I have a choice to stay open, non-judgmental and not afraid. I was reminded that this is the process.
Read more:
http://www.conductdisorders.com/community/threads/i-had-to-say-it.62177/page-13#ixzz49Zn51ABP
On the fridge it goes.
Open, non-judgmental, not afraid. Which is subtly different than "unafraid".
Thank you, Copa.
I just don't understand how he can be what he is. I bet he hasn't showered 4 times since mid-April when he moved in. I'd be surprised if he brushed his teeth that many times. He sleeps in his clothes. He's just - gross. I DID NOT RAISE HIM LIKE THIS!
This happened to my son too, Lil. Prior to what I now understand had to be the core issue for my son, he was so clean and roaringly picky about his belongings and his room and his person.
But he was like, easy in his skin, if you know what I mean.
He was so particular about his clothes. I mean what he wore, and what he would never consider wearing.
He had those gloves without any fingers and things like that.
Which was something new, back in that time, and utterly cool.
And then, he just got so dirty. And his room was all piled with stuff. And you know? I never really thought about it before, but all that clothing disappeared, and all those nice things. He had a paper route before he was old enough to drive a car. Like, twelve. We had to sign for him to be able to do it. That is how young he was. He would wake up on his own and deliver the papers on his bike. Sometimes I would help him on Sunday, when the papers were so heavy, or when it was raining. And you know what he bought himself with that money?
A beautiful waterbed for his room.
Really a beautiful headboard.
Nice.
And part of what happened, once he was older (16) and had that plum job in that stellar restaurant where he would have gone from busboy to waiter to bartender and so on right through college is that everything he had was dirtied and broken and carved on.
And he stopped being clean.
It really is like we never saw that child turn into a man, at all.
There is someone else there, now.
Even his cars were turned into pieces of junk. But at first, it wasn't that way.
I was so affected by seeing the relationship between that mom and her children last night at my Book Club. Strange, isn't it, that we never put the pieces together. I am taking over your thread with my own stuff this morning, Lil. But just think how we tear into ourselves, how we question the why behind what is happening to our families and blame ourselves.
That mom was just so casually loving with her kids. She called each one over to meet me, because I have been away, and had never met them.
And they were such nice kids.
It really affected me, to see them together.
Is it that they dislike themselves so much? Is that why?
I was here on the site for so long before I could let go of that thinking that told me it was my fault. That insisted I had gone absolutely wrong somewhere.
My son did not seem to dislike himself so much as he seemed to hate me. Seemed to hate all of us.
That started the "Why?" spiral.
And that is how I lived my life you guys, for the next twenty years.
With that kind of guilt and horror and shame and deep regret.
Isn't that something.
My son is forty, now. We lost him when he was 16. By the end of that 16th year, he was gone.
So, a part of what we do to heal is remember, and grieve for ourselves and our gone children.
Where did he go?
My daughter is still herself, is still here. Things were very different, with my son.
Where did he go?
He must be in there, somewhere.
But you know what, you guys? That son I was just thinking about, who was clean and happy and so funny. It's like he hates me, now.
And he is not kind, anymore.
He is kind of scary.
This is my son. He was not bathing at the facility. He had his own shower with handicap friendly features. There was bathing assistance available if he need it. I was taking his clothes home and washing them. They asked that I stop. It was part of his rehab to do daily living chores. He refused. The girl he liked told him he smelled bad and he got mad at her and cussed her out. That ended that budding relationship. How the H is that so difficult to do. This isn't new. He was this way before. He had a write up everyday when he got locked up for hygiene issues. He is just plain disgusting.
This is happening to all our children.
Out of all the differences in the ways they were brought up, some families religious, some not, some with working moms, some with moms at home, some of us single moms (or dads) and some of us not and etc...this is the one commonality.
They turn dirty.
How awful for us.
Those were our babies.
About hygiene issues- my son is same way. He explained to me that the reason he dresses like homeless poor person and doesn't bathe is because when he preaches on the street, people open up to him and he meets them on their level.
Daughter's situation is different than Son's, to a degree. But she went through a whole thing with going "natural". Part of it for daughter was that she developed a fear of the shower because she could not see or hear if someone scary was coming in, while she was showering.
Could that be part of it for all the kids? A kind of hypervigilance, and a kind of magnification of any flaw into the only thing they see about themselves?
How awful for them.
We have discussed before whether drug use destroys the capacity for empathy. Maybe, they come to a place where they have no empathy for themselves, either. Radical Compassion is about allowing empathy for ourselves.
Maybe, they cannot do that?
Maybe that capacity is trapped deep within them too, with the other good things about who they were as children.
Cedar
