Gone Boy

[Scent of Cedar *]

But I am getting to the point where I think maybe that "him" I always assume is underneath? That might not be who he is anymore. And that makes me sad.

When difficult child son was addicted, I felt that way, too. It was the most horrible feeling to look into those empty eyes.

Chilling, like there was no one there; like those underlying currents of emotion we feel in the presence of those we love had been reproduced as meaningless echoes of my own feelings and thrown back at me to ridicule both him and myself, and to make everything that was good meaningless and foolish. Maybe that is why, that look and what it said and what it meant, maybe that is why I panic when I see that in myself?

It's like a kind of damnation, maybe.

But then, one day...I saw the flash of my son, trapped in those eyes.

And that was worse.

Boy, I am a bucket of cheer this morning.


That was a PTSD moment for me, though. Remembering it still breaks me inside. It was way worse, understanding that he was still there, that he was trapped in there somewhere. But in the end, for both my kids, that was where I was able to love them, how I was able to see them so clearly for who they really are.

This should never have happened.

Not to us, and not to them.

I think that is what this whole "twinge of disgust" thing is about. difficult child son is picking up beautifully since I was able to stand up. But I am having trouble with difficult child daughter's position. Her manipulations feel like clever imitations of innocence. And I know I need to face this. But that is the thing. I don't see the flash of pain that meant my child was real, and was still in there. Everything, every conversation, every emotion, seems calculated to accomplish an end, now. Sincerity is lacking. Interest is lacking. Content is lacking.

But here is the thing. Though I do need to stand up, and I do need to see what is real for what it is, I am her mother. I will believe, by force of will if nothing else.

Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

Click those heels, Dorothy.

I can do this.

But is that the sound of my red Dorothy shoes clicking out the rhythms of defiant belief, or...my teeth, chattering.

Whatever it is, it seems very ugly.

Ours is an ugly story.

But it is our story.

I was reading HLM's post about birthdays and memories and thinking back on all the good times we had as a family, all the times we supported his interests, all the times we believed him and backed him up when no one else would...and he just takes off without any consideration?

There is that twinge, again. D H said: (I have posted about this before, but I must need to go through it again.) "This is your father. Do this for me. Stay in treatment. Do this for me."

And she didn't, and you all know how that played out. But though I missed it the first time I read it, this morning I see that same thing, that same feeling that family is only a charade of family, to them. If they need something, boy are we family. If we need something, like for them to do the right thing for once in their lives, family doesn't matter.

Many manipulations have happened in the name of family obligation.

Perhaps I will come through this no longer vulnerable in that way.

I think in trying to make sense of it all (we never will) we "other" them so we can say, well, they just don't feel like we do. I believe many of our difficult children do feel like we do, but the disease is just too powerful. It helps us to other them, but I'm not sure we are right about that.

That is what I am fighting through now with that twinge of disgust. That is what it is. You are right, COM. We are not right to do that. As the disease takes hold, it becomes more and more the thing, the only aspect of our now adult, broken a thousand times child, that we can see clearly.

It is important for me, for the sake of my own self and salvation and future ~ I mean, it seems crucially important that I come through this believing in my child.

Somehow, I need to learn to balance what is happening as I continue, finally, to lose her with the understanding that, though I do not see her there anymore, she is there. The disease is the disease, and that is a separate thing from my child.

Oh, thank heaven. It is right to see clearly. It is right to acknowledge manipulation and admit to disgust...which is a form of anger, a form or angry denial, maybe.

And beneath anger, always, is sorrow and regret for what is. And if we refuse to stop at anger or sorrow or regret, if we refuse to let that be the end of the story, we reach compassion.

We reach compassion.

It could be any of us.

It is a disease. Whether the basis for it is genetic or chemical, that is my child and I love her. And though I may need to protect myself from her, and though I definitely need to be wise and wary, I am free to choose for compassion to be my reality, my take on how to see her. Not regret, not hardness; not as someone who sees me as a fool to be used, but as as someone being eaten alive by the disease that claims her.

Wise, and wary.

Clarity of vision is a tricky thing.

But once I can see it, it isn't too big a deal.

It is like that song we are always posting about. Halleluiah. Leonard Cohen, right? "Love is not a victory march. It's a cold and it's a broken halleluiah."

And as you remind us, Albatross, those broken places are how the light shines through.

It is amazing to me how, together on this site, we are able to clarify one another's understanding of how we are to survive this intact.

Score one for our side.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Something about hope being a good thing, maybe the best thing, and no good thing ever dies..

I had gone through a thing recently about hope being the thing that keeps us hooked. But I was wrong. Hope is the thing we still believe, with our whole hearts, could have been.

We are not fools.

We have not been cheated.

The dream was every bit as valid, for us and for our children, as whatever it was that really happened to all of us.

I am getting beyond myself, here.

It has something to do with perception, and with what is real, and with who we are.

Yes. Sometimes it feels like the water is smooth and glassy, we're sailing along or maybe soaking up a little sun on the deck...and something surfaces. Sometimes we're not even sure what it was, or maybe it was just enough to rock the boat a little bit. Other times it is enough to nearly capsize us.

We are pirates in many ways I guess.

We are.

We refuse to accept the usual interpretations. We refuse to pretend it doesn't matter, that our children were not worth what we did, what we chose to do for them.

They were worth it.

Guilt was not worth it. Beating myself up over something so tragic ~ that was not worth it. Trying to pretend now that it doesn't matter that I lost them when it does matter ~ that's not a right thing. It does matter. I (we) saw something priceless destroyed, saw our children attracted to and attacked and eaten away by a disease (great analogy) we cannot even name.

We need to learn a different response, and we need to learn how to see ourselves and our families through the brokenness.

I don't know how to do that, either.

Darn those kids.

It is so hard, SO HARD, for me to walk this line, to remember who I want to be in this journey, when it is so easy, SO EASY to put the focus on what I perceive HE ought to be.

Yep.

Maybe we need to remember that it is a journey.

There is time, until there is no more time.

Remember when we thought difficult child daughter had gone into organ failure? The rage, the sense of betrayal ~ all that stuff disappeared. (It's back now.)

All I wanted was to hear her laugh, and to hear her voice.

And that was enough, and none of that other stuff mattered.

That is how I know it isn't real.

When we thought it was over, none of that stuff mattered. There was not even a shadow.

Even at my angriest, when my son is at his worst, I feel sorrowful that he seems to be trapped in a hell of his own making.

I feel this way, too. I have seen it, seen the confusion, the shock at his own behaviors, and the push through it to do the bad thing and get what he was after, what he needed. difficult child daughter is different, now. Maybe, as COM suggests, that is the disease process. There was a time when she was as hurt and confused by what she was doing, by the violence in her and the sometimes heartlessness in her, as I was.

I don't see any guilt or naivete about the reality of her situation coming from Cedar. Cedar is my rock and definitely one of my heroines around here for that very reason. She sees it all and she still hopes and loves, and she pulls us all up with her.

I love that you said this!!!

But here is the truth. I am working my way through the illusion of hope. Which means that I believed, all these years, that my child would pull through. That was the child I loved. That child who had not yet pulled through but whose destiny it surely was to pull through ~ I saw everything through that filter.

Now, as the disease progresses, I see that. I think it is courageous of me to look into something so black and ugly, and it scares me now, because I no longer believe this is going to be...I no longer have that sense of disbelief that these things could be happening to her and to me. I am coming to believe the disease is the disease.

I am so grateful for that concept.

I can save myself, there. I can see a way to do this.

That is my child.

I need to learn to separate the two.

I may need to learn to distance myself from her or I may lose her altogether and I have to figure out how to see this, and how to see myself in it and I don't know how to do that.

2much was right, Alby.

She has a child nearing forty, too. It is strangely wicked thing to poke around in. Young people are so beautiful, so innocent. There is such loss of potential, and there is something so clean about them that you cannot help but be in love with them with your whole heart.

It is different with a child approaching forty.

All the good, connecting things have not happened, not for years and years. The relationship is off kilter. Too much need, no growth into independence, too many desperate times when manipulation became the go to response and respect for us as parents was lost.

And respect for herself.

And our respect for her, and our envisionment of her as an adult.

I am so sorry, Alby. Ours is an ugly story. I am having to chose between so much that is harsh and yet, that is real. It is difficult to face some of what I can no longer pretend is just a glitch or a phase or a victimization or an accident.

COM's concept of a disease.

I think that is saving me.

I have to see. But I don't know how to come through it, and that is scary.

And that little tinge of disgust...that is something new, and is not who I want to be.

***

We all do what we do, here. We are a self-selecting group. I liked that you said that, too. Each of us awakens questions the others of us consider at a heart level. Each of us takes her courage and her pain (and her child ~ there is not a one of us here who has turned away from her child, or who has said this is simple ~ not for long, anyway) and we are gutting our ways through it.

It's scary sometimes, to look right at it.

That little tinge of disgust....

And I know that he is alive, and he knows that we love him and expect him to pull up his Underoos and deal with the mess he made. So today is a good day.

And that is a good day, and a triumph of love.

It does feel like we are battling something bigger, more crucially important, than is believable, sometimes.

One heart at a time, one refusal to slip or blame or stop seeing clearly at a time.

Talk about your tall orders.

:O)

We are doing it, though.

I loved this thread. I am so thankful that it came up just now when it did, and that I was able to go through in just the way I did.

I am so grateful we are here, every one of us.

Cedar

 

[Echolette]

Just lately, as I have been letting go of guilt and responsibility for what is happening, I am finding a sense of ~ I don't know how to describe it. Worminess at the core of it all is part of it. But the thing that concerns me is that I feel maybe a twinge of disgust at it, now.

Cedar, I know what you mean by this. I felt uncomfortable about this all year last year...a lot of the posts were about detaching with love, total acceptance, loving our kids as is...and...I couldn't get there. I detached in...some degree of disgust. some degree of judgement. some degree of anger. I couldn't get past it, and I was ashamed of it. But it was part of the process. Today, at this moment, it is less, better. But who knows about tomorrow. Thank you for putting your finger on it.

But I am getting to the point where I think maybe that "him" I always assume is underneath? That might not be who he is anymore. And that makes me sad.

Alb, I know. That happened to me a while back..months or even a few years. I realized he isn't who I thought, or who he used to be, or who I used to know...any of those things. He is his actions. That is who we all are, right? Be careful of your thoughts for they become your words, be careful of your words for they become your actions, be careful of your actions for they become who you are...my son, all our difficult children, all of us...we are our actions. That is how we interface with the world, how we impact it, how we receive it. OUr sons are as they appear to be, as they show themselves now, not as we imagine.

I am sorry this is happening to you.

Hugs,

Echo

 

[2much2recover]

Alb, I know. That happened to me a while back..months or even a few years. I realized he isn't who I thought, or who he used to be, or who I used to know...any of those things. He is his actions. That is who we all are, right? Be careful of your thoughts for they become your words, be careful of your words for they become your actions, be careful of your actions for they become who you are...my son, all our difficult children, all of us...we are our actions. That is how we interface with the world, how we impact it, how we receive it. OUr sons are as they appear to be, as they show themselves now, not as we imagine.

I do find it so sad that the person I love is just not there anymore - I remember my daughter so well in so many wonderful ways, but if I get involved with her now it is I would be hurt and let down again because she is not who I thought she was anymore - she is gone. That makes it really hard when you are hurt, angry or grieving, because the person is there, they are alive, but whats inside them is not the person you know.