Copabanana
Well-Known Member
Feeling, is there something that you can do? Like locate the shelter and the social services agencies that he might be dealing with? Through a private investigator, or somebody who does interventions?
It seems to me that the question revolves around what is legally possible, in terms of your son's consenting to treatment which was always the issue, up until the end. Even if you were to locate him (which I believe you could) it would all revolve around his cooperation, which is so compromised by his illness, because he does not understand in a way that he can correctly determine who is friend or foe.
Are your other sons willing to work with you to do some sort of intervention? If It were possible?
If he did cooperate, is there somewhere where he could be placed in long term treatment that would be viable? Are you willing to bring him home and will it be safe for your youngest son and for you?
The longing and pain of it.
Somehow what I was writing, right now, morphed into your post above which I had not read where you talk about the reality of things, throwing boiling hot water, stabbing Pyrex casseroles, urine and filth throughout the house, constant fear. Always feeling over ones head, holding on for dear life to get through it, turning off thinking and feeling to be able to keep walking, to cope.
I think it comes down right now to being female and a mother, however sexist this may sound, without a man to take charge and to help you through this. To take responsibility. There is nobody to take responsibility except you. And you have nowhere to stand. Because you are miles and miles beyond your depth, and no matter what you do you cannot find solid ground. And nobody can make it better.
Feeling, what in the world can you do, in real life? If there was a solution that you could have found you would have found it, you would have tried. You could not find one.
It is bringing me back to the time when my mother was ill and dying and not one thing in the world that I tried would work. And it kept getting worse and worse. I was all alone with M, and all of the responsibility was on me. And it kept getting worse and worse. Every decision I kept trying to make well and responsibly would fall apart. Nothing would fix it and I was over my head. And still it got worse and worse. There was nobody to call.
One day I stood in a flowerbed in the Target Superstore parking lot and I screamed. As loud as I could because there was a life or death decision to make and I did not know what to do. I was being pressured to let my mother die and I could not do it. So, I screamed right there in a flowerbed. At Target. M got so mad. Is all you can do when you have a problem scream in front of the people? (He asked in Spanish.) What else was there left to do? I had tried everything else.
I was over my head and nobody could help me. Everything was horrible. I could not fix it. It got worse and worse.
I am still trying to get over it. I have never not one day not felt over my head since that time. I reread this and I tear up. (There is a post I just read here by a woman who will not post anymore. She regrets putting her pain and life all over the internet. I do too. I seem unable to stop myself. Like she said, the pain and fear of it is overwhelming. It is like taking drugs, this posting. I need to stop.)
Since my mother was dying, It is like my very relationship with life, with myself has been altered, and seems unable to be readjusted, re-calibrated. Like I do not any longer work. I am no longer sufficient to meet life. Life has become something I do not understand.
Really, I think that these are times that the only thing left to do is to turn to faith, to find faith.
I am thinking here of a story M tells me. A younger brother sniffed glue and used other drugs. This brother had been the most together and ambitious of young men. And a very, very loved brother and son. By the time he was 14 or 15 he owned property, land, which he had purchased through working. And when the craziness set it, M helped his very Catholic mother find help. They walked through the streets and brought the brother to a psychiatric hospital. The brother pretended to be sane.
And so it went. They were, the mother and M, dismissed as if they were the impaired ones, and the brother the rational one. And so it went. This still haunts M. He feels he should have done more. More to help his mother.
The brother never recovered. But the mother has her faith. And her son. But he is not violent. Just, very, very impaired. That was maybe 25 years ago.
I think everything hinges on the violence.
No matter how many times I go over it in my mind, Feeling, I cannot find another place to stand. For you to stand. The problem is. You are under water. And I, unfortunately, am there standing next to you.
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