Without meaning to, I took a break from writing. It has been quite a few years since I last wrote about my son. It started to feel like writing about my son wasn’t helping my inner peace as much as I wanted it to. After I finished a blog post, I was down and depressed. That wasn’t supposed to happen. My writing was meant to help me express my feelings, hopefully help others by sharing our story, and I wanted to be able to eventually show that a successful outcome was possible. But we have had more ups and downs than I could have even imagined in the last several years. Anger and addiction have not released their holds on our son and it has gotten really hard to even know how to deal with everything that comes up, let alone share details about it. A few months ago, something awful happened and it made me realize that I do really need to keep writing. I can’t keep all of this bottled up inside. I wish I still wasn’t the mom screaming inside, but here I go again.
May 2014.
He had a broken arm, a new job, a place to stay, food, some computer time, and rides to work. He had everything a seventeen year
old could want. And he wasn’t
happy. He constantly berated me, swore
at me, called me names, and tried to pick fights. I began to feel so bad about myself that I
felt desperate and emotional all the time. In most instances, my husband felt just like I did. In many ways, he was treated even worse than
I was.
I told my friend, “I feel so bad. He
says horrible things to me whenever he doesn’t get what he wants, tells me what
a bad parent I have been, and calls me terrible names. I know I am not supposed to let him get to me
and am not supposed to believe all of the things that he says about me, but
hearing it over and over gets inside my head and makes me feel like I am an awful person. When a blow up happens with him, he spins it around
to where everything is my fault, making sure that I know that I am the worst kind of person, and that he is the way he is--because of me. I just can’t stand it, anymore. If I could disappear, I would. I hate being in the house with him and feel
like this constant negativity consumes about 80% of my life. If it weren’t for my grandkids, my other two
children, my husband, and my friends, I would hate 100% of my life. I can’t take it anymore. I feel like I am
constantly being verbally abused by him and that the only thing I can do is
stay as far away from him as possible.
What kind of life is that?”
It was pretty hard to take days like this:
Everything started with him waking up and demanding
that I pay him to do chores because he needed some money. He needed $32.00 immediately and wanted to do
the chores over time because he thought he wouldn't be able to do every job that it
would take to earn enough money in one day. No matter how
many times I told him that I would not give him chores to earn money, he would not
let it drop. One of the rules that he
had been given to be allowed to live here was that he was not supposed to ask for money in
any way; for any reason. I pointed out
that it was a house rule and that I was not going to change it for him. He told me that as his mother, I should want
him to have money so that he could have fun over the weekend.
I reminded him that he already owed us a lot of
money and that giving him more would just add to his debt. We had gotten his electric guitar out of the
pawn shop so that he wouldn’t lose it, but also weren’t going to let him have
it until he earned the money to pay us back. He said he was never going to pay us for
the guitar because we had ruined all of the hopes and dreams that he had as far
as his guitar was concerned (apparently, by not letting him have his electric
guitar back on the weekend that he had a chance to join a band with the greatest
drummer that he has ever seen).
I said, “You are the one who moved out because you
couldn’t live by our rules. You pawned
your guitar. You wanted to be able to
smoke pot. We had nothing to do with
your hopes and dreams being destroyed.
You did that all on your own and you can’t blame me for that.”
Of course, that made him mad and he said, “You would think my f***ing mom would
do something nice for her kid and give me some money!” Hearing him use the f-bomb with the word ‘Mom’
made ME so angry! I was tired of hearing
it all the time. I turned around and
said in my upset mom voice-- with the tone that he perceives as yelling-- “Don’t
call me your f***ing mom! I am your MOM,
but I am not an f***ing mom!” But, he
exploded in the middle of my words and did not hear the part about my not
wanting him to use that horrible adjective in association with my name
anymore. He took my exclamation out of
proportion in his usual irrational way and said that I finally admitted after all of
these years that I am not his mom and he yelled “Thanks a lot you f***ing b****
and punched a hole in the wall.
He wouldn’t listen when I told him that was not
what I meant and he knew it. I just
wanted him to STOP swearing at me and calling me names and f-bombing me. He was upset and began to yell at me
right in my face. I tried to get
away from him and pushed him back. But,
as I pushed, he did a Tae Kwon Do downward thrust on my arms. His guitar string bracelet caused a long red
scratch on my arm.
I ran up the stairs to lock myself in my room,
but when I tried to close the door, he put his foot in it and then my door
broke. Of course, he blamed me and told
me that it was my fault for slamming his foot in the door and he stormed back
down the stairs. I tried to call my
husband. He didn’t answer, so I called
my older son and told him I needed help.
He said he was coming, but I felt like I had to get away, so I grabbed
my keys and ran out to my truck and locked the doors. I was out there in the driveway when my son
came charging out of the house yelling at me to just give him some money so
that he could leave. I cracked the
window a little bit and said, “No. You called
me names, you hurt me, you punched a hole in the wall, and you broke my door.
There is no way I am giving you money, loaning you money, or letting you earn
money. Right now, you are out of control and you just need to go somewhere else
and calm down.”
He almost broke the window on my truck trying to shove his arm inside to unlock the door. When I tried to drive away, he screamed at me that I was trying
to break his arm. I didn’t like having
this all go on outside where the neighbors could witness it, but luckily my
older son arrived and got him away from my truck.
I could hear him telling his little brother to just go away and leave me alone. But, he said, “All I wanted was for her to
give me some f***ing money! If YOU asked
her for money, she would give it to you.
She doesn’t even treat me like I am her child. I am just a dog that she got at the
pound. She would return me if she
could. She would treat a dog better than
she treats me. She is not my f***ing
mom.” He threw his phone at me and told
me that he didn’t want anything I had ever given him, again.
My older son is very good at keeping his cool and he just told his brother that what he was saying was a bunch of bull and he helped me get into the house.
He said, “Mom, we can’t just let him get away with this. He damaged your house, hurt you, and something has to make him stop. I am sorry that I have to do this, but I really feel like I have to call the police.”
We wouldn't let my son come back in the house. It seemed like he was going to leave, but he walked away, came back, yelled, walked away, came back, and yelled some more over and over again. Finally, he just stood on the porch pounding on the door and screaming at us to give him back his phone.
When the police arrived, they found him at the front door and they handcuffed
him. I had to answer all of their
questions and I felt like I couldn’t remember what happened first, last, second,
or when and where.
When he told his story to the police, he tried to blame me for freaking out
when he said that I was ruining his life and that I had told him I wasn’t his
mom and that all he was trying to do was get his phone so that he could
leave. They lectured him about his
behavior and told him that he owed me an apology. He was given a ticket for criminal mischief
and they took him to youth services.
Great. That was helpful. The Youth Service Center is not like juvenile detention. As soon as the police drop a kid off there,
they immediately call you and tell you to come and pick him up. It doesn’t do anything but let a few hours
pass by so that people can calm down.
Sure enough, within about an hour, my husband and I received the phone call. But, we said that we would not come and get
him without speaking with a mediator first.
That gave us a few extra hours to have a little break from the drama while
they tracked down a social worker.
He was so combative during the meeting that nothing really got resolved. He just blamed the whole incident on me. He said that if his f***ing ‘mom’ would have just
been nice enough to give him some money to take his girlfriend out to dinner for
her birthday, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now. A few hours hadn't made a difference in his attitude. Nothing was going to change his way of thinking. The social worker just gave up and we had to
leave with him.
As soon as we got back to our house, he grabbed his bike and rode off.
He did not come back that night.
And that was okay.
