Love of Habit. Environment of Instability = Chaos

Renee_daughtry

Internet Manager for a Daily Newspaper

3 kids, one full time job, one business on the side. A scuba diver, wanna-be world traveler, voracious reader and a writer of a journal published online for over 10 years. ...

Wednesday, June, 11, 2008

My second ex-husband and I split up almost 3 years ago. At that time, my oldest was still 16 and my youngest was 7 and it really threw them for a loop.

My oldest was so pissed off at me that he decided he was staying with his Dad. Even though S. worked out of town 5 days a week at that time, he was also adamant about him staying there.

Not a great decision on S.’s part or my part.

What happens when you put a hormonal 16 year old (who had been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder Atypical about 2 years prior) into a situation where he has 1.) a vehicle and 2.) WAY too much free time with no adult supervision?

It got bad. He got into A LOT OF TROUBLE. He’s over 18 and I’m not going into details on what happened but it was just devastating. He was completely out of control and it affected, adversely, every one in our family. He ended up getting kicked out of his Dad’s house, he rolled out of the state, took the car S. had bought for him, ended up in Texas, got into some MORE trouble there, ended up back in NC and was going to be sitting in the county jail.

Until my well-meaning but ultimately misguided Mother decided that her precious grandson was NOT going to sit in jail.

Everyone else in the family that had the devastating events unfold right in front of us, affect us directly in many ways, thought she was insane.

I love my children but I had to look out for E., my youngest, and my son was completely out of control and I didn’t want that behavior affecting her so him coming to stay with me was absolutely out of the question. Nobody else would take him in either after all that he had done.

And honestly, I think a few months in a county jail would have been the best damn thing to happen to him.

It didn’t go down that way though.

My mom bailed him out and let him move in with her and her husband. He was there for about 6 months??? I think, before SHE kicked him out for not following house rules.

He ended up in a halfway house for about another 4 months. Found a girl, moved in with her, continued to do things that still weren’t getting his life back on track and I just stayed the hell out of the whole freakshow going on. There was nothing I could have done because he was hellbent on self-destruction.

He’s got a great heart and his IQ is out of the ballpark crazy good but he’s got the common sense of a hat pin.

During all this time, about 2.5 years, he would call me and we kept in touch through myspace and I knew, though he wasn’t being honest with me, that he was still using on and off and I still didn’t want that type of person in my PERSONAL space. Even if he is my kid.

But back at the end of March, I stopped hearing from him. My messages were never responded to, he didn’t call, he dropped out of touch with everyone. And I knew that something was different about this time than all the previous times he’d gone off and start doing stupid crap.

I tried explaining to my fiance’ what I was feeling and that was NOW WAS THE TIME for us to offer him a place to stay, to help get him back on course and away from the partying scene in Wilmington.

Now, the thing of it is, my fiance is older, ex-military, used to be a drill sergeant and believes that a man is a MAN. Anything else is not wanted, needed nor looked upon with good regards.

But I also know how patient he can be, how loving he is, how much love he has to give and I knew that if we did not get that boy up there with us, (still at this point, NOBODY in the family was willing to take him in) I knew that we would be attending his funeral very soon.

It’s sort of strange. I always knew, could never stop it but I knew, the kind of trouble he was getting into and it was dangerous but I never felt like HE IS NOT GOING TO MAKE IT THIS TIME. I felt that grip my heart and my soul and I was just in anguish.

I finally broke down and cried one night and tried to call him. Of course, he didn’t answer his phone and I left a broken and crying voicemail for him to call me, that we would get him if he wanted us to.

There was nothing else I could do at that point. He is 19 and considered by the world to be an adult.

He called later that night, very late, and talked to Kevin. Who had decided, without giving me any idea about it, that yes, we would take him in for a short period of time and try to get him back on the right track.

I left work early the next day and drove down to Wilmington, loaded him and his very few possessions into my Jeep and off we went.

This was April 21. And our lives have been exceedingly emotional, very difficult, trying, exasperating, outraged, etc. since the day he moved back.

He hadn’t really had any parental authority for over 2 years.

Now, he has two people breathing down his neck. I will BEND and take into consideration where he is coming from because I love him and I am his MOM.

Kevin, on the other hand, can get so frustrated because he has never experienced being a parent to a teenager. He was, in his own head, this exemplary teenager. He was jumping out of airplanes and serving his country when he was 19. So it’s a bit of a stretch for him to try and understand where this snot-nosed punk 19 year old manboy is coming from.

I want this to end well for all of us. I want M. to take away all the important things he needs to go forward in his life as a productive adult in our society.

He wants that too but he’s also a “live by the seat of my pants and living for the moment” kind of person and that is not an easy thing to witness nor live with.

So, everything is basically upended right now as we all try to figure each other out and to figure THINGS out.

It’s absolute chaos at times and I’m over here hanging on by a fingernail but we’re still here.