How to even talk on the phone with my son....

[Scent of Cedar *]

"What? Are you feeling like you're talking to your abusive father", my son mocked?

"Is this bringing back traumatic memories of your Dad?" he taunted."

"...my son mocked." "...he taunted."

Your child betrayed your trust in him, Copa.

This will, and was designed to, hurt you on many levels. In some corner of your heart, you cannot even believe he really did this. So, if you were me, I would be having an underground battle somewhere I can't see it about whether this child you love is even the same person you believed him to be at all. And the other corner of your heart is staunchly defending him, and attacking you on about three levels. The level of the mother heart where we love our boys no matter what is having at you; the level of the core of you where the initial abuse occurred is whisper-hissing that there must be a connection between your father's initial betrayal and this betrayal, and you are experiencing Post Traumatic flashback to the original trauma so intense that your psyche is on overload, running through every defense in its arsenal to protect you. (I think I heard that in where you froze around the issue of the male voice.)

My son has treated me cruelly many times before. This time, however, I could not turn away from the controlled sadism in his words and more, his tone of voice.

Right there. That is where I heard you freeze.

Plus, you are already vulnerable because the situation is unbalanced with your son, and you love him and he is in trouble and you are not sure this is the best way to proceed.

You have a right to be angry Copa, and you should be. When we are coping with abusive people from our broken core selves, sad is the only emotion we allow ourselves ~ but we have to abolish our "selves" to do it.

That is true, for me.

He wanted my advice about where he has been living the last week or so.

I'm sorry, Copa, but I think he wanted to assess the situation relative to showering at your house and never leaving. It comforts me, once I am calm enough to receive it, to remember that it is not the child who is bad or wrong. It is not me. It is the addiction or the illness. That is the bad or wrong thing. That is where I can step out of the circle. Nothing to fear; nothing to protect. It is what it is.

That helps me, Copa. Also slow, deep breaths. Slow deep breathing switches our bodies' responses from "flight or fight" to "rest or digest". Our brains do not know about time. Everything is happening now. Our breathing will help our brains to know we are fine. So you will be able to center.

And then, you will be able to think clearly again.

This is FOG, Copa.

That's only the FOG. It will pass.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Cactus Update

the landlady has been outside in front of the house these past two hours...gathering pieces of M's beloved cacti.

torn off pieces of 20 plants; ..I guess the moral of the story is you can't protect what you love.

Guess what? The landlady brought the stolen pieces to sell to M's sister. Believing these were new variants, M's sister bought two.

The kicker: The stolen cacti had originally come from M's sister's plants. So, in a manner of speaking, at least 2 of the stolen babies found their way home!

I hate this lady.

PS Since I told my son I would put a block on the phone, he has not attempted to call, either the landline or the cell.

It hurts that he does not find a way to reconnect, but know it is for the best, most likely, that he experience a period of time of independence and hopefully thinks about our recent interactions.

After he said what he said, I do not see a way to call him. It would be as if I was making everything alright. It is not.

I feel for him feeling alone. He does not really have anybody else but me. But there is no easy way out of this, for him or for me. Sooner or later I will leave him. I am not young.

Better he have the chance to grow...or not before it is too late. I know this. But it is hard.

 

[BusynMember]

Honestly, why would you leave your own son forever?

Even if Goneboy came back, it would be hard to try to forge a relationship because of the hurt and our religious differences, but I would never "disown" a child. Trust me, it huts too. And for an adopted child...it is a second rejection.

He left us, we did not leave him. It's not something I could ever do. It was done to me by my own mother. It hurts a lifetime.

in my opinion it is not right to look back at our childhoods and place what happened to us through our parents onto our children. Those issues need to be addressed, hopefully, before having children. If not...your son is not your father or mother. I can see a time out, but not a forever unless he physically hurt you, stole from you, or abused you verbally 100% of the time. Trust me, I have put up with stuff from my kids, but I still love them and would talk to them, even if only sometimes, if I could.

Just food for thought. No criticism.

 

[Echolette]

Copa,

you are being wonderfully strong. You are staying open to your own heart, to your own love for your son, to your fears. You are staying open...I can feel it in your posts. That is the hardest place, but the place of best learning.

My son is mentally ill too, Copa. He is the sweetest sweetest boy. But he is on the autism spectrum and has a disabling inability to interact socially or read cues, and he is bipolar and when he is manic it is a sight to behold. He is much better on medications. But he won't take them.

So I know your fear and confusion around...what do I do? I can't abandon a sick person, my sick son, can I? I don't want to, I can't, and even if I did want to it would be wrong, right?

SWOT writes a lot about this, since she suffers from some mental illness too. I am bipolar, or at least dysthymic, and I've wrought destruction in the past in my manic phases...spent too much money, endangered my health and life, hurt and betrayed people who loved me. In the end...I am responsible for these things. So is my son. And if he cannot see, in his illness, that he needs medications...the cold hard hardest fact is that there is nothing, nothing, that you or I can do about it.

I have cut off communications with him from time to time, to save myself. I've gone a few months hearing nothing. RIght now it is better for me to stay in touch (conveniently he is in jail and on medications and clean, which is his best self). The targets move. Our reactions move. OUr hormones move. The moon moves and how we cope changes.

But I do know that posting on the board helps move us forward, to a healthier way of living. I can see that you are doing that...it is slow, and it is two steps forward and 2.5 back...but...you are better. You will be better still. You can find a place where you love your son and live your own life. I believe that.

Echo

 

[Copabanana]

That is the hardest place, but the place of best learning.

Echo, thank you so much for your kind, generous, open, and heartfelt response.

My heart breaks for my child. He is my only child. He is the love of my life. I cry as I write this. I would do anything, anything...as would you to make it better for our sons.

You know from reading my posts that by trying and trying I was making it worse.

This is the loneliest place a mother can be. I miss my son so much. When I am not in contact with him, my heart aches. My body aches. Echo, the pain is really sometimes more than I can bear.

My son too was the sweetest most loving boy. He is now a man, so he cannot any longer be such. He has turned bitter and aggressive. His life on the streets has made him such. Or is it that doors keep getting slammed in his face.

Again, like a refrain, I feel the need to say, I would do anything to make his experience of the world a different one...if it was in my power to do so.

But I cannot, any longer, change his world.

All of this that I am going through is such slow going.

This site for me is like a sweet, long drink in a desert. When I post or read the posts of others and am touched by them, I understand the purpose of all this, for me.

What we are going through as much as anything else is the essence of motherhood, of parenthood. I googled 'Virgin Mary, to look into her eyes, as Cedar suggested, and I saw my own.

Through you and others here, I am finding in myself the depth of my love, commitment and courage as a person. Without you and others I would never have come to this place.

Thank you.

 

[Childofmine]

Copa, we can't know the answers to the questions that come in the dark night of the soul.

I call it the "Parade of the Terribles", the endless circular questions and longings and thinking that comes in the middle of the night about our DCs.

I am a thinker. I can think and think and think. I have often been accused of "overthinking" things, many times, throughout my life, and finally, I am starting to be a little freer from that. From whence it comes? I don't know. It is both a blessing and a curse.

I used to read and think and ask and call and study and research endlessly about my son. If only....

The mental illness---not addiction but something "else", a brain thing, a biochemical dysfunction, schizophrenia, bipolar, severe depression, whatever it might be, that confounded me the most. If this, then that? If he can't function, then what is my responsibility as his mother? On and on and on. It was never ending and it was incredibly painful and that kind of thinking kept me locked in a prison of my own making and my own mind. How much is truth? How much is him? How much is other people? Where do I fit into all of this, his fiercest advocate, his own mother?

It's enough to drive a person completely crazy.

The day I truly heard this...it was a gift...such a gift...to learn that until his drug use (alcohol and abuse of any type of substance) was stopped and he got into treatment, which is way beyond the physical side of it all, to include the mental, emotional, spiritual, etc., there was no way to know any of the above.

No way at all. In fact, I was told by the best professionals, often the other "stuff" completely disappears once they are free from substance abuse. All of the behaviors and bad thinking just...stops.

I had to be told this over and over again by multiple professionals before I would believe it, and then before I could hear it, and truly take it in, and allow my own self to be changed by this brand new information.

Now, I realize that many of us on this forum had diagnosis for our DCs well before the substance abuse began, and I can understand that this continues to confound us.

My own son was never diagnosed with anything before his drug use and alcohol use began, but I can see, looking back, that he at least had some degree of anxiety that I can identify, from very early on. However, he was functional and did well in school and had friends and really had few behavior issues (precocious redhead and very energetic little boy notwithstanding) before 7th grade. You would have said, well, he's just shy and a mama's boy and has lots of energy. All that was true.

For me...for me...unhooking from the endless thinking about what if was an important step on my journey. It went hand in hand, for me, with realizing I can't fix things for people. I can't fix the world. I can't fix my son. I can't fix the mental health system, the government, the police, the courts, the whatever. I can't fix anything really, except myself, and wow, isn't that a JOB? A full time job.

I had to release my son. Release him to the universe. To God. To my Higher Power. To the world. Was it painful? Yes it was terribly painful. And hard to do, and I backslid a lot. I had to simply face that he was a grown man and as much as I love him, I can't BE HIM and I can't do every single thing for him that is necessary for him to live a "normal life." I wish I could, but I can't.

That doesn't mean I don't love him, that I didn't have a lot of contact with him, because I did, even though it all, but I had to start thinking about myself more and what I could "take" and setting more and more boundaries for myself with him.

It is such a process and in my situation, I couldn't do anything else in order to save my own life. That's what it came down to, and I want to live. I want to live a great life, even if, even if, and I will say this outright, even if he can't.

I had to sort through all of this stuff I am writing about here, and much more, to get here. I am still sorting. I will always be sorting. I don't believe any of us are really different here, about all of this.

There has to be comfort there, knowing we, many of us, most of us, feel the same.

 

[Echolette]

Copa,

this is very very hard work, agonizing really, especially in the dark of the night with the parade of horrors, as COM says.

If you could have saved him, with all of your love and all of your thinking, and all of your effort...he would have been saved 10 times over by now. Some one said that to me in my early days on the board, and it made so much sense to me, it broke through my fog. Yes...I cannot save him. If I could, it would have been done by now.

This ties into one of my favorite buddhist practices, also a breakthrough moment for me...in buddhism we try very hard to accept things...there are some core things in which the lesson is...do not struggle against these, they are inevitable, and struggling is wasteful, dishonorable almost, almost hubris. I came across these as a I settled into my seat for a long airplane flight for something for work...I was listening to Thich Nhat Hahn tapes then, and they were so soothing. I popped the headphones on and leaned back and his sweet high voice came on "you must accept that we are of a type to grow old. You must accept that we will lose the ones we love. You must accept that you will become ill. You must accept that you will die." My eyes bugged out and I ripped the headphones off...that was NOT the comfort I was expecting!

But it is so very very true.

Now sometimes I look in the mirror and see that I have lost the beauty of young womanhood, something I relied on and traded on so much...and I get a moment of panic...and then I remember, believe, that straining against that has no utility, because I will get older no matter what I do...and I let go of straining. It is such a relief.

So somewhere between those two places.."if I could have saved him he would be saved by now" and "you must accept" I found some steps on the ladder to being whole again.

You might try reading Pema Chodron, either "when things fall apart" or her book about living in turbulent times, I can't remember the title. She is a bit more accessilbe than Thich Nhat Hahn, although I love him best of all. Ironically he had a stroke in the fall and the world of modern buddhists, including me, reeled in agony...but in my heart I knew that he didn't mind at all, that he was at peace and could accept this illness and whatever followed.

That is a good good way to be. It frees you to do the important things, the things that you can actually effect.

Hugs to you today,

Echolette

 

[Childofmine]

Echo, I love your whole post.

It is so intriguing to me how much sense I find in Buddhist teachings, and that I never really knew what Buddhism was all about until the past few years as I have seen the intersection between recovery and these teachings.

As you know, I am a Christian, but I love Buddhism too, at least what I know of it, and you know, I think that is perfectly okay and not a bit inconsistent.

Thanks for your wonderful writing above about your experience in letting go. It helps me.

 

[Echolette]

Child,

it is always interesting to me how many of these philosophies are cross cutting...a lot of people define Buddhism as a philosophy and not a religion anyway...and I too see no conflict between any of the religions with which I am familiar and Buddhism. I was raised unitarian...my ex husband is jewish, as is my SO. My kids were all bar and bat mitvahd, and they go to a Quaker school...I sometimes confuse quakerism with buddhism, and their meetings for worship (in which the room sits in silence, with no leader or preacher, since they believe that "there is that of god in all of us" and no need for an intermediary...whomever is moved to speak, speaks. I was moved once.) with meditation.

The best example I have is of natural childbirth, where lamaze and bradley all talk about letting go, releasing and trusting...surely the only way to survive those darn contractions!!! and horseback riding...you can relax into the canter and then the ride is lovely and smooth, or you can stiffen up and battle the rocking horse motion and you'll bounce all over the place and get off with a sore a__. Maybe that is the best analogy of all!

Echo

 

[Copabanana]

this is very very hard work, agonizing really, especially in the dark of the night with the parade of horrors

Hi Echo. I so appreciate your wisdom gained, in the very heart of the pain in which I find myself.

My son has not phoned me since I threatened a block on the phone if he continued to disrespect me. I left a message for him a few days ago and momentarily had some peace. At least I had let down the barrier on my end.

After a few days more, beginning to suffer, I reminded myself that he may need the barrier, and that disrespecting me, had been, for him a way to make distance, because he has to.

Maybe he seeks growth, too, and rather than punishing me as I sometimes fear he is doing, he may be trying to overcome his dependency.

do not struggle against these, they are inevitable, and struggling is wasteful, dishonorable almost, almost hubris.

And this, too, I find scary. It is almost as if I am resisting the acceptance of that which I had wanted. That he grow away.

Growing up and apart is the nature of things. What we want. Yet at the same time, the trials of these difficult years, and his difficulty emancipating, have as if woven the pain into the bonds between us, and there is a tearing of the fabric of love, rather than a freeing.

There is something in me that still wants to believe in magic. If I do this or that, things will be resolved, healed.

Instead of the reality, that they change to some new state which may be equally difficult. Entailing another and different adjustment to yet another state, whatever that might be.

I am learning that what needs to change, again, is me. Not just in nots, not doing this and that...or shoulds...but a way to be without expectations and without knowing and without the need to keep hold. Because all the nots and shoulds have just resulted in another temporary state of things for which I am unprepared.

So somewhere between those two places.."if I could have saved him he would be saved by now" and "you must accept" I found some steps on the ladder to being whole again.

The place between saving and accepting, what is it for me? For now all I can say it is in the second of rest between the breath in and out. Nothing more.

It frees you to do the important things, the things that you can actually effect.

I am on my way, Echo, but it is in the space between here and there, that is giving me problems. The moments that I miss him.

And I guess as I write this, missing him is okay. Because that is love. The instant between breathing in and out.

 

[BusynMember]

Separation is different from a cut off. I know why you feel so hurt. As you know, I have suffered many FOO cut offs and it is humiliating and causes shame in us, but that isn't rational. We are just flashing back to our little girls who felt shame and unloved. It would be so much easier to understand if our brains just told us flat out why we were so horrified rather than letting us try to decipher our terror. Well, I k now I felt a terror in the pit of my stomach each time my sibling cut me off (well, until the last few times when I got used to it). And when my mother disowned/disinherited me, even though it was obvious that this was what she was going to do. I denied it until it happened. You know my story well.

Both of you feel abandoned. How do I know your son does? I'm not sure, but his birthparents left him and all of my adopted children have that hurt. Jumper told me (and she's very well adjusted) that adoption should be considered a special need. Copa, being adopted is different. Your son was almost two when you got him and his subconscious remembers the orphanage and waiting to be hugged. Adopted kids are more vulnerable to feeling no good, because their birthparents didn't want them or were not suitable parents, and perhaps when you said you'd block him, he was triggered with an emotional flashback and thought, "So what. I'll bae alone again. I started out that way." And he triggered you by bringing up your father, who was so incredibly hurtful to you. So both of you had emotional flashbacks and you both reacted. Adoption, Copa. It is VERY significant here. He can not turn into your parents as he doesn't have their DNA and a ny issues he has are not related to being like they are. He could also have some attachment issues...shaky attachment. He loved you but always maybe with a guard up. You are not responsible for all his challenges. Or that he is adopted, thus abandoned. You didn't do those things. His birthparents did.

Hear me? You are not responsible for how he came into this world or his emotional flashbacks.

I can't tell you what to do. I can tell you what I'd do. And what I did with Goneboy.

I did try to contact him. He didn't block me, but the phone calls kept deteriorating. I look back and wonder if anything triggered HIM. He was in an orphanage for six years. I think I might have triggered something in him. I don't know. But I feel guilty too and wish I could live that time over again, although I'm not quite sure what I'd do. At the time, he was rejecting his sister Princess whom he had always counted on and loved. Like you, I was ill equipped to deal with this conflict. I am still not good with conflict so I avoid it by stepping out of the fight.

It is up to you what you do about this. If you want it to stand, do nothing. He may contact you again once he is over it. If you want to try to discuss it, you can call him on somebody else's phone. You can do nothing else, but try to work it out. Since you were the once who was blocked, he is the one who has to decide what to do if he talks to you or hears from you. I would not grovel. He won't respect you at all if you do that.

I was able to move on from Goneboy, but a big part of that is having other people, plus four other kids. Copa, I adopted three kids (actually more, but one turned out to be dangerous) because I wanted a big family. Like you, I did not feel a part of my FOO and wanted to have a family. I thought that adopting an older child would be ok...I did not k now as much about attachment as I do now. But when he left, I had other people who loved me to fall back on, plus I felt that I had rightly defended my daughter from him. His wife was very jealous of their closeness. All of his girlfriends before his wife tried to befriend her because they were so close. This one pretty much wanted her out of the picture and his religious beliefs tell him that you stick to what your spouse says. I know that's vague, but it was multi-layered and, in the end, had lots to do with the identity that Goneboy felt he did not have. Now he has a ethnically-the-same wife who follows her culture and his kids are growing up in a that type of ethnic home. He wanted this very much. I'm glad he got it.

At any rate, I wish you peace and the ability to make a rational decision, not based on fear of being alone, which you are not. I just wish I k new the answer, but I don't.

Hugs and try to have a good day.

 

[CrazyinVA]

I'm sorry, I know how much this hurts.

But, I have to disagree that this puts him in control. You asserted your boundaries, and he reacted - childishly. He's punishing you for asserting yourself - and that's pretty typical, unfortunately. This is hard stuff, and painful I know -- but it's how it goes when we begin to stand up for ourselves. They don't like it one bit. To me, that means.. it worked.

You're still in full control, in my opinion. If he unblocked you and reached out, but disrespected you, wouldn't you still say STOP? It's not a power struggle.. it's you respecting yourself, since he won't. Don't give him that power over you.

It doesn't mean it will be that way forever .. it just means it's that way for right now. And in a way, that's not a bad thing -- use this time to focus on yourself, to grieve the relationship you want but can't have right now, and gain strength. Try not to torture yourself by checking up on him (I know the temptation is strong!). Go to some al-anon meetings, see a therapist, do something you love to do.

Hang in there...

 

[InsaneCdn]

It doesn't mean it will be that way forever .. it just means it's that way for right now.

I totally agree.
It's HARD when we are in the middle of this stuff, to see that today, or this month, or this year, isn't how things will be for the rest of our lives. We cannot know the future.

Hang in there. Keep doing what it takes to care for yourself, even though it feels strange to do that because we are in the habit of not doing it.