I have completely lost perspective re: thank you at this point, and I'm frustrated with myself and scared too. It's probably been a good 6 years since I've woken in the middle of the night obsessing about him... most waking thoughts are about him as well. It's a bad place to be in and I guess I foolishly thought I wouldn't be here again.
He called last night to find out if we were coming up to see him this weekend. I said absolutely not. On Monday he was too "stressed" to discuss an AWOL and the fact that he is now asking sibs for their property (or conspiring with- peers at TLP to steal sibs' property during home visits - depends on who you believe) and the conversation Monday nite was left at he was to call me when he was ready to discuss these issues. Instead I get a call last nite asking what fun things we're going to do for him. Nope.
He went AWOL again on Monday, for the entire school day. He did it for the first time a couple of weeks ago and when I quizzed him about it then, he said it was an "accident". I rather strongly voiced my opinion that intentionally walking out of a class and leaving the building hardly qualifies as an "accident". He was peeved that I didn't get it. Sigh...
Justification for Monday was that since I didn't believe his "accident" explanation 3 weeks ago, why should he bother to keep going to school. Circular thinking at it's finest. I told him that him going AWOL has absolutely nothing to do with me.
As far as sibs' property, he wasn't aware he couldn't ask them for their stuff. Apparently, he's been deaf for the past 7.5 years. Not a new rule.
I asked him how his quality of life is (no allowance due to various infractions, owes a lot of peers a lot of money) and he said it su*ks. I asked him what he was going to do about it. Nothing, because I'm never going to let him live at home again (not true, he just has to show consistent decent behavior and compliance) so why bother. Again, all my fault. I am apparently an incredibly powerful woman, as well as incredibly unreasonable for asking for more than 2 months of half hearted compliance with rules and school.
Conversation last night ended with this wonderful morsel: "You can't *make* me do anything anyway, so I'm just going to do what I want." I told him that was an interesting take on things and that he should let me know how it works out for him.
He's been nasty and foul mouthed in the past - I've been called *every* name in the book. Somehow, I miss those days. There was no name calling last night but he has reached a brand new level of vileness and hatred with his tone. It was really quite scary to hear.
I see him crashing. He's digging a deep hole and instead of doing anything to change it, he's just going to keep on digging. I've talked with staff and they're giving him enough room to really foul things up. His attitude is vicious across the board. Principal is apparently buying into his "I'm bored with school" junk, so is requesting classwork from home SD, which of course he's not going to be able to do because he hasn't done school work in... 8 years? He's all gung-ho about the new curriculum right now, but it's going to hit the fan when he figures out different isn't better (and why is it taking him so long to learn that lesson?).
My biggest fear is that one of this days he's going to go AWOL and do something really really stupid. He has no street smarts and is hanging with kids who I suspect won't take too long to figure out he's a patsy. I can only hope that the call will be that he's in custody, not something worse.
I know I have to let go. He *has* to go thru this process. He is crippled by his insistence that it is all my fault - every choice he makes all comes back to me. I have nothing to do with it. We've got a year and some months before he hits 18 and I'm just panicking because he's so focused on consistently making really poor choices. And he's right, not a doggone thing I can do about it, absolutely nothing.
If someone finds my perspective, please return it ASAP.
