding, I would not let him come to the house and it killed me to do that.

Actually, it would be so much easier for us if our son was in hiding due to an active warrant. Lil and I are both mandatory reporters due to our jobs. If we knew he had an active warrant and we knew where he was at we could lose our job for not reporting it and he knows this.
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
RN, the only way you will know for sure that your son is ready to become a real adult is if he comes back and deals with that warrant.

Hoping he finds jobs/apartments that don't check background is not the path to adulthood. A real adult makes right on what's wrong.

He needs to do what is needed to close out that warrant, and then move on from there.
 
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