He was joyful to rejoin me. His therapist at the time described it, as coming to his beloved. It embarrasses me to write this. As if to have my son love me like this, I had to have done something shameful.
I loved my son in that special way too, Copa. Each of my children was so different in the way they loved me. My son's love was a more tender and protective thing. As his addiction deepened it turned manipulative and I never even got that until SWOT posted for us here about abusive adult children and there I was.
Huh.
Sure enough.
Copa? It's important that you know that when our son stops using for a time, he has so far been able to come back to himself. Even this last time, he was able to come back. We think now that when he hates us, he must be using. I don't think they need to use enough to be totally out of it, either. I do believe the brain is wrung of the chemicals it needs to fuel empathy and discernment and even, love, to create whatever the high is.
When your son stops Copa, your son ~ the man you know and love ~ will begin to come back.
I know you don't believe drug use is the core of this, Copa.
I didn't, either.
You may be right. I can only tell you what happened to us, and what we were able to figure out, now, with the clarity of vision come of hindsight, about what happened, then.
I am still broken-hearted, Copa.
He was the coolest, sweetest, funniest, kindest kid.
And then, he wasn't.
Sometimes, Cedar, I have thought that we may have been the same kind of Mothers. That our love was so strong, so true, so pure, so selfless that the love itself was the problem. For our sons.
That there was nothing in real life that could match it. My love for my son and his for me had become a wind against him.
I'm sorry, Copa. I disagree. Boys do love their moms. They protect their moms, they appreciate their moms and laugh and tell them jokes. They carry their luggage and buy them gifts that are just right and they bring things home for them when they travel.
And then, they don't.
My son changed when I abandoned him.
That is his truth. I did abandon him. I have posted about this. I was so sure I had harmed my daughter to have made it impossible for her to do other than she was doing. I did not want to harm my son in that same way.
I lost my confidence. I became a frightened, guilty, uncertain mother searching for where she had harmed her daughter and terrified of harming her son.
So, in that sense, I did abandon him.
For those reading, no matter what anyone says to you about why one child may be acting out, unless they can tell you specifically what is wrong and give you specific tools to correct it, keep faith with yourself and your family.
I cannot stress that enough.
Our son was twelve when our daughter went into her first treatment center.
That said Copa, as I understand it, our son began using cocaine at 16. He was working at one of the finest restaurants in our city. He had his own car, was doing well in school ~ was even running for class president...and then, he wasn't. A multitude of other drugs followed. Again, believing our family was wrong in some essential way we could not see, believing treatment centers only made things worse because no one had been able to help our daughter (and she had been in two or three by the time our son was sixteen), we kept trying to find and address whatever it was that was wrong with our family and never believed it could be the "recreational" drug use our son was engaged in. (We put all these pieces together later. At the time it was happening, our daughter was so broken, I had seen and been betrayed by that first therapist, my FOO was hot on the track, our marriage was falling apart...and then, our son fell.)
And we never believed it was drugs.
And I know you cannot believe it could be drug use for your son either Copa, but because of our experiences, I believe so strongly that your son loved you (like mine did) that you loved your son and raised him beautifully (like I did) and that your son is behaving the way he is now because of what the chemicals he is using are doing to his brain.
I believe this now, finally, about my own son too Copa. But I could only see it as, within the past years, I have posted on P.E. (I have been on P.E. twice. I found the site initially for our son.)
It began with SWOT's post on adult kids who verbally abuse their parents and that was in this time when I was here for our daughter.
That is where I began to believe it is the drug use ~ not a failure of mother love, not a divorce in the child's history. (D H and I were not divorced.) I was where you are for so long a time, Copa. For years. D H believed it was the way I'd been babying his son. So, he took over when, with the other parents here behind me, I finally demanded that our son go into treatment or he would get nothing from us.
That is the broccoli story.
Our son had stopped using, come home, put his life in great order and fallen again I don't know how many times by that time. Whenever he lived on his own and bad things happened, we brought frozen chicken and frozen broccoli and pasta and cheese and milk and eggs and butter and bread and coffee and dog food.
I thought he liked broccoli.
But man, he hated that broccoli.
Whatever. I am getting off track. I am still grieving the loss of my son. I loved him, very much. I liked him, too.
He was so totally cool, Copa.
He dressed so well we thought he might actually be gay.
And I am very sad for what happened to him, and to all of us.
***
Anyway. I asked D H about how a boy loves his mother. He said: "Moms just love you no matter what. Whether you've done something wrong or not, they still love you. You are a hero for your mom, you want to be her hero." And then, D H said: "Unless there is something she wants you to do for her and you don't do it."
Do you see your son here Copa.
And that my son came to hate me for that thing from which he could not tear himself away. That I am the drug. That he would degrade himself for. And he hates me for it.
Again Copa, I so strongly believe this is not a way to think that will bring solution. Again, from D H: "Sons are meant to leave their mothers. They do. They want to. Moms are meant to be home, cooking and doing whatever it is they do all day."
They leave us behind, Copa.
They are meant to.
When our children are way off the chart and we cannot say why, and when there is drug use, however minimal we believe it to be, it is the drug use that is the problem, Copa. I believe this now, finally, with every fiber of my being. Not the mother. Not the love. Not even the messed up way our family had been limping along with daughter in one treatment or another and me in a bread bag pretty much, would my son have lost his life the way he has if drug use was not involved and had not taken him into addiction.
I could not see it either, Copa.
You will be the only one who can know how your son was as a child. The things you are describing for us here ~ primarily the hostility and the viciousness of the manipulation ~ tell me drug use over time.
I can only know my own story and extrapolate it to yours, Copa.
If it was something in the way you loved him, identify and change it.
If it is something else, insist on treatment as a condition of interacting with you. You have no other power than that he loves you. That, and the misery of his life in this time.
I wish with all my heart that I had done that, Copa.
I am just very, very lost and sad in all of this. And trying to find my footing and then my way.
We are right here, Copa. I always say this, but it is so true: We have been where you are, SWOT and me and all the parents here. You see the new parents come in Copa, so sad and broken, so sure these terrible things happening to their children have to do with the way they loved them.
I know you love him, Copa.
You are stronger now than when you first came to us. Unless we are honest, we cannot examine and define and put things into proper perspective and it is crucially important that we do so.
You are doing so well, Copa.
We are right here, SWOT and me and all of us.
Cedar
