Does anyone remember "Goodnight, Moon"?

[HereWeGoAgain]

Like Jane, we try to be open about difficult child, and in our case both family and friends ask about difficult child and celebrate her achievements and mourn her failures as we do; we are very fortunate in that respect. My parents, difficult child's step-grandparents, have come far: 8 years ago my dad told me that difficult child wasn't his granddaughter. Last week he made a point of asking us to convey to her that she is very welcome and wanted at their 50th anniversary family reunion (this is a very big deal).

The above applies outside of work. I have been reticent about difficult child at work, mainly because I am naturally somewhat reserved and nobody talks a lot about their families, good or bad. I have recently been more frank with my boss, and he has been very sympathetic and accomodating and "in my corner", so to speak. Above him information is strictly need-to-know only, they are perfectly capable of misusing personal information.

Oh, and I read "Goodnight, Moon" to the kids many times but I don't recall exactly how it goes anymore.

 

[ScentofCedar]

I have a problem with being open about difficult child, unless I trust the person I am telling beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Even then, I always deeply regret having said anything, and I will tell you why.

Would you, twenty years later (or whenever our difficult children finally get it together ~ if they ever do) want anyone you had not told about your past yourself to know how it was for you, way back then?

How many people should know what is a personal trauma and a tragedy, not just for us, but for our children and their siblings, for the rest of their lives?

Ellie Wiesel said, about having survived the individual, day to day and minute to minute horror of the Holocaust, something I have never forgotten. The gist of it was that talking about what happened "could only profane its sacred horror".

And that is what I think has happened to us, too.

And maybe I am being a drama queen, but I don't care.

That's what it feels like, exactly.

(And maybe our pain will turn out to be a drop in the bucket compared to the pain and horror our difficult child's will feel, once they realize they have destroyed, not only their own futures, but the trust, forever, of their parents and siblings).

*****************

I know just how you feel about family dinners, hearthope. I am so sorry for the pain you are in. You are right. It is a devastation, and it ruins the holiday, the dinner, and the weeks before and after the event. Shopping or cleaning for the dinner are not the same, because remembrances of happier times make this holiday, and the next and the next, markers for grief.

So, this is how I handled that one, and I am better, now.

I set a place for difficult child in my bedroom. With the napkin, and silver and glassware and placemat. (I tried the empty place at the table one year? And it nearly broke my heart.)

I thnk it helps me believe (or pretend ~ beggars cannot be choosers) that difficult child will be fine ~ that one day, he will be there at the table again with his manners and his personality intact.

No one else knows (except husband ~ and on some level, that placesetting in the bedroom comforts him, too).

I think this helps me because, while I need to portray an almost casual certainty that, while difficult child is not here this year, he is going to be fine (when I know darn well he is so far from fine it makes me want to vomit). But somehow, that placesetting has helped me do my grieving in private.

By the time the rest of the family arrives, I know what my hopes are, what the reality is, and exactly how much I intend to tell anyone who asks.

And I do not bring it up, except to say that I wish difficult child could have been with us this year.

If there are questions at that time, I answer them as I had planned to.

Because part of the pain and confusion we feel have as much to do with protecting the family as with that feeling of shameful exposure before the family.

This has worked for me, hearthope.

Ignoring our own pain is not going to help anyone. Dealing with it in private first seems to.

If we can see how we need to be, if we can understand that we really don't want to spend this hoiday too in a place that makes looking back on it without a sense of horror or impending doom impossible, then we have to do our own grieving in private, first.

I always tell husband about my feeings, like I am the weak one? (And I probably am.) But husband's so seldom talk about their feelings. I have seen my husband explode into anger and then, tears at the most inappropriate times, should another family member probe too deeply about difficult child.

husband's need an opportunity to vent, and to choose their best self, their best set of responses, too.

If I had not devised these kinds of strategies?

I would still be stopped dead in my tracks.

Other women seem so much stronger than I am. I know it should be easy for me to call a spade a spade or whatever and just go on.

I literally cannot.

But I am so much better.

Some things have helped me so much more than therapy or exercise or creating another facet of self or any of the other things I have done to survive what happened to us.

But the most important thing, I think, is to take our pain seriously so that we can address it honestly.

However foolish it may seem to someone else, pain is pain.

Honor it, but honor yourself enough too, to work your way back into joy.

Did I lose my chain of thought again, this morning?!?

:blush:

Barbara

.

 

[hearthope]

I have reread your post several times Barbara.

Do we make ourselves hold on to the pain because to let go and move on would mean defeat and failure?

Do we want so badly for our children to be okay, that we are unwilling ourselves to experience joy because we know that they are not?

Do we ask ourselves What kind of mother could possibly be happy when her child is in such shape?

It is almost as though we were addicts ourselves. This must be what it feels like to crave a drug. No matter how hard we try to move past it, there it is surfacing. Constantly on our minds, no matter how hard we try to fight it.

I am thankful to be able to be open and honest here, without the concern of judgement.

If you came into my shop, I would greet you and pick up the conversation were we left off the last time you came in. Smiling and laughing the whole time, you would think I had no worries.

If I ran into you some where else, I would smile and talk with you ~ but I would always be in a hurray to go ~ I couldn't take the time to get into a deep conversation, you may ask me about difficult child and I might be a place in my struggle that I couldn't hide the pain from showing.

It helps ease the pain to openly talk here about it. Everything is not painful all the time, I don't want to leave the wrong impression.

I will just say that even when the sun is shining so bright outside, there is always a little cloud

 

[tiredmommy]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: hearthope</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I have reread your post several times Barbara.

Do we make ourselves hold on to the pain because to let go and move on would mean defeat and failure?

Do we want so badly for our children to be okay, that we are unwilling ourselves to experience joy because we know that they are not?

Do we ask ourselves What kind of mother could possibly be happy when her child is in such shape?

It is almost as though we were addicts ourselves. This must be what it feels like to crave a drug. No matter how hard we try to move past it, there it is surfacing. Constantly on our minds, no matter how hard we try to fight it.</div></div>

My heart goes out to you. I know with my Mom's addiction & mental illness (which is bad, but probably not as painful as it being one's child) I find myself clinging to the pain she's caused along the way. The only reason I can think that I do that is that I fear the pain may be all I have left of that my relationship with her. To let go of the pain completely may very well mean I let go of her completely. I haven't quite figured out how to separate out all the pain, so it stays.

 

[ScentofCedar]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: hearthope</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

Do we make ourselves hold on to the pain because to let go and move on would mean defeat and failure?

Do we want so badly for our children to be okay, that we are unwilling ourselves to experience joy because we know that they are not?

Do we ask ourselves What kind of mother could possibly be happy when her child is in such shape?

It is almost as though we were addicts ourselves. This must be what it feels like to crave a drug. No matter how hard we try to move past it, there it is surfacing. Constantly on our minds, no matter how hard we try to fight it.

I am thankful to be able to be open and honest here, without the concern of judgement.

If you came into my shop, I would greet you and pick up the conversation were we left off the last time you came in. Smiling and laughing the whole time, you would think I had no worries.

If I ran into you some where else, I would smile and talk with you ~ but I would always be in a hurray to go ~ I couldn't take the time to get into a deep conversation, you may ask me about difficult child and I might be a place in my struggle that I couldn't hide the pain from showing.

It helps ease the pain to openly talk here about it. Everything is not painful all the time, I don't want to leave the wrong impression.

I will just say that even when the sun is shining so bright outside, there is always a little cloud </div></div>

***********************************************


Yes to all those things, hearthope.

But it does get better.

I think the pain is real. The loss is real. It has to do with watching the little boy grow into the adolescent whose potential you could so clearly see, and envisioning the young man who would stand there in front of you in just a few more short years.

That other son, the one I saw so clearly for awhile there, is gone.

Just gone.

So, for you and for me and for all of us here, the pain is real.

Because we saw our child, grown ~ and until we see him (or her) as we envisioned them to be, I don't think we CAN let it go.

It feels like I lost him.

And I am always looking to see if he's in there.

Now that I am on the other side of it a little bit, I understand that we do come to terms with our understanding of our children's changed situations.

But here is the thing.

Our dreams for them die hard.

Our responsibilities TO them die even harder.

Those are our children. Anymore than we stopped mothering them when they were physically sick, we cannot just turn off those feelings, now.

Nor should we.

We need to learn how to love them through it.

Part of that, at least for me, seems to be pretending things aren't as bad as they are.

So I am hurt and shocked whenever I am confronted with the "this is how bad it is" part.

But that doesn't change what I need to do.

I remember. I am his mother, and I remember there is so much more to him than what I see, now.

I KNOW he can do it, and I resent that he hasn't.

So it's all confused.

And you are exactly right, about becoming caricatures of ourselves, in our grief.

But you will come through this part too, hearthope.

Maybe better than me.

I certainly do seem to be stuck in the "I can't believe this is happening" department!

But that's okay.

I'm getting better.

And it's true, what you said and what TM said.

We have one another, and we can be honest about what this all feels like, and we can take that strength out into our other lives, and go on.

When I first came here, and the pain was still so intense, I always wanted someone to tell me how long this would last.

How long would the pain be so intense.

I think I have been here three years?

And by the end of the first year, I was so much better.

You will get through it too, hearthope.

Barbara

.

 

[hearthope]

I am getting better.

I think I am where Ant's mom Janet is speaking about.

Since my difficult child is currently home, I am see-sawing back and forth each day with my feelings.

I am getting a close-up view of the choices he makes on a daily basis. Sometimes I think he is getting somewhere and I allow myself to believe he is changing. As sudden as he seems to do good, he then makes three steps backwards.

Remember, he hasn't lived her for a long time. He was either running or locked up somewhere. When he was running I was in a dull depression, I pretty much just made it to work to get back in the bed as soon as I came home.

When he was locked up I could function knowing that he was getting the help he needed and he wasn't going to be found in a ditch somewhere.

Currently I am trying to find the fine line between advising and letting him go to make his decisions. It is hard to stand back and let him make the wrong choices, but I keep reminding myself that I must allow the process or he will never get it.

When he quit his job, I voiced my opinion, but the choice was his. He went from a steady daily routine to whatever ~ whenever.

We all know that the routine helped him stay focused and on track. That a difficult child needs structure to funtion, but I am watching him run backwards now.

I guess that is why the pain seems so intense at this time.


I will make it through, just like all the rest of us here. Sometimes will just be harder than others and now is my time for the hard place.

I wish peace on us all.

I used to dream of success in my business. I used to dream of competing at the NFR on my horse. I used to dream about many things...

Now the only thing I wish for is just peace in my heart

I hope we all find it......

 

[WhereIsTheLight]

Thank you all for sharing.

I just posted in General a rambler about kicking my daughter out. This thread was suggested reading. It was as if I had written it myself. I feel like this is all there is. This is the best my life - MY FAMILY - will ever be.

I just have to babble now. I threw her out two nights ago. I told myself that it would be peaceful now. It was going to be beautiful today. Finally! Spring. I could play the stereo at 2:00 p.m. and not worry about waking her. Or her mood when she woke up. She wouldn't be taking my cigarettes all weekend. I wouldn't have to listen to her alternative, dark, alienating music. There would be no harrassing her sister.

I came back to this forum, because I knew you knew. I knew you knew the lonliness, the guilt and the shame. The what ifs and the blame and the quizzical looks that you can't tell are sympathetic or disgusted.

My own family has accused me of feeling sorry for myself. I don't think they mind hearing the juicy details, but they can't deal with my emotions. I have burst into tears once or twice. And I've gotten quite vocal when I felt my girls were being shunned. I am no longer on speaking terms with my sister in law because we had a fight in which she started trashing my kids. She has told my mom not to talk to her or my brother about me anymore because they were tired of the drama.

At work, I have one or two people who know a lot. A few people who know a litte. Everybody knows difficult child broke her jaw. Not so many know she was twice over the legal blood alcohol limit when she did it.

I don't care who knows what, either. And I don't think it's so much an advocacy for mental health education, as much as I've just become so damned apathetic. I've come to accept that I've become the middle-aged, fat, bitter and boring person I have.

And I don't blame the kid for the apathy. That's my responsibility to get past. The apathy is the result of dealing with this mental illness, and my own undiagnosed issues. My daughter provokes anger in me, not apathy, and for that I am thankful.

If I'm angry with her, I still love her. I still have expectations, I still have dreams and hope and her behavior is obscuring them, delaying them, blocking all that potential I've ever seen in her and frustrating the hell out of me.

If I become apathetic towards her, I will have completely dried up emotionally. I've become pretty good at detaching - I can roll my eyes when she calls me a host of filthy names, and not let it rip my gut apart. But I cannot be completely proud of her, either. After all, how long will it last? I cannot feel real joy anymore. It's been a long time since she's accomplished anything of merit. Sure, I have praised the small victories, and I've tried to encourage her and I've supported her interests. Detachment has dulled the hurt, and dulled the joy.

It is a delicate dance, this balancing apathy and anger and detachment and boundaries and hopes and dreams. There is no time for me to think about hobbies, goals or a social life. I mean brain time...the time you spend going about your day thinking about difficult child rather than hoping or dreaming or planning or doing.

Parenting her has sucked the life out of me. I know it isn't her fault, but now, as she is 19 and I keep hoping she can at least glimpse into the adult world, when I ask her to help me, ask her to get a job, or help around the house, or control her anger or to watch her mouth or stop going in her sister's room without asking and she gets menacing and threatening and argumentative and the meltdowns come and I say I'm going to call the police or I leave the house at 1:00 a.m. because she won't and she won't let me sleep and I have to go to work tomorrow, when I try to show her the impact she has on the family, it just enrages her more. I have to walk on eggshells every day.

When she was in the ER, a man about my age came in on stretcher, restrained. His elderly parents were with him. He was belligerent with nurse, cussing up a storm. And he was nasty tempered with his parents. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. That's me in 20 years. But without the husband.

Without the husband. I've made peace with DEX. The dynamics of the marriage are complicated. We loved and hated passionately. The divorce was ugly and we despised each other during the worst of difficult child's episodes. We had to be separated during visitation at juvy. But, now, we know we still love each other, and we've come to accept that. So, we've healed. But he is remarried and his life turned out to be worse than mine. I'm letting him off the hook because I really think he's going to stroke out or have heart attack young. So I don't pressure him to spend time with the kids, as his wife can't stand them, and is a homophobe and a racist. And he makes a great living and is perpetually broke, and has a lousy marriage, so I don't guilt him into seeing them. He's not in a good place and he needs to get through it.

After we divorced, I got selfish. I had a gastric bypass and dropped 130 lbs. I've never been thin in my life. Men were checking me out and I even thought about dating. My career was in the toilet though, and with the divorce and losing my job, I figured I lost over $100k in household income in one year. And I had just bought a house.

But I got through unemployment and took a crappy job, but it was a job. It looked like I could actually entertain dating. People actually wanted to fix me up. And then, shortly after 9/11, she was not yet 14, it all crumbled over chocolate chip cookies.

She wanted me to make chocolate chip cookies. I said no, because she had been mouthy or something. I had been getting calls from the school that she wasn't in class that week. I remember being very angry, yelling at her, grounding her. I could send her to her room and she'd pound around in there, or make her take a shower to calm her down. I was the mom, then.

But it was different that night. I knew something was terribly wrong. I thought it was me. Weeks before she had called me a fool and I hit her. A few times. She was spanked as a child, but I hadn't touched her in years, and I lost control then. The next night, I found a Tough Love group that was beginning to break up due to lack of members. I drove 50 miles to go to the meeting. I was ashamed that I hit her and I wanted another way. I learned in one night about detachment.

I learned to calmly put my shoes and socks on while she sat next to me on the bed and scream DIRECTLY into my ear. I learned to yo-yo between the front and back doors to leave for work when she refused to go to school and would block me from leaving the house. I would calmly get her out of the driveway, prone behind my rear tires, trying to block me from going to work. She wanted the rage and she would do everything to provoke it from me.

After about six weeks of what I still believe are heroic efforts on my part, she wants chocolate chip cookies and she wants me to make them and she holds onto this like a pitbull on a kitten. Violently, hurtingly, she is demanding and she is losing control. I call my family...I want an intervention. Someone tell her this is unacceptable...that normal kids don't act like this. They come over, and two of my brothers, both over six feet tall have to subdue her while my sister in law calls the police. And that's when I find out about the cutting. The depression. The suicide attempt. That was the night I lost my baby. The one I went off the pill for. The one we knew would be hard to raise because he was just getting out the Navy and making $8.50 an hour but we wanted one while we were young. The one we planned for and the one I remember the exact moment she was conceived and she was conceived in the kind of moment that brings tears to your eyes because you are so incredibly content and safe. The baby that always smiled and rocked to the Jeopardy theme and crawled into complete strangers laps waiting for a table at Bill Knapp's. The baby that was potty trained on time, never had colic, potty trained her baby sister, that turned into a pretty little girl with a button nose and big brown eyes like Daddy's, a year-old posing with a pumpkin, Halloween costumes and Christmas trees and naked in the pool.

If I can still cry, apathy hasn't completely gripped me. Thank God. But I too, don't know how to be happy and watch her struggle through obstinance and social disconnect and laziness and dumb decisions. I feel like I have to choose between my own mental health and her safety. I can let her stay, and never pull myself out of this nadir, or I can kick her out and work on my own issues - and finally fix myself.

I have put my life on hold waiting, hoping, praying that this is the last episode, that she'll figure it out. I don't leave the house for fear it will burn down or be full of questionable kids when I get home. I gained back about 50 pounds of the weight I lost and I don't date. Who would want to be involved in this family? Nobody wants this baggage.

And when things are really bad, and I'm grieving and blackhearted and the feeling of impending doom chokes me, I deserve every damned bit of it.

 

[ScentofCedar]

What a beautiful and poignant posting, WhereIsTheLight.

I want to read and read it again before I respond. I wanted you to know you had been heard, so I am putting this little post in, for now.

There have been times when I have posted and felt foolish and ridiculously exposed afterwords.

I did not want you to feel that way.

Your posting was beautifully written, and so perfectly expressive of the pain and the loneliness that attend parenting our children when the joy never outbalances that nagging feeling that somehow, we were not enough.

You ended your post talking about weight loss and dating.

From the quality of your writing?

You are an amazing woman.

Right now, you are probably sending (appropriately so) messages that others should stay away until you have healed.

I enjoyed reading your post.

Hang on.

You are here with us now, and things will begin to seem brighter.

Barbara

P.S. I don't know whether you are into movies? But if you could picture the scene from Mrs. Doubtfire, where the boyfriend is choking on the cayenne shrimp? And Mrs. Doubtfire goes leaping across the room shouting "Help is on the way, dear!"

Well, that's all of us, coming now for you.

:flower:



.