Hi Sherril, I hope things are better today for you. The sadness you feel is real.
He is facing 3-12 years in prison for robbery. Praying that he comes home after this & lives a productive life and is happy. I never, ever thought any of my kids would end up in jail.
I remember the first few times Difficult Child was in jail I was devastated. The longest he spent in jail (I think, strange that I can't remember 100 percent) was about 8 months, I think. The last time he was in jail, the public defender told him he would be going to prison for four years so get ready. The next morning they let him out.
I think that was the final straw in his decision to change. He was terrified of four years in prison.
So far, the past 17 months have been steady progress.
Sherril, maybe, just maybe, this is his turnaround. It's awful to think about...before my son went to jail, I only knew one person who had ever spent time in jail, that i knew of, and I was baffled every time I looked at him to think this person had been in jail and that i actually knew him (lol on me).
I had no experience or knowledge of jail, or people who broke the law, or people who used drugs...or any of it. It was another world to me. A world my son, my own precious sons, either one of them, would surely never know.
Shows where I was in my thinking. These last seven years have been one cold jug of water in my face after another. I have had to let go of so many Cinderella notions about life, about people, about reality. I see how isolated and sheltered I was about all kinds of things, like controlling/managing/fixing other people, making people do things, feeling I was separate (better than) from people who lived lives like my son's has been...on and on.
These past 7 years have been both the worst and best times of my life. I have changed a lot, and I think for the better.
I still have a long way to go.
Maybe Sherril, this will turn out to be a good time for you and for your son...and even for your family. I know that sounds strange to say, and it is still bewildering, very sad, scary, not what you ever would have thought...but at the same time, perhaps it can be a time of positive movement for you and for him.
Your grief and your fear are real. But that can be separate, a parallel track, from another track you can live on while your son is in prison. You can live on two tracks, one of wishing he wasn't there, and feeling the pain of that, and then, one of figuring out what you have learned from all of this, and who you want to be.
There can be a silver lining in the very very dark cloud.
Warm hugs Sherril. I hope you will have a better day today.
