Recovering, I think that, given that love is mostly the desire to love, is mostly the wish to happily cherish another person...I think there will come a time, as each of us becomes healthier, when we will be able to love both ourselves and our dysfunctional adult children WHERE THEY ARE.
That is our goal, right?
Now that we are down South again, I find myself thinking about the way Southerners deal with this stuff. "Miss difficult child, she's just not right, bless her heart. She does the craziest things, Miss difficult child! But we love her. She's ours, and we love her just the way she is, poor little thing."
There is something here about the way I see my difficult child. Something about denial. Something about the pain we all feel, the dread we all live in being less a thing having to do with the difficult child than it does with our own stubborn refusal to see and accept and love the difficult child for who they keep telling us they are. Here is a secret: Maybe, my difficult child has never been the child I love, in my heart. I keep trying to believe the horrifying paths she seems determined to walk are mistakes. They are not. This is who my difficult child is and has always been. It would be a terrible thing, to be loved not for yourself, but because your mother already had the dream of who her child would be and filled that space in her heart with you. Maybe that is why our difficult child's seem to try so hard to force us to see the differences between who they are and who we insist that they are?
That statement seems so simple. But what it does is acknowledge the situation as it really is. What we learn as our troubled teens turn into adults is how much it hurts to hope, and how hopeless it all really is. As Recovering noted regarding the holidays, the joy of anticipation is impossible, for us. Instead, we find ourselves almost hypnotized by waves of dread anticipation. Remember that story about the man who loves to stand outside and watch through the windows as other families celebrate their lives, because he has no family of his own? And when he finally has his own family, he places a mirror outside, so he can watch his own family celebrate?
Well, that's us.
Always on the outside, looking in. Knowing what we hope for, and knowing that for us, that mirror is going to reflect a very different reality.
You are right, Recovering.
I dread the holidays, too.
I don't know what I am going to lose, this year.
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For all of us, the goal is to learn to cherish and respect both ourselves and our kids. There has been so much horror for all of us. MWM, right this minute, is beginning her morning with the dread of 35's threat of suicide hanging over her because she has opted for the healthier response. MWM is being punished and blackmailed by 35, really. I like what you did, MWM. You told 35 the truth. In a way, what you did was respected him enough, believed in him enough, to be honest with him. I hope he picks up on that ~ but even if he doesn't, you have been courageous enough to change the rules of the game he has been forcing you to play. It's a beginning.
Normal parents have no clue what we go through.
Here on the site, we seem to be creating a way to see our relationships to our troubled adult kids in a better way. What we are reclaiming in the process is the sense of wonder and hope and possibility. It is so risky for us to hope, to believe, to celebrate. Think of how many times each of us has said, "Hooray for us. We did it ~ got difficult child through another crisis and this time, it's all good."
We've all had to learn not to do that, anymore.
The results of allowing ourselves to relax where difficult child adults are concerned are horrifying.
Worse than horrifying, when there are grandchildren.
Those who have read along with me this past Winter know husband and I essentially lost all those months. We were not able to celebrate our good fortune, our friends, each other ~ nothing. Everything turned black and got darker.
That is what dealing with troubled adult kids costs.
I am so afraid for the horror of what is coming next. MWM is in that place right now, over 35's threats of suicide. Dreadful, dreadful, never knowing what you are going to be plunged into next. Recovering, like me and maybe like all of us here, anticipating holidays where everything turns from a celebration of love and light to something twisted and dark and unspeakably painful. I don't know how we are going to change how we see ourselves and our troubled adult kids. I don't know what that is going to look like. But I do think we are working our ways toward that.
It's almost impossibly hard to live with dread, with the certainty of loss. It was so strange this summer, when difficult child learned the family had begun preparing ourselves for the phone call that would tell us the end of the story. She was so angry that we had...prepared ourselves to begin to go on, I guess.
difficult child felt betrayed.
I don't know what to make of any of it. I only know where I want to get to with it, but I don't even know whether that is possible.
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Recovering, this may help. During any family event, I know that, at the end of it, whatever has happened, I will sit quietly alone after everyone has gone to bed. (Nowadays, that would just be husband and the dog ~ whatever! :O) ) I make a cup of gourmet coffee, and I drink it out of an exquisite, bone china cup that belonged to my maternal grandmother. Through that ceremony, I connect with the women of my line ~ connect with the pain and the joy, with the tragedy and the triumph and loss. Somehow, that comforts me in a way nothing else has ever been able to do. There is something there about other women sustaining losses they did not have the strength to face and going on, anyway. It legitimizes the pain of the thing for me, somehow. I find a kind of wordless strength, there. If it's Christmas, I truly celebrate the lights and decorations, all by myself. I give myself that gift. Knowing I am going to do that, knowing I am going to re-see everything that has happened through those eyes that have seen generations of pain and laughter and life...I don't know, Recovering. It settles me, somehow. If you decide to try it, envision the women of your line as far back as you can do it. Not their appearances so much, but the feel of them.
That is the only thing I know that helps me face the holidays. I know I will be alone, in joy or in pain or bewildered shock...and that there are others who have gone there before me, and survived.
It will bring you strength too, Recovering.
:O)
Cedar
