Tanya M

Living with an attitude of gratitude
Staff member
You know, I had forgotten the strength to be found in laughter.
So true Cedar, if I couldn't laugh I suppose all I would do is mope and cry. Laughter is magical for me, it helps to color my world against the shades of darkness.

It really is impossible to walk around on an equal basis with those whose children have become the successes we dreamed for our own children.
I work with a group of women who are always talking about their kids and how wonderful they are and I just sit and listen. There was a time when that would bother me but not anymore, I'm happy for them. I mourn the loss of the son I had hoped for just as I mourn the loss of my parents but I cannot dwell on that loss or I will stay stuck in a dark place that is not good for me.

I am a 20 year cancer survivor and going through that taught me so much about living in the here and now. It made it very real for me that we all have expiration dates. While none of us know how many, we only have a set number of days on this earthly plane and we each have a choice how we will spend that time. Don't get me wrong, I still have "days" where I will have a little pitty party, sometimes with ice cream, but it is short lived as I remind myself that nothing positive comes from wallowing in it.

I will always love my difficult child, he has his life to live and I have mine. I did my very best for him and then some; he doesn't see it this way and that's ok because his opinion of me no longer matters.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
I did not ask to be born just so I could suffer from mental illness.
And I didn't ask for you to be born to suffer from mental illness. Neither did I ask for my own complex range of issues and challenges.

IT ISN'T FAIR.

On that point, difficult child is right. It really is not fair. Not to him, not to you, not to anyone else.

Unfortunately... for many, many people, that is life.

We either learn to deal with it, or we don't. That's about the only choice we have most of the time.
 

Tanya M

Living with an attitude of gratitude
Staff member
I always loved this quote:

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I was loathe to add this, but I have heard "Will you just die?" Not for a long time, but there was that threat to come up to visit me with a gun....what are they thinking?
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
" I did not ask to be born just so I could suffer from mental illness. You wanted someone to love. Well here I am. You owe me for the rest of my life. You selfish @#$%^." This is what my 18 year old beloved son said to me as he was being lead away in chains.

That's snake mean.

Hateful and manipulative and designed to hurt you on so many levels. Have you been able to gain any kind of perspective, pasajes?

If your child believed any of this was true, he would be too ashamed to breathe a word of it out loud.

He did it to hurt you.

It's all so ugly.

I have been thinking lately that mine is an ugly, ugly story. It's been freeing. Strangely enough, putting an end to that neverending pretense that it was going to be okay took the vibrancy out of the shame, somehow. Or maybe, it is the guilt that doesn't cut as deeply anymore.

That started happening when I would find myself saying that mine had been an ugly story. Something in that phrase ("Mine has been an ugly story."), let me stop fighting the ugliness of the story. I was sad over many sharp things I remembered, but now I am no longer surprised by that sense of betrayal.

Mine is an ugly story.

But here I still am and somehow, in that admission that my story is ugly, I am free of it.

It just is what it is.

***

So how is it that any of us are still even functioning? We have been hurt so deeply, so unexpectedly and repeatedly, by our own children.

That's not supposed to happen.

That's like...people used to make really scary movies about children who were just bad. Remember, The Bad Seed? The whole horror turning point of that movie was that it was a child who was bad. Or those Stephen King movies about the children in the corn. Children are not supposed to turn on their parents, they are not supposed to do any of the things our children do.

We have lived that. We have lived the stuff they make horror movies out of.

Somehow, we go home, we go on with our lives, we go to work and make dinner and smile pleasantly at the therapists we know cannot help us.

Back when everything was starting to fall apart, one of our neighbors said he'd seen me driving and I hadn't even waved. The neighbor was teasing me about being stuck up. And all I could tell him was that I might have been crying, and hadn't seen him.

That was all I could think of to say.

I did my crying in the car, or in the bath tub. I could not risk thinking or talking about it in public, because once I started, I could not stop. I know now to call that feeling FOG. I did not know that, then.

There was such a disconnect between normal life where people laugh and tease one another and are happy to spot one another unexpectedly and what we were living with.

But nothing was funny to me for a very long time, when those things were happening to us.

I am sorry for the hurt of it, pasajes. You do not deserve to be talked to like that. No one deserves to be targeted and treated cruelly, but it is especially hurtful for mothers to be hurt the way so many of us have been hurt, by the children we carried and birthed and would literally give our lives for.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Don't get me wrong, I still have "days" where I will have a little pitty party, sometimes with ice cream, but it is short lived as I remind myself that nothing positive comes from wallowing in it.

"Sometimes with ice cream...."

:O)


There was a time when that would bother me but not anymore, I'm happy for them. I mourn the loss of the son I had hoped for just as I mourn the loss of my parents but I cannot dwell on that loss or I will stay stuck in a dark place that is not good for me.

I will always love my difficult child, he has his life to live and I have mine. I did my very best for him and then some; he doesn't see it this way and that's ok because his opinion of me no longer matters.

Maybe this is where I am coming to, now. Once I admitted or accepted or whatever it is that is happening for me now, I don't feel the pain of it so keenly.

I try to be happy for those whose children are doing well. (Sound of vomiting. Projectile.) That is more an intention than a truth for me for right now.

Cedar





MWM, I'm so sorry you had to hear those words. That is an excellent way to understand why they do what they do.

Thank you.
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
I don't know if it helps anyone, but a friend of mine who has one of those "perfect" 18 year old daughters told me just the other day that her daughter (still in high school) wanted to go to a party in a town 2 hours away with a boy she knows. There were apparently a lot of kids going. Her mom didn't tell her no, but did tell her she'd go to, and get a hotel, and then her daughter could stay with her. The daughter wanted to stay at the boys house.

Much shouting and screaming and "You ruin everything, I hate you!" later...Mom said, "Fine. You aren't going at all." Her daughter now isn't speaking to her.

My friend was in tears telling me about it, how much she was hurt by what her daughter said.

I guess my point is: Even perfect children hurt their parents. I think that for us, it's just more frequent, and combined with other things, but being a parent just always hurts sometimes.
 

2much2recover

Well-Known Member
"...my dang genetic mess...beloved child."

It's like, when you see the victimizers so clearly that you decide victim-hood too is a choice and refuse it, you cannot be surprised or hurt in the same way, anymore. What I have come to understand through all the writing I have done here on the site is that, probably because victimizing others is nothing personal to the victim, persons who do that kind of thing will do continue to try to hurt you, so you need to be aware and never trust them.
This is what it has come down to for me and difficult child daughter - it is never going to stop. I am sick and in atrocious pain - a lot. My life, sadly revolves around this horrible illness. There is no more room in my mind left to play the games the difficult child want's to engage me in. All of my brain power is focused on getting through pain. There is nothing left to give to an empty vessel. When we were talking, she would call me almost every day - but what would start out as "how are you feeling today" quickly turned to whatever her agenda was. It did not matter if I had been up all night in pain (as my answer to the call) we were going to talk about her and whatever she wanted. Playing the came and trying to avoid being victimized again just became too much of a mental and emotional burden to carry. At times, because of my illness, and she is my only child I feel so let down. I will never be able to depend on her for anything (not talking about money - emotional support type things, or to just talk, or spend time with her)
 

Tanya M

Living with an attitude of gratitude
Staff member
she is my only child I feel so let down. I will never be able to depend on her for anything
2M2R I feel the same way about my son. I know that I will never be able to depend on him. I know that it is up to me to make sure I plan well for my future. husband and I moved back to his home state so he could be closer to his aging parents and help take care of their needs. His dad has since passed but he goes over to his mom's and cleans out the gutters, takes out the trash, paints, etc....

My difficult child is my one and only child. It used to really bother me but then I realized there are many people that never had children and they have to plan their lives accordingly too. I know in the end I will be ok.
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
It used to really bother me but then I realized there are many people that never had children and they have to plan their lives accordingly too.

I really hadn't thought about it that way before. Thank you. That actually makes me feel better too since, like you, we just have the one and it's occurred to me lately that Jabber and I will likely never be able to depend on him. But it is what it is. As you say, there are many people who don't have family. They do okay. So can we.
 

Albatross

Well-Known Member
As you say, there are many people who don't have family. They do okay.
If not better!:D

I am so sad for the moms who have to hear these ugly comments from their own children, or for the ones like me who get the more hidden kinds of hatefulness and spite. I used to think he just felt safe unloading on those he felt most secure with. Now I think it's, like Cedar said, just plain snake mean.

Tanya, yes, I can feel it has moved into a mourning. That hope I had, that person I thought might still be hidden in what he's become...is now just an abstraction. That one's not coming back.
 

pasajes4

Well-Known Member
I did not feel hurt by the words that came out of his mouth. His life will continue on the same path he has been on because of this attitude. I have done all that I can do. I have said all that I can say. I have run myself ragged. I have put my health on the line. He will sink or swim and he can hate me or love me. I am 61 years old and have x number of days left to me. I will be damned if I give him those.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Cedar, I just saw this thread.
Wow. I have no words of advice, just support and hugs. You are stronger than you know.
And I am so thankful that you are able to use this forum to think through things.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
When things have been quiet for awhile I find myself letting my boundaries be compromised piece by piece. My difficult child's seem to know when my resolve weakens..

Yes.

The reality of parenting a difficult child child is a harsh one.

difficult child kids are differently wired.

MWM always reminds us of that.

But I think I am just now getting that what differently wired means is that the wires are probably never going to magically make the right connections if I behave differently.

That is key.

I am not going to get what I want.

difficult child kids are differently wired and why doesn't matter.

So that is one part of radical acceptance: Why doesn't matter.

I know firsthand that convincing ourselves we are
unaffected by difficult child irresponsibility only works until there is explosive damage.

Okay, so I hit a key, there. difficult child irresponsibility. It isn't solely the drugs, the alcohol, the mental illness. It is that from the beginning, from the time they were out of the house enough that we could no longer enforce responsible behavior, a difficult child child invariably chooses irresponsibility.

They do the strangest things.

We're back to genetics, again. Back to adventuring, back to courage and creativity and the creation of new things; back to so many of our ancestors having chosen to sail an ocean in the time before radar or even adequate maps or engines on boats.

They did that.

Those were our ancestors, here in America.

And that is the blood that runs in our children.

From the time she was a little girl, difficult child daughter's dream was to be an astronaut and settle another planet.

difficult child son makes things happen. He does. His ambition? Was to sue people. We were hoping that meant attorney. Wrong again! He meant to do nothing and get money.

Who knows where they even come up with this stuff.

I may start a thread on that. What did our difficult child kids want to be when they were little as opposed to easy child kids.

I'm betting there will be a difference.

***

Someone posted about being labeled "cheap". I think it was Seeking. husband is labeled cheap, controlling, and mean. Now that I am now refusing to be the money conduit to husband, no one quite knows what to do with me. I am looking askance at their difficult child interpretations of family, too.

This is where I am vulnerable. Wow, how did I not see that vulnerable place for what it is.

The role of family, the role of mother; I blackmail myself first. All they have to do is play the music I provided. The dream of getting what I want (a happy, successful family) will keep the money flowing.

I have to think about that one a little bit.

Back to cheapness.

I am the good cop. husband is the bad cop.

Do you see the triangulation, the disrespect, the identity through the difficult child eyes in these roles we have been cast in.

Do you see the harsher realities our marriages are tested against, versus non-difficult child child marriages.

Another difference between ourselves and non-difficult child parents is the way we are seen and labeled and who we are understood to be by our difficult child children compared to the way they are seen by their non-difficult child kids. This is an important distinction for us to make. Those differences in the nature of the self reflected to the parent by the child is a source of much pain that the non-difficult child parent is wholly unaware of. We might choose to be unaware of that too, but we do so at our peril.

It makes us weak, that our difficult child kids see us as they do, and it makes other parents very strong, very centered, to know their children see them as they do. I mean, it affects the who they think they are in every other area of life too, just as that same weakness, that same sort of horrified inability to look away affects us in our lives, in who we think we are down in our hearts where no one sees.

This pain and the weakness attending it may be the core thing that keeps us hooked in. The shame of the way they see us, the coldness of it, the lack of respect in it weakens us, sets us off center and out of balance and out of sorts and is a thing to recover from before we can participate in the world with our heads up, not determinedly, but joyfully.

That is a difference between us, whatever our positions in life, and those we know whose kids are not difficult children, whatever their positions may be.

I am talking money and accomplishment and things like that.

Shallow, I know.

But there is something here, I just know it. Something that will set me free. I know I am supposed to be so happy for them that they do not know what I know.

But I want more than that for myself.

It is not that I wish them to know the taste of my situation. I would like to understand my freaking situation in a way that does not leave me wounded and vulnerable to further manipulation.

***

Friends or not, we know darn well those successful parents have just as many tics and shortcomings and hang ups as we do and yet their kids are fine. This puts us on the rotten outside looking in again.

It's maddening.

Faced with the pain and confusion surrounding the way we love and are loved by our children, we need the factual, blow by blow knowledge of the dynamics of our relationships. That way, we can counter the hurtful self image come of parenting difficult child children, one little piece at a time.

Maybe.

Understanding the purpose and the payoff of the roles our children cast us in is a beginning way to heal guilt and shame. Guilt over what we did or did not provide. (Which is a rationalization, a way for us to believe that if we could find and fix whatever the lack was, the difficult child would be able to thrive when the truth is that humans are hard wired for challenge and our difficult child kids are behaving irresponsibly even in how they express their genetics.)

But here's the rub. We are going to have to do this over and over and over again for the rest of our lives.

Maybe we don't, Trish. If we can figure out our own motivations, then we will be free. Our difficult child kids will still be difficult child kids, but we will be able to face whatever comes without guilt or remorse or even, regret.

We will know better.

How long ago is "some time"? Please remind me how old the grandkids are now.

Here are the small sparks I haven't assimilated yet.

"Some time" was in relation to the length of time the ex-husband has been out of work. So, he let difficult child daughter come home in early Spring. By Thanksgiving, he had quit his job. She had been demanding that he do so. Suddenly, one Monday morning, he did. That was all we knew.

The kids are 5 and 9.

Remember I had a 4-year old special needs/non-verbal grandson that was found neck deep in water in a nearby lake.

Nightmare imagery. I am so sorry Trish and I wish I could know, for you and for me too, how to cope. I fall into the FOG sometimes because I can stand it better to be in that buzzy place than clear eyed and present.

This totally sucks, and this is not something that is supposed to happen, either.

When I get twisted up in the "what ifs" I defer to my husband. While you probably had to lead your husband to the serenity well, it sounds as if he may find it easier to maintain a cool head in the face of an oncoming storm.

husband is...he does not trust either difficult child. He is jaded where the future is concerned for our grands, too. He does love them, but his eyes are open and he takes no joy from what he sees.

Oh Cedar, I think it is not only okay, but perfect and loving to be wary and wise where difficult children are concerned. To be anything less (or more?) is to discount not only the truth, but ourselves.

Thank you for this, Albatross. I am confronting the way I am put together in looking beyond what I think I see with my kids.

It's hard to sort of be making these kinds of accusations. I never know for sure whether I am telling the truth, or trying to clear myself of something I am responsible for.

But I have to know.

Nothing is changing, so I have to change.

There isn't so much room for the luxury of illusion regarding who and how our children are, when our children are difficult children.

We all know the stories of elderly parents abused by difficult child kids. Ultimately, these things happen because the parent refuses to believe it, when the child tells them who he or she is.

We all know the heavy cost of that.

Though I knew she had helped him with part of a bus ticket, I did not know she had paid for a round-trip bus ticket simply because he wanted to make it all they way to CA...and traveling money. I also didn't know that she told difficult child not to tell her husband about it. (He and husband and I have been very vocal about her enabling behaviors toward her own child and ours.)

I find it unbelievable, too.

My sister used to be able to collect quite remarkable sums of money during plane rides because she was a single mother.

It is the same thing. Though it is disconcerting in the extreme for us, predatory people see nothing wrong with what they do.

And I especially didn't know that the reason she "helped" difficult child this time was because he greatly colored the story of how he ended up 1000 miles from home with no $, very much painting himself as the victim

My sister does that too, only I would not say painting herself as a victim. She paints herself as the courageous survivor and gets people to invest in making the world better through giving her money.

I'm hoping the sober him isn't really the kind of person who would not only do the things he did that necessitated us kicking him out, but turn around and find the nearest sympathetic soul he could find, so that he could turn a natural consequence of bad behavior into an expenses paid vacation. I really hope that's not who he is, when he's clean and sober.

We are working on eradicating our vulnerabilities, Albatross.

We are going to be fine and strong and happy and focused again soon.

No more guilt, no remorse.

We have parented fully and beautifully. The beauty in generosity, in forgiveness, in loving someone for the best in them ~ all that stuff is ours, is bred into us, is in our natures.

We will still be ourselves, but our eyes will be open.

But I'm not going to go that way.

Nope. Not this time.

which reminded me a bit of the dig your daughter had to make, about how comforting the neighbor was. Those kinds of hurts...man, they hurt on so many levels.

Not only that. I don't know what she told the neighbor, what she tells the neighbor. I do know she...BLANK SPOT which Cedar pushes through. I do know difficult child daughter and difficult child son talk about us to one another. I do know they do not think well of us. I do know there are sophisticated manipulative games being played which will cost the neighbor money.

It very much sucks.

I'm still working on that "radical acceptance" part, in which I accept that yes, somehow perhaps my son didn't get what he needed, but that yes, also, I did the best I knew how at the time. That none of us get everything we needed, but we are still responsible to make a life worth living for ourselves, anyway.

Me, too. I am so glad you are posting and participating with us. We will do this; we will see our own vulnerabilities and...well, that's all.

But maybe that will be enough.

You might have WANTED to slap his face that day at school, but maybe you held back because you remembered. And somehow it ends up getting used against you. That double standard is a killer. I use it against myself. And my son uses it against me.

And that is key. Knowing how our difficult children manipulate our feelings about ourselves to have it the way they want it.

Now that I think about it, they tend to be good at finding our soft spots and blind spots.

But not all kids become professional victims...some decide not to let it define them and get help

I've never seen this cycle I go through again and again put so succinctly.

You didn't know he was going to have mental illness. What crapola from them

And I didn't ask for you to be born to suffer from mental illness. Neither did I ask for my own complex range of issues and challenges.
IT ISN'T FAIR.

Laughter is magical for me, it helps to color my world against the shades of darkness.

I did not feel hurt by the words that came out of his mouth. His life will continue on the same path he has been on because of this attitude. I have done all that I can do. I have said all that I can say. I have run myself ragged. I have put my health on the line. He will sink or swim and he can hate me or love me. I am 61 years old and have x number of days left to me. I will be damned if I give him those.

I accidentally hit post.

Edit time is up.

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
But not all kids become professional victims...some
decide not to let it define them and get help


Here is something I know. Something I learned during this posting. Identifying my levers, my vulnerabilities, has shown me what I need in my life to consider myself successful, happy, worthwhile.

This is a priceless gift, to know those things about ourselves.

Once we know why we need what we need from our relationships with our children, we can provide it for ourselves. As I write what I think I see, as I kind of face all that black down, it's kind of scaring me, what I see.

I don't see that what I want is wrong, at all.

What I see is that time and again things get twisted. The twisting is not a technicality and it is not an accident.

Eerie.

But now that I am determined not to feel badly about anything I think (because that is a piece of how we stay blind to it, too ~ we can't believe we believe what we believe so we stop believing it), I am going to keep testing that.

It always does feel like a kaleidescope when things fall together.

Cedar

Thanks to each of you. We are pretty much in this together. Without you as witnesses, I might not have been able to push through.

It's an ugly feeling to think about my own children in this way.

Shaming.

That shame feeling has to be one of the things that keeps us from admitting what is happening.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Remember I had a 4-year old special needs/non-verbal grandson that was found neck deep in water in a nearby lake.

So, on the issue of grandchild vulnerability Tish, how do you function around that?

Cedar

Yet another difference between those with difficult child kids and those with PCs. Their grandchildren are safe.

What a complex mess all this is. No wonder we can't face and name it.

Another: We spent so much on the costs of day to day living for both our difficult child kids that there was a sense of resentment toward spending more on the normal special fun things we might have done for the grandchildren. When I realized that, I began paying for lessons in areas they chose for the two oldest granddaughters.

My gift, mine and husband's.

Something right and positive to do in the face of the unending negativity. It turned out then that, though I had paid for the lessons, difficult child daughter would not be bothered getting them to and from them!

And I got the distinct impression that difficult child daughter resented my sort of going over her head or discounting her in favor of her children or something like that.

Some thing that feels that weird feeling way things do feel with difficult children.

difficult child adults are very self centered.

Thank everything that is that this site is anonymous.

I feel like a really nasty person for confessing to the way I see things.

(What kind of mother...?)
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I guess my point is: Even perfect children hurt their parents. I think that for us, it's just more frequent, and combined with other things, but being a parent just always hurts sometimes.

I thought about this post for a long time, Lil.

You are right. easy child kids do rave around and make life uproariously difficult and make moms feel terrible during their adolescences.

But they grow out of it.

Their self centeredness is different, is about them, tends not to be a manipulation, I think.

I think that is true.

They want what they want and they get mad.

But they seem not to get entitled.

That is one difference.

When difficult child daughter first started running away, she would come home for her allowance.

***

The similarities, the similar kinds of pain, similar almost to wording, of the things that have happened to each of us here...there is something eerie about that. It is a chilling thought that there could be one child that would cut his mother to the heart, that would knowingly humiliate either of the parents...but all of our difficult child kids do it.

And they use almost the same words.

Seeking Strength, I remember that especially from your earlier posts.

MWM, I remember your posts about your son, and how hard it was for me to read them and how I kept going back and reading them again and again until I finally could break through my denial about what was happening with my own son.

If our children were afflicted in some other way, if theirs were physical illnesses, we would look at that straight on. However bad it was, we would face it and cope.

I know I would.

I know you from your posts, and I believe you would, too.

What is it about coping with our difficult child children that prevents us from getting a handle on how to respond appropriately without destroying ourselves?

Cedar
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
What crapola from them

Yeah.

What she said.

:O)

Cedar

Actually, THIS is the phrase I need to post on the fridge.

You do too, Albatross. I re-read your post on feeling shocked at recognizing yourself in my description my self condemnatory responses to my kids.

"What crappola from them."

When I catch sight of it, posted there on the fridge? I am going to imagine it in MWM's voice, too.

Heh.

My kids don't stand a chance.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Laughter is magical for me, it helps to color my world against the shades of darkness.

This is beautiful.

***

This is something Headlights Mom wrote in another thread yesterday. I wrote it in my journal, and found myself thinking of it again and again throughout the evening. I will share it here (I think it's okay to do that) so that if you missed what she posted, there on that other thread, you will see it, here.

"Lest I grow cold about him or let his ugly behaviors devour me. Sometimes, it's the only gratitude I have for him. So........I'll take it."

Lest I grow cold...or let these ugly behaviors devour me.

And Headlights Mom touched too on gratitude as the saving grace that it is.

This just blows me away. I am so happy to have read it.

Cedar
 
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