OMG, his plan is to return here...

[tishthedish]

BG,
What a tough line we walk. It helps to let in the light and relieve ourselves of the burden of our most horrible secrets, like we do here. I have received some strongly worded advice on this site that was difficult to read the first several times. My elder son has threatened my life when manic. I have been called the most objectionable name a mother can be called. The shame with having a D C (or two, in my case) is so multifaceted. We have no reason to hope, but we do. We have no reason to love, but we do. It's shameful not to love your child, right? It's shameful to allow yourself to be treated in such a manner, right? That's why I'm here. I need to be able to divulge what has happened to me, to my sons, to my marriage, to my family in a way that I can't to even my siblings or best friends. I don't want their judgement on top of all the conflict. They know my story, but I don't talk as plainly or as in detail as I do here. I am much more guarded with them. I can't turn them off like I can the computer and come back when I want to.

I'm a bright, strong woman too. No one would look at me and guess the kind of problems I have. I have subverted my own feelings so long that I lost myself amidst everyone elses' needs and demands. The people that should have loved me the most were blind to my suffering. And I tried to soldier on. In retrospect it was a huge mistake, for them and for me, but mostly for me. I kept waiting for someone to notice that I was bleeding out, but everyone was too self absorbed. And I had always been the center for the team, the peacemaker, the homemaker, the love maker, the make everything better maker. I thought I was stronger than all of them, and maybe I started that way, but I got weakened and beaten down over time. LIfe happened. My parents died. My son got sick. My husband lost his job. My younger son spent his school loans on drugs. He got a girl pregnant. They were terrible parents. My grandson is special needs. He was neglected. I'd tell myself, "it's not that bad. They're sick (G F G1), addicted (difficult child 2), irresponsible and addicted (grandson's mother) needy and hating to be alone (D H)".

I was waiting for things to turn around. I was waiting for everyone to settle down and start living right. I waited until I couldn't wait anymore. I needed to change the one thing I could and that was myself. Still, it's like turning around a barge in a raging river. It's slow, but it's coming.

A lot of the people on this site are a lot farther along the road to recovery than I am. But we all go at our own pace. Just like our D Cs have to come to their own realization that their life is not working as is, we also have to come to the same conclusion for ourselves. You are making all the right moves for you. You are doing your best and I think you will act in your own best interest. It's hard to do that. If you're anything like me, you haven't had much practice. What's happening by you tonight? . I hope you take the time to enjoy the sunset tonight or look at the stars. It's a beautiful Midwestern night. There is no decision to be made tonight and no wolf is at your door. Take a breath and know that this crisis will pass and you will look back on it as the beginning of a new positive way of life. You come first in your own life. It should have been that way for all of us all along. We are long overdue. And once you do, it feels so damn good. I find myself saying to myself, "So this is what being loved is supposed to feel like. I was waiting for everyone else to do it and all the time I could have done it myself." Like scratching an itch. And it keeps getting better. You'll get there. You're already on your way.

 

[blackgnat]

Wise words, Albatross and I appreciate your concern. I tend to think that if he were around me then I would not be safe at all and would have all his rage directed at me, even for things that had nothing to do with me.

This is what colours my decision to relocate to CO. I want to see my Easy Child and feel I am missing out on important parts of his life. But the proximity of Difficult Child (unless he's in jail) is too scary for me. However, I would at least be near my ex and Easy Child. If I am here alone in IL and Difficult Child comes back, I am in too vulnerable a position.

What to do, what to do?

 

[Copabanana]

How do we learn to suffer, and to savor our lives, still? Well, like that. Like this, like what we do, here on the site, for one another.

Hallelujah.

 

[JulieAnn]

BG, I feel sad for you. I truly do. This was the scariest thing I've read. I was afraid for you when you were recalling the past.

At some point though, the time for analysis has to be over. I think the fat lady has sung. Remove yourself. Look at it from the outside in. If your daughter or best friend were telling you this story, what would you suggest to them? I don't tell my friends or family the extent to which I enabled because I already know the answer.

Sometimes we're the volunteer, not the victim.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I hope you don't think I'm wallowing-I was bringing up those other incidents just in a stream of consciousness way, but I didn't mean to alarm or offend anyone.

I think some part of you wanted us to know your situation so we can advise you correctly.

I related these ugly incidents because this is my safe haven, but maybe recounting those abuses wasn't necessary or was perhaps counter-productive.

It was exactly the right thing to do, blackgnat.

It took courage to admit these things, first to yourself, and then, to us.

Good, good job.

Now, we are making progress. It will come by leaps and bounds now blackgnat, and I am so happy for you that this is so.

***

Until we can figure out why we do what we do with our kids, it is very hard to change what we do. Like me blackgnat, you have seen yourself through the eyes of your abuser. There is a core of terror at the center of you that will not allow you to acknowledge your situation because you are your abuser's mother. It's my situation in reverse. In a sane world, we mothers are responsible sources of comfort and we know just the right things to say and do to help, and to comfort, our children. As regards your son, there is no comfort you ~ or anyone else ~ can offer.

You lived; somehow, the last time this happened, you lived. You are being put into the powerless position of watching it come round again.

We are right here.

And that is small comfort but it is enough. See with clarity, blackgnat. Refuse compassion just for now, just for this time when clarity of vision is crucial.

I have never experienced abuse as a child, but my brother was a paranoid schizophrenic and so my formative years were spent dealing with that horror story.

You are being retraumatized, blackgnat. That is why you cannot think; that is why you cannot see. Child of Mine is correct: Post traumatic stress, every hit blasting through you, distant past, recent past, and future

***

Paranoid/schizophrenia in an uncle. You did not fail your son, blackgnat. His genetic heritage did. And you can not change that for him.

Posting as you have was exactly the right thing to do. It indicates a determination to heal.

And we are right here, and we get it.

You are being retraumatized over and over again, past and present and future all a horrible whirl, a nightmare kaliedescope.

Here is something beautiful:

Seboulisa, mother goddess with one breast
eaten away by worms of sorrow and loss
See me, now.
Your severed daughter
laughing our name into echo all the world shall remember.

Monique Wittig
Politics of Women's Spirituality ~ Spretnak

"Are there cameras or microphones in these rooms?"

"When we get home I'm going to cut your head off."

Just feel so damned sad again today

It's going to be alright, blackgnat; it is coming to its conclusion, now. Like Dorothy, you are on the road to Oz. Soon you will see that the Wizard is a fraud.

Then you will be able to choose another way to go.

But I have to wonder if the psychotic part of him will take over one day. I am always the outlet for his rage.

Yes.

And he is letting you know he is good and mad.

When home is not happy and is scary (with brother AND son-Geez, what the HELL did I do in my past life?) you have to tamp things down or just carry on with daily life as if this stuff isn't happening.

You didn't do anything wrong, blackgnat. It's genetically mandated, what is happening to your son. He is irresponsible in using any mind altering substance not prescribed by a psychiatrist who knows how his body processes the medications prescribed.

It is your son's irresponsibility regarding alcohol and street drugs ~ to you and to himself ~ that is exacerbating his genetic abnormality. Your brother did not have access to the more refined psychiatric medications available today.

Your son does.

He chooses this reality for you and for himself, .

Because he is making a choice blackgnat, you are free.

Alcohol turns him into Satan and unfortunately that is what he can longer seem to stay away from.

Choice, blackgnat. Your son chooses.

You pay.

My Easy Child is not in any danger from my Difficult Child. Difficult Child loves and admires Easy Child and wants his approval.

I am sorry blackgnat, but I think this is not true.

Difficult Child plays the games he plays until he plays a different game.

Easy Child is always given an equal role and a say as to whether Difficult Child can come through the door, stay the night or even just for 10 minutes

Yes. And in Difficult Child heart, there is a burning resentment ripening.

The two boys ebbed and flowed in their friendships and closeness while they were growing up. They didn't really have a lot of shared interests, but they did have times when they enjoyed being around each other. I know when DCs friends came around, Easy Child usually was included in their group.

One of my children grew up as your Easy Child did.

You know the rest of my family's story.

I wanted to tell Cedar once again how much I admire her strength of spirit and generous heart. Cedar, I have never seen your story laid out all in one spot before. You have been through so very much, and your response to it all has been to become MORE loving, rather than shutting people out. I think that really is quite extraordinary and wonderful.

:O)

That was why I was so panicked at the thought of his return to IL. He would probably kill me if he had a mind to. Thank God we never had access to guns in our house or I would surely be dead now.

I overheard our daughter on the phone once, threatening to kill me to protect her friends if I knew enough about what they had done that night to be a danger to them by revealing what I knew to the police. (I had picked her up from the police station. She had been released into my custody. She kicked and pounded the dashboard with her feet and screamed the most horrible things the second we were out of the police station and moving down the street. I stopped the car. Told her to get out, and that I would return to the police station and tell them what had happened when we left that safe haven, if she did. Or she could come home with me. She stopped. When we got home, she roared up to her room and called her criminal and very scary "friends".) D H was working shifts that night. I had daughter come to sleep in my bed. It was a water bed. If she got up, I would know.

We did have a gun.

Why I even considered for a nanosecond that I could drive him back here is a mystery to me.

It's the essential conflict between the mothers we are, between the heart decent person you are, and the reality of who it is our children turn out to be. A disconnect happens because we cannot believe that what we are thinking could possibly be correct. We end up questioning ourselves: "What kind of person thinks like this?"

How many times have I posted that very question right here on this site regarding my family of origin and regarding my own children, too.

The good thing here is that you posted, blackgnat. Now you have something to validate reality with. In sharing the horror of it, you are hearing our stories in return. This means you are not the only one. You can feel for us, for our situations, the horror and compassion you cannot feel for yourself.

That is how it happens for me, too.

How doesn't matter. Clarity of vision. That matters.

We are right here, blackgnat. We have been where you are.

It takes strength and courage to decide to confront traumatic events. You are confronting trauma on many levels, and it feels overwhelming, like you are lost somewhere where nothing makes sense.

You are living in the rabbit hole, blackgnat. The very rabbit hole Albatross posted about for us.

And for you, the Red Queen is on her way.

I am making it through, blackgnat.

So are you. We are so fortunate to have one another and this site.

Now, we can do this thing we could not do, before.

And when we are through it? Then we can help someone else see what is with clarity, so she can recognize and rely on, her own strength. At the end of the day, we are alone with it. But that is a very different thing, once we know where we are, once we make the decision to defend ourselves.

Once we decide to live, blackgnat.

You lived. Life is precious.

You know that, now.

Good, good job.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Possible for you to return to Australia, blackgnat?

Cedar

 

[blackgnat]

Thanks so much for the posts-to everyone, but especially to the amount of thought and effort that tish and Cedar put into their most recent ones. Thanks to everyone for taking time out of their day to console and support me, It means everything.

Yes, I was thinking of going back to OZ-not enough cash for the airfare though!

Difficult Child contacted exgf's ma yesterday and told her to tell me that he is sorry and loves me and wants to talk to me. But that I need to put money on his jail phone. Horse's b*lls, right?

I'm thinking he wants to talk to me to try and get me to drive him back here. But I had a talk with my ex and I've decided it would be foolish to make a return journey-the cost of gas alone would be $300 and that's a lot for me. So I will either get a cheap return flight (if I get a new job here in IL after school is out-I'm retired, but subbing) or just make a one way trip to CO and look for work there. There really isn't a lot here for me now and as I've said, I'm missing out on Easy Child's life.

If Difficult Child is still determined to be in IL after he gets out and I'm not there, great! He will have to pay for his own bus fare, though. Right now he's going to be in for another 9 days and then says the state will load up his card and he'll be on his way to Illinois.

Exgf's ma wrote him a very stern letter, saying to stop relying on his parents and grow up . To stop verbally abusing me and asking me to walk a mile in his shoes, when HE chose the shoes! It was a great letter, but even she confessed to feeling apprehensive about visiting him after he has read it...

This little man has a LOT of power...

 

[witzend]

And I think I am minimizing because again, chaos was normal growing up and that was the way I think I was brought up to deal with it. When home is not happy and is scary (with brother AND son-Geez, what the HELL did I do in my past life?) you have to tamp things down or just carry on with daily life as if this stuff isn't happening.

If that makes sense.

I do understand, and it does make sense - but only when they're children. You're talking about a grown man. Would you date a man that you knew behaved like this? Would you ask him over for dinner (let alone put him up in a spare bedroom)?

This child is grown and gone because he chose to be gone. Why choose to bring him back and have your home be "not happy and scary"? Of course we'll support you whatever you choose to do. on the other hand I've been here 13 years now and I know that support comes in many forms. With the adult children when we're first starting out there's a lot of sympathy in the support, and then comes encouragement to let them go and agree with them to be there when they have made progress and agree with yourself to not be their victim when they haven't. You're at the part now where we are encouraging you to not be his victim anymore. Letting him come home (in my opinion even for a meal) would be a bad idea under the circumstances.

 

[JulieAnn]

This little man has a LOT of power...

He only has that power if you give it to him. Stay strong.

 

[blackgnat]

Beautifully said!

I feel the need to re-iterate that I will NEVER allow him to live with me again. NEVER.

I lost my home to foreclosure in 2012 and am currently living with a roommate, very peaceably, in an apartment. I've moved around a lot in the last couple of years and before he went to CO, I lived somewhere for a year and I never gave him my address because I of course, didn't want him to know where I lived.

He DOES have my address now because I used to write to him in jail every now and then-but I always felt okay about that because he was originally on probation and not allowed to leave Colorado for three years. This last time, he did some sort of deal whereby he was completely free to go where he wanted, no probation, no place or authority to be accountable to. This dude has the luck of the devil.

My fear is he could come back to Illinois. Really just to insert himself into my life, because I think he thinks I OWE him that. If HE is suffering, he's damned sure he's going to try and take me down with him... I could get a restraining order on him, but I don't even want to have to deal with the drama that he always brings, calling the police, changing my number, having him ring the apartment buzzer all night long-stuff that I know he would do. I just don't want to deal with the chaos any more.

 

[pasajes4]

You owe it to your roomie to do everything in your power to keep him from showing up and possibly hurting them.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Difficult Child contacted exgf's ma yesterday and told her to tell me that he is sorry and loves me and wants to talk to me. But that I need to put money on his jail phone. Horse's b*lls, right?

Yes. Horse testicles. On three levels, as I see it.

The shame of knowing the exgf's mother will know if you don't do what he says. Compounded by the slimy little game he is playing with and through exgf's mom about how nice and forlorn and sorry and loving a guy he is. And how lonely and bereft and now look, his mom is turning away from him again and is there something, any smallest something, like calling you again, like breaking through those very boundaries it is killing you to set up and stick to, that she could do for him. Plus, she knows now that you, heartless mother of a so sadly misunderstood child, may not put money on his jail account.

So she will.

If he cannot get to you, he knows precisely, with exquisite aim and timing, how to get to her.

Well, that was more than three levels. It was like, six levels or something.

I'm thinking he wants to talk to me to try and get me to drive him back here

If you had all the money in the world blackgnat, and a chauffeur -driven limousine, you still need not to drive this very dangerous son that you love anywhere, let alone anywhere near where you live.

You have been very strong, blackgnat. I love the way you are standing up to him. It must be hard for you. I wish it could be easier. But each time you do it, it will be easier to say no the next time. One day, you will be able to just say no and not even think about all the reasons you said no.

One day?

I will be that mom, too.

Right now he's going to be in for another 9 days and then says the state will load up his card and he'll be on his way to Illinois.

Are you able to be gone from where you live now, without breathing so much as a whisper about it to anyone who could tell Difficult Child you are moving ~ could you do it in nine days, blackgnat?

but even she confessed to feeling apprehensive about visiting him after he has read it...

She is beginning to be afraid too, blackgnat. Remember when we posted about praying that she does not know what you know? It will be very hard for her, to know that true thing. After our daughter was beat? One of the barriers to my capacity to put myself back together was stumbling over my own, heart deep, rock bottom belief that people can change. That we can learn, and choose, and do better.

That was a very hard thing for me.

You are doing so well, blackgnat. Man, when I think how you have changed everything about how you are able to see this grown man / child / grown man with a man's voice and beard and musculature. You are doing the right thing for him, blackgnat. If he is ever going to turn himself around (and he may not) requiring that he make his own way in the world is a beginning point for him.

That is true.

I think that is true. It helped my children stand up, when I stopped being even a person who would empathize. Our son called yesterday. He completed a job, and the person not only squeezed every penny he could out of the bid price, but is now refusing to pay the bid price. In the past, I would have commiserated. Yesterday, I told our son the person was doing what he was supposed to do ~ getting the most bang for the buck. That my son is a person selling a valuable service that his customers believe he can provide better than the competition. Nothing to do with loyalty. There was a contract involved. As the bid price changed, so did the terms of the contract but in the end, the price finally agreed upon barely covered the cost of material.

Anyway, by the end of the conversation, my son got all abrupt and had to go.

Which usually means I am not providing what he was looking for. He has either given up trying to get that thing that he wanted, or he is actually thinking maybe I made a valid point. And I don't know which, and I have to let go of whether my input was valid or not. I am just his mother. I don't know. There are lots of things I don't know.

And that is okay.

But I had to think about what I was doing, the words I was using, the whole time.

I think I did good.

Cedar

 

[blackgnat]

Cedar, you did good!

 

[blackgnat]

I just have to see what unfolds. Like my ex, I have decided that if he wants to communicate with me from jail (9 days? really? I wouldn't even hear from him in that period of time in the "normal " world) he can write a letter.

This morning, I discovered such a verbally abusive voicemail to me, (that I didn't know I had received), that I was stunned. The vitriol and rage and ugliness (is that a word?) that he conveyed in a few simple sentences was a wake up call. Like, why the EFF am I even giving this guy any of my time?

I let my therapist listen to it and she said, "You are a THING to him. He doesn't even hate you. He just thinks that you are THING that is there to meet his needs Don't forget this. He cannot be fixed, as sad as this is, he sees you as a commodity".

What do you all think of that?

 

[JulieAnn]

I let my therapist listen to it and she said, "You are a THING to him. He doesn't even hate you. He just thinks that you are THING that is there to meet his needs Don't forget this. He cannot be fixed, as sad as this is, he sees you as a commodity".

What do you all think of that?

Wow, I think your therapist is dead on. And when we don't meet their needs.....look out.
I had to read that about 5 times. It's so true.

"Don't forget this". We can't.....

I'm sorry you had to hear that voicemail. Ugliness is definitely a word and that was the definition of it.

 

[blackgnat]

As a HUGE digression, I would love us to have a convention and all get together and put faces to the names and to have a big ole group hug...

I know that there are people who don't even understand that others are going thru similar situations (I can honestly think of 3 people right now who would benefit from being on this board...) and they think that nobody would believe what they are going through and feel that they are freaks or they are in the Ninth Circle of Hell and they should keep it to themselves because, well, you couldn't make this sh*t up, could you?

How do you reach those people?

 

[JulieAnn]

I don't know that you can reach them, you can try I guess. They probably have to find the site like we did. Out of pure desperation....
I did send someone I know the link. Whether they use it or not is up to them.

 

[InsaneCdn]

I have never given anyone I know personally, a link to here. They would then go trying to figure out which one is me.
But I did give the link to my therapist, to share with the other therapists and with their clients.

I keep wishing there were ways to post a key words list with total anonymity - for example, I deleted my sig, it was too revealing. Even to list the diagnoses and medications is too revealing (it's an unusual combination). But... if we had a pooled list of "the diagnoses that brought us here"... would the board show up on more search engines?

 

[JulieAnn]

As a HUGE digression, I would love us to have a convention and all get together and put faces to the names and to have a big ole group hug...

I know that there are people who don't even understand that others are going thru similar situations (I can honestly think of 3 people right now who would benefit from being on this board...) and they think that nobody would believe what they are going through and feel that they are freaks or they are in the Ninth Circle of Hell and they should keep it to themselves because, well, you couldn't make this sh*t up, could you?

How do you reach those people?

Oh, I just remembered - one thing I have done was to forward Recoveringenabler's post - Articles of Detachment. The link to this forum is at the bottom of it. It's there for them if they want it.

 

[witzend]

I know it was awful to listen to that voicemail, but truly it was a gift. The gift of clarity. I'd be tempted to play it for the girlfriend's mom (is that who's been acting as intermediary for him?) so that she can understand and also protect herself from becoming your surrogate in his mind. I'd put it to her just as you did to us.

"I'd been wrestling with wanting to help him and being worried as to how bad it could get if he came home, then I got this. I can't have him come home and I can't spend money I don't have to go see him. You should know for your own decision making as to what to do what he can be like if he thinks he deserves something from you that you don't give to him on his terms."

Then she can make up her own mind.