Hopeful, we on this site understand your heartbreak because we have been there and many are still right there with you enduring the pain, like they have posted.
It's almost impossible to help someone who does not want help.
I would edit out one word from your statement here---I would take out the word "almost". It is impossible to help someone who will not help themselves. Impossible. Our bandaid---a bag of food, a night in a motel, a ride to the shelter---is just a bandaid. It is for us. It is something we need to do so we can live with the intolerable pain of loving someone so much and watching them self-destruct. It doesn't help them, except to provide a few brief moments of respite from their real lives. It doesn't do anything to turn the situation around. They and only they can turn their own situations around.
The day, the minute, the second they figuratively get on their knees and say I need help and it comes from the depths of their being, that is the day that things can start to change for them...and I have learned that other people, other resources...are best to help in those early days, weeks and months. Mommy and Daddy are usually the worst to get involved with early change because early change is shaky, it is back and forth, it is up and down...and it's soooooo easy to slip back into old patterns. Change is so hard. Change for them is so hard, and change for us is so hard. The struggle is very similar.
We know because we can step outside our own selves for a minute and we can see our ourselves. We can see ourselves obsess, fret, worry, decide, change our minds, try something, stop trying something, frantically back and forth, up and down, scared to death, filled with fear and anxiety and pain and grief.
Us and them. It's the same struggle.
You and your family could do nothing more than what you have done. It's okay. It's really okay. We can only be human and do the very best we can every day. That is all we can ever do. And that means it's not a perfect process.
I have never witnessed a stronger love than the love of a parent for a child. We. All. Know. here on this forum that none of us could ever have even entertained the idea of throwing our own child out of our homes without being pushed past the brink of sanity over and over and over again until there is nothing more to be done except that one single thing.
So once we get to that point....we are completely sick and tired and spent. We can't do or imagine one other thing to try to do, and we are all out of time. They have to go.
So....then....we obsess, we drive ourselves crazy with the not-knowing, the fear, the grief, the shame, the guilt. We have to feel all of those emotions---just like you are doing right now. We have to feel them and deal with them.
But we don't have to act on them. We have to learn how---this is a first step in our own recovery from enabling---to separate our very real and true feelings from our actions. This was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I felt like a lion pacing in a cage the first time I threw my son out and he was homeless and I had no idea what was going on with him. I literally could not stand it. I thought I was losing my mind.
I had to learn how to do something with my feelings and I had to learn how to wait and not act and live with and feel my feelings instead of deny them or stuff them down or bury them or curl into a ball and die. Just like all of us here, just like you.
It took time. It took work. It took assembling a toolbox of tools that worked for me and I started using them every single day. For a while I still felt like the lion in the cage, but tiny bit by tiny bit, things started to change inside me.
I began to get a little bit better. I would still plan time into my day to lie on the bed and cry and sleep and stare at the wall. I had to literally hibernate and lick my wounds. when I would sleep and then wake up and remember...it would all rush back in again...and I would be devastated again. Sleep was a brief respite.
Let me share with you some of my tools that worked for me: Books (CoDependent No More, Boundaries, anything by Pema Chodron and anything by Brene Brown, any Al-Anon book (there are many) and there are others as we'll; writing a daily gratitude list---this sounds small and silly but it is a life changer and it takes five minutes; digging weeds in the yard and/or scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees (quick way to release the lion pacing in the cage feelings); going out and taking a 10 minute walk; going to therapy; going to AlAnon meetings faithfully---there were times when I went every single day for weeks; getting a sponsor in Al-Anon; writing in a journal; buying flowers for the kitchen table; writing and reading on this forum.
There were days when I could barely use one of these tools for 10 minutes and there were days when I could really work a plan of recovery for myself...but over time...little by little, I got better and better and become more and more functional...and even happy...and peaceful...and contented...and serene...even though there were still bad days and days when I cried and cried for a while.
My son wasn't any better or different during this period of time when I reclaimed myself. He was homeless or in jail or in rehab (in and out) during this time. He has been arrested multiple times for drug-related things. He was a victim---never his fault---took no action---took no responsibility for years.
Once we get to the place were you are...it's time to work on us. We know...we so know...that we can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. We just cannot.
But we can help someone who does want to be helped: ourselves.
We can help ourselves heal from the awful insanity that comes with loving our self-destructive child so very much. We would give anything we have or will have in the future to help them, but there comes a day when we really and truly accept that this won't work. Helping isn't helping.
Adults must to learn to accept life on life's terms. Us and them. Life is a hard deal. Very hard. We have to learn how to navigate it. And it doesn't happen overnight.
Please know that the purpose of this forum is for us to help each other with support, ideas, encouragement and listening. We can't and don't know all of the details of your journey and your son's journey, and that is okay. What we have to offer may or may not be helpful. Please take what you like and leave the rest. That is perfectly okay. You will hear many different points of view here. I believe they are offered with the best of intentions and out of our own very real experiences...but we can't know what you ought to do...ever.
That's what got us in this trouble in the first place: thinking we know what other people ought to do.
This has been the hardest, most painful, most humbling and more rewarding experience of my life, learning how to live in the face of deep pain, fear, grief and crippling uncertainty. I have become a better person through this awful road I have walked. And it isn't over. In fact, it will never be over. My son is much better today, and he appears to be progressing continuously over the past nearly 18 months. But anything can change at any time, and it's up to me to maintain healthy boundaries with him, a 26-year-old man, and believe me, that isn't easy for me. I continue to work hard on me to be a healthy person and it will be work I will have to do for the rest of my life, with a lot of mistakes along the way.
Please know that we are here for you and we care. Warm hugs today.
