Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde

His whole attitude and behavior were just not improving.

Most of the time at home, he was angry, belligerent, defiant, uncooperative, demanding, disobedient, arguing, fighting, and disrespectful.

He was even getting disrespectful to his therapist.  When she mentioned at Family Therapy that it might be a good idea for us to just sell the X-box, he said “F-that” right to her face!

But, usually, in a group, or in public, he may have appeared to be sullen or quiet, but he wouldn’t show the obvious hatred and anger that he had toward us.  He would wait until we were back at home.

We go out to eat a lot after Family Therapy, after Family Group Therapy, or after AA.  I haven’t cooked very many meals during this whole process since we are always gone at dinnertime.  At restaurants, he isn’t supposed to have caffeinated beverages after 7:00 p.m., but he got away with it that night and then, he couldn’t go to sleep when it was time.  I was sure that it was because of the Dr. Pepper or whatever he had that night at the restaurant.  He ended up staying awake watching TV until 2:00 a.m.  I didn’t feel well that night and letting him stay up was easier than fighting with him about turning the TV off.  My husband had gone to bed early and didn’t even know what was going on.

The next night, I don’t know if my son was trying to get away with the same thing that he got away with the night before or if he legitimately couldn’t sleep, but by midnight, he was still wide awake.  We wanted him to try to go to sleep without his TV on, since we had been doing better at not having midnight arguments with him about it, lately.  But, he dug in his heels.  He even told my husband that he and I had worked out a system the previous night.  That wasn’t true.  He just played me and then tried to use it to his advantage.  Every time I give him an inch he wants to take a mile.  He thinks that the inch is a new pattern to live by. 

It makes me so angry and I feel like I have been backed into a corner when I am a little lenient sometimes. 

We were being set up for an Ambien argument.  His body wanted him to be asleep, but he was fighting it.  We gave him one more half hour and then he said he would turn the TV off.

30 minutes later, he did turn his TV off, but insisted on listening to his I-Pod.  The unreasonableness that Ambien brings out in him started to show through as he plugged his I-Pod into his surround sound speakers in his room! 

He argued with me when I told him that he could only listen to the I-Pod with his ear-buds.  But, he didn’t know where his ear-buds were and it was all MY fault because I must have been the one to move them!

We finally found the ear-buds and everything quieted down except the throbbing in my head.  About an hour later, I went to the kitchen to get some more ice for my ice-pack and all of a sudden, my son was standing there, too.  He scared me to death!  I thought he had finally gone to sleep.

He wanted me to let him turn his TV back on.  When I said, no and told him it was time for him to just try to go to sleep, all heck broke loose.  He swore and swore and swore at me telling me that everything was so F-ing this, that, and the other.  He wanted to go live somewhere else.  He thought the rules were stupid and that our trying to enforce them was stupid.  He hated us and wanted us out of his life.

When he seemed to have finished ranting, I told him to go to bed.  I went to bed.  I cried and cried.  My head hurt so badly and the crying didn’t help.  It made me sad to think that he would say those awful things to me.  It made me sad that he hated us so much that he didn’t want to live here anymore.

The next morning, he said that he didn’t remember much of what went on the previous night, but I know that he did because he sure seemed to pick it right back up where he left off.  It was like a continuation of the night before.

He started talking about how everything around our house is B.S. and dropped a lot more F-bombs just because he couldn’t play the X-box when he wanted to. 

We were subjected to another tirade about how we shouldn’t have put him in rehab…

We shouldn’t have any control over his life…

He doesn’t want us to care about him and if we would just stop, it would make things a lot easier…

He doesn’t want to do what he has to do to commence from the program and even if he does, he is just going to end up right back in it two months later because he will probably go out and “use”...

There is nothing good about rehab and he is not getting anything out of it…

He hates us and doesn’t want to live here anymore and wants to find a place to live where he has all control over his life.

Wow.

He seriously thinks that we should just let him do whatever the heck he wants to do, whenever, and for however long he wants to do it, and if we did that, things would go a lot smoother around here.

Too bad though.  We wouldn’t just let him have all of the power.  We know that watching TV all night while taking sleeping medication does not make sense.  We know that playing the X-box for hours and hours without stopping isn’t good for him.  We know that the best chance he has right now in his life is sticking with the rehab program. 

We can’t stop caring about him, either.

All of these emotional roller coasters that we kept riding were tearing me apart.  My husband was doing a better job of being detached than he had been previously.  Every book I had been reading about bringing your recovering addict home from rehab said that you have to be emotionally detached from their behavior, but it was HARD!  I kept going from being mad at him for how he was acting to being devastated about how he was acting.  I just couldn’t stand all of the hatred and darkness that was hanging over everything.  I felt like I was being ripped to shreds inside.

I began to wonder if he had something else going that was causing all of this Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde stuff.  I asked his therapist about having him re-evaluated to see if he was Bi-Polar.  I even asked her if he could be re-admitted to see if they could get a handle on whatever was causing all of these issues since everything seemed to be getting worse and worse.  I told her that his anger was so much more of an issue at that point than it had ever been and something had to be done.  I even thought that they might move him from the Chemical Dependence Program to the Psychiatric Program.  Sometimes kids have to do both programs at one time—majoring in one and minoring in the other.  I really didn’t know if they would do that with my son, or not.  He started out majoring in Chemical Dependence, but had a therapist who was also skilled in Psychiatric issues in order to help him with his depression.  So, I thought it would have just been a matter of her shifting the focus.

I knew that a program switch would make him mad though, so I hoped that it would just require a medication adjustment.  I thought that maybe he should be on a different type of anti-depressant, or a higher dose.  I wasn’t hoping that he was Bi-Polar, I just didn’t know what else to think.  His emotions, attitude, temperament, and behavior were all over the place and I didn’t know what to do about it. 

Some of the things that I read about Bi-Polar sounded just like some of the things that we had been going through.  In a manic episode the person could become angry, irritable, aggressive—picking fights, lashing out when others don’t go along with their plans, and blaming anyone who criticizes their behavior.

Hmmm.

But, then I wondered if his sleep medication might need to be changed.  When he lets the Ambien work, it works just fine.  But, when it doesn’t work, it is just awful.  He gets so ANGRY at everything we do or say when he is on it and isn’t asleep.  Ambien side effects that apply to my son are:  depressed mood, decreased inhibitions, aggression, feeling restless or agitated, loss of personality, forgetfulness, impaired thinking or reactions.

I thought that the therapist might think that we were trying to diagnose him ourselves, but we really were at our wits end and didn’t know what else to do.

At the same time that I was emailing my concerns to her, she was in a staff meeting where they were discussing the same things about my son.  I think she was seeking help in knowing what to do for him since I was constantly emailing her and calling her about the problems that we kept having.  She also knew that after months of being in the program, he wasn’t getting anywhere.  After the meeting, she called me to ask me how my husband and I would feel if they moved the focus on my son more toward Psych than it had been before.  He would officially be classified in that program, but would still have to complete his C.D. work, too.  She was also going to talk with the doctor about my other concerns, but she felt that this was the best course of action to take at the time and didn’t think he was Bi-Polar.

It was a Thursday when she called me with the decision and she wanted to know if she should tell him right then, or on Monday.  I asked her to please wait until Monday so that at least we had a chance to have a good weekend.  I was pretty sure that he would not react well to the news of the change.  Not that we had been having any good weekends, but I was always hopeful.

I had a lot of questions about the change.

I wanted to make sure that he still was minoring in C.D. so that he would still have all of the coping skills in his mind when he completed the program.  I knew that he still hadn’t admitted out loud in front of anyone in Family Group or in AA that he had committed to staying sober.  He wasn’t even sure if it was worth it to be sober or not.  Once, in one of our recent arguments, he even made the ridiculous statement that if he had a kid who was using drugs, he would smoke weed with him, not put him in rehab.

I wanted to know what his Psych assignments would be like and what they would do to help him figure out how to have a life that wasn’t filled with anger and animosity.  He was at a point where he didn’t know how to be happy and wasn’t even sure if he wanted to try.  He had no goals and no desire to improve his situation through his own efforts.   The therapist told me that she carefully chose his Psych assignments so that he would be doing the ones that she thought would be the most beneficial to him.

Surprisingly, we had a fairly good weekend.  I was so nervous when Monday came.  It was a long day.  The therapist called me late in the day and told me that he did not have much reaction at all when she broke the news to him.   

He came home that day and said, “They switched me to Psych with all the _________, _________ crazy people.  Great, huh?”

I said, “So stop acting crazy then.”

And that was the last thing he said about it that night.

STUBBORN

I think his sponsor told him that he needed to apologize because he gave me a hug and told me that he was sorry when I gave him the letter.  At least he didn’t seem to be in a worse mood after he read it.  He admires his sponsor and thinks of him as his higher power (AA Step 2), and I appreciate all of the good things that come from that.  I especially like the fact that his sponsor asks him every day, “What did you do nice for your mom?”  At least it gets him thinking that he should be nice.

My husband told him that he had to do a bunch of chores for all of the swearing that he had done.  Until he did the chores, he wouldn’t get to play the X-box.  He refused to do the chores on the basis that he was “provoked”.  So, the activity of the day was watching TV, until we dragged him to my grandson’s first birthday party.  He chose not interact with anyone and repeatedly asked how long we had to stay.  This should have been one of the happiest days of the year, and my son just couldn’t stop trying to drag us down.  This did not make me very happy with him.

He spent the entire weekend without the X-box and became more and more withdrawn, acting like there was nothing to do in the world. 

On Monday, when he came home from Day Treatment, he asked if we had anything planned to do.  I couldn’t resist and said, “No, you quit the Monday and Thursday night activities, and we don’t have anything else planned to do.  Do you want to change your mind?” 

He said, “No, Tae Kwon Do is stupid.  The only thing I have in my life is Day Treatment and coming home to nothing.”  I told him that he could hang out with me and we could talk while I made dinner, but he just went to his room to lay down on his bed. 

Later, I asked him if he had any other activities in mind that he would like to be a part of and naturally he said no.  I told him that if he wanted to start guitar lessons or anything else, he should let me know.  He took that opportunity to inform me that now he hates playing the guitar too. 

At dinner, my husband suggested several other activities that my son could get involved in from football to swimming.  All of those ideas were shot down.  We tried valiantly to make conversation, tell jokes, and laugh about things to draw him out, but we got no response or reaction.

After dinner, I asked him if he wanted to watch a TV show with me, but he began to insist that I give him his Ambien so that he could go to sleep (at 7:00 p.m.)! I told him that he couldn’t have it until bedtime. 

“For me, it is bedtime,” he whined as if I would fall for that.

I replied, “Sorry, Ambien is not an antidote for boredom.”  Then, I walked away as he continued trying to convince me that he needed his sleeping pill right then.  I suggested that he work on his therapeutic assignments and he said that there was no point.

He wanted us to feel sorry for him, give in on the chore penalty, and let him play the X-box again.  Then, all would be well with him.  I kept trying to think of something to do to get him to do the chores and get it over with just to get rid of the cloud of gloom that was hanging over all of us.

Any other time, sooner-- rather than later--he would want to get his X-box back.  He would have radically accepted that he had chores to do and would get them done.  But, he was being very stubborn this time.  I don’t know if it was to try to prove something or if he couldn’t figure out how to pull himself back out of the pity party that he had gotten himself into.

The therapist tried to help us get through this current conflict on Wednesday night at Family Therapy.  As we left the building, I said, “When you were talking about the chores for swearing penalty, you said that you wanted to be able to pick the 10 chores, instead of doing the ones that Dad wrote down.  Would you like to talk about the chores you would be willing to do?”

He said, “I’m not going to do any chores.”

So much for Family Therapy.

I was so frustrated that we hadn’t gotten any results in family therapy. 

On the drive home, I told him that I had apologized for how things went last week and had tried to make things better.  I asked him why it was so hard for him to accept and work on improving the situation, too.  He said that he is just not like that anymore.  Once again, he pointed out that he was done trying and had just quit.

I said that I just didn’t understand his attitude because even though we had a big blow-up last week, we really have had a lot fewer conflicts like that lately.  I pointed out that we learn something from the ones that we DO have which can help us to avoid them in the future. 

But, he insisted that nothing has gotten better over the last few months and that it wasn’t going to get better.

I changed the subject and asked him how much homework he had.  He said he didn’t know.  I asked him if he wanted to work on his Leisure Packet so that he could move to Phase 2 soon. 

He said that he didn’t want to be a Phase 2 anymore.  I asked him why and he said that having Phase 2 friend privileges would mean that he could either skateboard with friends or play the X-box with a friend.  He didn’t want to skateboard anymore and he played the X-box all the time, anyway, so why bother becoming a Phase 2?  He felt that these were the only two things that his friends would want to do, so why bother doing the work just for that?

I wondered if he was using the current situation to have an excuse not to progress because he was afraid to hang out with his friends again?  Was he as worried as I was about what would happen when he got more freedom?  Was that why he didn’t have any motivation?  Was that why he kept picking fights with me and my husband, because he knew that every family conflict would hold him back in the program?

Or did he just have a compulsion to make sure that we knew that we had ruined his life and that everything was as bad as it could get because of what we did?

That night he wouldn’t eat dinner.  The therapist had brought up the fact that he was still losing weight.  He said that since everyone thinks that he doesn’t eat, he might as well not eat.  I couldn’t convince him that every time the issue of his weight gets brought up, it wasn’t to pick on him, it was out of everyone’s concern for him to help him understand the importance of eating good food and gaining some weight.  Of course, hearing that people cared about him and his health did nothing to break the ice.

His tone and his attitude was so insolent and rude that I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Do you hate your Dad and I that much?”

He knew how to cut me to the core when he answered, “I’m getting there.”

I don’t know how I possibly could have expected him to say “No, I love you guys.”  I am a crazy glutton for punishment, that’s for sure.  I had to try very hard not to show that the tears were right at the surface.  

No matter what we did... 

No matter how hard we tried... 

No matter how much we love him and care about him... 

No matter how we tried to not have contention and blow-ups... 

He didn’t want to get over us putting him in rehab. 

He didn’t want to leave the arguments of the past couple of years in the past. 

He didn’t want to accept any responsibility for the course his life was taking right now.

He just wanted to blame us for everything. 

He wanted to justify his drug use by making it seem like we drove him to it.

Inside I was screaming!

"I am sorry that you don’t realize how much I want things to get better between us!"

"I am sorry that I yell!"  (At least this time I was screaming in my head, not out loud!)

"I am sorry that after I tried every single thing I could think of to do calmly, helpfully, and nicely in the face of defiance and stubbornness—that I resorted to yelling!" 

I wish I could have figured out how not to do that.

I tried.

I read parenting books.

I read books on how to deal with Oppositional Defiant kids.

I took classes on dealing with O.D.D.

I brainstormed with my husband all the time about how to not have things turn into blow-ups.

We both tried.

But, our son didn’t try.

He just started drinking, smoking, and using drugs. 

He didn’t even think he should accept that the only person who made him start using drugs was himself.

He justified everything with the fact that we argued a lot.

We wanted to forgive him for the things that he did.

We wanted to move on from there and work on improving our relationship.

But, he didn’t want to.

He wanted to hate us for everything we had ever said or done in the past 14 years.

Then, out of the blue that night, he came to me with a list of ten easy, yet stupid, chores to do.  They took him about 10 minutes--total--to finish.  It was the lamest effort at work in history.  At this point, I didn’t even care.  At least he was doing something!

He got the X-box back. 

You would have thought that would make him happy, but he just couldn’t resist pushing the envelope.  He tried to set it up in his bedroom instead of the family room!  He insisted that it would be so much for comfortable to lie on his bed to play it.  Explaining that nothing had changed in the last few days about where the X-box could be used was maddening!  He knew that we didn’t want him to isolate himself in his room with the X-box and that it had been a rule ever since he started Day Treatment that the X-box would be played in the family room, and yet he thought he could just set it up wherever he wanted to.

My husband and I didn’t argue with him, though.  We just stated the facts and then shut our mouths.  He finally realized that he wasn’t getting any results from this course of action and gave up. 

But, he seemed to feel that he had to get in one last word just in case we would change our minds. 

He said, “I can’t believe that I AM THE ONE THAT HAD TO GO TO REHAB and I can’t even be comfortable NOW when I play the X-box.”

That didn’t help his case.

We laughed for the first time in days at the absurdity of that statement.

He played the X-box for one hour while sitting in our big comfy chair that he moved out of the corner of the family room right in front of the TV.

After that hour, his tone of voice and attitude were happier than I had seen in days.

All because of the X-box.

The next morning, he claimed to be sick.  He may have not felt well, but it sure seemed like he was using that as an excuse to stay home and play the X-box all day.

He showed his symptoms of stomach sickness, combined with coughing in as many ways as he could right up until my husband left for work.  Then he went back to sleep for several hours.  When he woke up, he was not coughing and didn’t show any signs of stomachache anymore.    

I told him that now I could take him to Day Treatment, but he was sure that he still needed to take it easy.   

He began to get himself all set up and ready to relax while playing the X-box. 

But, I had sent every single X-box controller to work with my husband.

It never crossed his mind that I would make sure that he wasn’t able to just fake sick in order to stay home and play games all day.

I laughed to myself.

He was not laughing. 

Far from it.

Still Going Backward

The next day he was not speaking to me and was still just as mad about the incident as he was the day before.  It was still all my fault.  Usually, the next day, or shortly after a blow-up, he realizes that he had a part in it and he apologizes and things get better for awhile.

Not this time.

So, first, I gave him the words to a song that I had just heard and thought how incredible it was that it explained almost exactly how I was feeling.

The song, “We All Bleed Red” is by Ronnie Dunn, formerly of Brooks and Dunn.  It is his first solo single.  I wish I could put the lyrics on my blog, but I don’t have permission at this point to use them, so please go to the link below to watch the music video and read the words to the song.  They are very compelling and I thought they would be perfect to get through to my son about how if we are fighting with each other we are both losing in so many ways.

http://www.onlylyrics.com/hits.php?grid=8&id=1060230

 

Unfortunately, it seemed as if reading the words to that song had no impact on him.  He was holding on to his anger with a tight fist.  Next, I wrote him a letter.  Sometimes, I can explain my feelings so much better in writing than verbally. 

Obviously, right?

This is the letter:

“I don’t really get what is going on. 

I gave you those song words because they really meant a lot to me in this situation and I hoped that they would mean a lot to you, too.

“If we’re  arguing, we’re both losing.”

I never meant to have a fight with you and I don’t really think it was a fight or an argument or a blowup at first.  I feel that it turned into something when your behavior got snotty and your attitude turned into freaked out and you started swearing up a storm.

I was trying to have a discussion with you and ask you questions and try to figure out how you made your decision because it sure seemed to come out of the blue and wasn’t what I really thought you wanted to do.  Every time I talked to you about TKD before, you said you wanted to get the 2 new sticks and that you wanted to go to sparring and that you didn’t think you were going to have a hard time getting back into it.  It gives you an activity to do that isn’t sitting around the house and it is something that you are really good at.

I thought that your “poo” and “hunting” analogies were really just smart aleck, snotty things to say that seemed to be trying to instigate a blowup because then, if there was a blowup, everything would be my fault, even quitting TKD. 

It is and was right for me to try to figure things out with you and help both of us come to the conclusion that what you were deciding is either the right thing at the time or something that might need more consideration before a final decision is made.  That is what parents do.

I didn’t want you playing the X-box while you were saying snotty things and while I was trying to have a discussion with you.  But, as soon as someone tells you that you can’t play the X-box, you just go storming off to your room as if the world has ended.

That is when I yelled up the stairs at you and tried to get you to come back down.  Because storming off isn’t the way to resolve anything and it was rude.

You say I was freaking out, but I wasn’t.  I was working very hard to stay calm.  But, I lose my temper when someone walks away from me.

Then you started swearing and throwing out all kinds of crappy language, and that is when I got more upset.

And I yelled at you to shut up.  So, yeah.  I was wrong.  I yelled.  I should have to have a consequence for that.  I can accept that.  But, I don’t think my consequence should have to be getting sworn at and called names.  I will make you a cake or clean the shower for you, but I won’t accept getting sworn at.  I didn’t swear at you.

Calling me a b*&%$ was very mean.

How nice of you to call me a b*&%$ for caring about you and for trying to make sure you were making a good decision about TKD.

I never “provoked” you into name calling and throwing out every F bomb you could conjure up that night.

Telling you not to play the X-box while a snotty attitude is coming forth from you isn’t provoking you.

Dad telling us both to take a time out isn’t provoking you.

Us, trying to do the right things for you and with you isn’t provoking you.

It seems like something else could be going on in your head (that only you can see and feel and that you aren’t telling us about in words) might be provoking you, but you can’t lay that on me or on Dad.

It is my opinion that something else contributed to blowing that whole night all out of proportion to you because it doesn’t really seem like something that should have ended up in all the swearing and freaking out that you did. 

Previously, you decided that for swearing you would do chores.  And when you agreed on that, we said that even if you thought you had the right to swear in a situation, that you would do chores for swearing anyway.  You decided on the consequence and you agreed that there were no qualifications for getting out of it.  If you put the qualification on it that you can swear any time you feel you are “provoked”, then the consequences for swearing are going to have to change.

Swearing doesn’t do anything, but show that you are mad.  Wow.  You can drop F-bombs and call your mom names and say bull@#%*.  It doesn’t change anything and it just brings more doom and gloom into the house and makes conflicts even worse.

How about if you show how you are changing and trying to make better choices in your life by showing that you can control that, too?

We kind of think that one thing that might going on with you is that you aren’t progressing as fast as you want to.   And when it doesn’t work out that you can probe every time that you think you are going to be ready to, you get mad. 

You know that there are certain things that you have to do in order to progress and in order to probe.  Instead of just putting them off and hoping that everyone will just “see” that you are ready, why not do the assignments and “show” that you are ready?  We are more than happy to help you with getting your assignments done, if you just ask us for help.  We won’t do them for you, of course, but we will gladly offer assistance.

I think that by accepting that you have responsibilities and just acting on them and making sure that they get done, you’ll be a lot happier.  Just radically accept that you have some chores to do, and do them.  Just radically accept that you have some assignments to do and do them.  Don’t put them off until later because later just never seems to happen.

We hope you will make progress.  We hope things will get better.  We hope our whole family’s life will get better.  We hope that we can have peace and happiness with you in our home.  We hope that when there are things that we want to talk about and discuss with you that we can do it without having them blow up into a big unnecessary conflict.  We hope that you will have respect for us by not saying rude, mean things and not filling our house with all kinds of bad language.  We hope that you will get over being mad so that we can get back to the nicer times that we were having.

I don’t know what else to say. 

So I will end with more words to the song.

(The words that I ended with were about saying sorry before it is too late and taking a chance at forgiveness; letting anger slip away; how we all sometimes lose track of where we need to be; how sometimes we all say things we regret later; sometimes we get hurt, but what hurts him hurts me and what hurts me hurts him; and how much my world revolves around him…)
 
You are my child.  I love you so much.  All this awfulness that keeps happening hurts all of us so much.

Let the hurt and anger just slip through your hands, okay?
 
Mom”

I recently heard someone say, “It will all work out in the end—it’s the middle part that’s the hard part.”

This is the longest, hardest middle part. 

It is not getting any easier.

The end isn’t even in sight.

2 Steps Back, Again

One evening, out of the blue, he told me that he was quitting Tae Kwon Do.

Everything spun out of control from that moment on.

I wanted to understand why and how he came to that decision all of a sudden.  I tried to talk to him about it.  I definitely wasn’t trying to start a fight.  I simply had not expected him to say that he wanted to quit. 

When he came home from residential treatment, I gave him the option to start back into Tae Kwon Do the next month, keep it on hold, or quit.  He wanted to start back as soon as he could.  I thought he liked the thought that Tae Kwon Do was something totally different from the rehab experience and was fun and challenging.

But, the next month, he only went twice.  He always came up with reasons not to go like being too tired, too sick, or having too much homework.

I didn’t really feel like he had gone enough times to determine whether he still wanted to keep doing it or not.

When I said that, though, he responded by asking me if I tasted poo, would I give it more chances to see if I liked it or not? 

I should have just walked away at that point. I should have seen how ridiculous everything was going to get.

Instead, I said that I just wanted to talk about this instead of just hearing “I am quitting.”

So, he tried another absurd analogy.  Apparently, if he needs to give Tae Kwon Do some more chances, then I should have to try hunting with my husband again since I quit hunting with him (at least 20 years ago!). 

I almost didn’t even know how to respond to that, so he took my silence as an excuse to end the conversation.  He started getting ready to play the X-box.

I told him that while we were discussing this and while he was acting like he was, I didn’t want him to play the X-box.  He got mad and charged up the stairs, swearing his head off.  I even heard myself referred to as a b!#@& in the tirade.  I shouted after him that I wanted him to come back so we could finish talking and he said that HE was finished talking about it--in all kinds of colorful language.

I wasn’t really yelling up the stairs, it was more like pleading loudly because I didn’t understand why he was acting like he was and I didn’t want it to end like that.  I wanted a peaceful resolution.

My husband walked in at that moment and told us both that it sounded like we needed a time out.  But, my son wouldn’t even let him finish talking and started swearing at him, too.

Then, I did yell.  I told him to shut up! 

He said that I was freaking out about him quitting Tae Kwon Do, but I wasn’t.  I thought I was doing a fabulous job of being calm in the face of absurdity. 

I guess wanting to understand a decision is freaking out.  I guess asking questions is freaking out. 

He said that everything that had happened so far was my fault.

I took my time-out by leaving the house.  I felt like some alternate reality had taken over and I had to get away from it.  I felt like I was watching everything take place from above my body, but wasn’t really in it.  It was so weird that I didn’t feel like it could really be happening.  I drove around the valley that we live in for 3 hours, not really going anywhere.  I cried most of the time and even had to pull over and park for awhile when I couldn’t see through my tears.

My husband tried to talk to him a few times, but he just kept getting sworn at.  He dropped the F-bomb so many times that night that it was dripping off the ceiling again.  He said that he wished he had the option to leave like I did.  He repeated his mantra of being DONE—done trying--and didn’t want to do anything anymore. 

My husband kept calling me to try to get me to come home because he was concerned about me driving around while I was so upset.  Eventually, I came back, but the only thing that changed was that my son had stopped swearing.  The tension was high and I still did not want to be there since my presence that night was causing my son to lose any sense of how to act decently.

Immediately after I entered the house, he started getting mad again.  This time because he did not know where the amplifier cord to his electric guitar was.  He stretched that frustration out to include the fact that not only did we lose his amp cord when we cleaned out his room, we broke his guitar too.

My husband just kept his cool, found the amp cord, and didn’t say anything at all about how we did or did not break his guitar.  He brought him the cord and a screwdriver to use to fix his guitar and just left my son alone.

After he talked to his sponsor that night, he calmed down a little, but insisted that because I wouldn’t accept his answer and just kept asking the same question over and over again, it made him mad. 

So, when I asked the question:  “Why do you want to quit Tae Kwon Do?” and the answer that I got was “Because I do,”--was I just supposed to take that answer for what it was and drop the subject?

My son thought so. 

But, we pay $117.00 a month for Tae Kwon Do.  We were in the middle of a 2 year contract.  I thought I should be able to make sure that quitting was what he really wanted to do.  I hoped that he would just take another extension for awhile because we were going to have to buy out the contract and lose about $400.00 in order for him to quit.  I didn’t know that he had given my husband a few hints over the past few weeks about wanting to give it up.  That information had not been shared with me. 

And, I was worried that if he gave up Tae Kwon Do, he would be giving up the only extracurricular activity that he had.  He has NO OTHER ACTIVITIES right now.  School, group and recreational therapy, doing things as a family, and playing the X-box are the extent of his life.  When my husband asked him what other activity he would like to do instead, he said that TV watching will be just fine. 

I was just sick about what had happened.  The situation had spun out of control and I failed to stop it.  I couldn’t even sleep that night because I was worried that he might try to run away since he said that he was “done” again.  I was worried that he would start getting depressed again and I was worried that he would relapse.  This whole argument was one of those triggers for relapse that we need to try to avoid.

We didn’t avoid it time.

I still can’t get over how it is impossible to talk to my son. 

If I had just made chocolate chip cookies and then asked him if he wanted one and he said no, I would probably ask him why not?  In a normal situation, he would say that he didn’t feel like eating any cookies right now, but would have some later because he really likes chocolate chip cookies.  But, in the reality that we live in now, he would start swearing at me, calling me names, and saying that I freaked out just because he didn’t want a cookie.

Every time it seemed like things are starting to go just a little bit better, something happens to move us backward again.

I guess I have to learn to just radically accept his answer for what it is and try not to get him to have a conversation with me or discuss anything.

And I won’t offer him a chocolate chip cookie.

TODAY

Sometimes I really hate AA meetings.  Sometimes I am really grateful for them.

One night, my son said, “I have woken up many times and have wanted to smoke really bad, but I haven’t been able to since I have been in this place.  I don’t know what I will do when I have the chance to do it.”

Sometimes the meetings give me insight into what he is really thinking.  Sometimes they scare me to death.

He has said similar things to this before.  Every time he does, I get that stomach-clenching, heart-dropping feeling.

Once, at AA the topic was, “When and why you decided to become sober.”  That time my son said, “I am sober right now, I haven’t decided if I will stay sober or not.  But, I know that I will be sober when I decide.”

He was 107 days sober that day.

I thought, “Wow.  After all this time, and all this treatment, he still doesn’t know if he will use again, or not.”   

We went out to dinner with his AA sponsor after the meeting.  We were at a buffet, and I was able to talk to him While my husband and son were getting some food.  I told him that sometimes when he asks my son how it is going, he doesn’t really get the truth.  He seems to get practiced, standard answers.  I let him know that sometimes my son tells him everything is going great, but it really isn’t.  I said he acts like he hates us and finds reasons to argue with us all the time. 

I also told him that I wished my son’s comment at the AA meeting would have been more like-- he was sure that he was going to stay sober, not that he hadn’t decided, yet.  I said that I was so worried and afraid for him.

His sponsor told me, “Staying sober is a one day at a time decision.”

As I thought about that, I found it interesting, because at the AA meeting one guy  said basically the same thing.  He said, “We are all just as sober as each other.  We all woke up today sober and we are all here, still sober.  Hopefully, we will all stay that way tonight.  And when we wake up tomorrow, we will have another sober day.”

When my son came back to the table his sponsor said, “We take our sobriety, one day at a time, don’t we?”  My son agreed.  Then, his sponsor said, “It is a decision that we have to make every day and as long as we can make that decision each day, we are doing good.”  I knew that his sponsor was trying to help both me and my son.

Later that night, I was laying in bed thinking about how the Serenity Prayer is good, but I wished that my son had some kind of affirmation that he could read to himself every day that would be more specific for him and would help him decide each day to stay sober.  I thought about the things that my son’s sponsor had said and about things that I had been reading lately in a book about the changes that happen to the families of recovering addicts.

I couldn’t sleep.  Then, all of a sudden my thoughts started forming lines of a poem.  I was amazed that what I was thinking was becoming something awesome.  I got up and wrote it down.

My husband woke up after the third time that I had jumped out of bed and asked me what I was doing.  I was so excited about my poem that I read it to him at 4:00 in the morning.  He was as impressed as a half asleep man could be.

I couldn’t believe that this poem popped into my head.  It almost seemed like one of those “meant to be” things.

This is the poem.  I feel like it is a Recovering Addicts Daily Affirmation.  Written by the mom of one.

TODAY

I WILL STRIVE TO BE BETTER

THAN I WAS YESTERDAY

BETTER THAN I THINK I CAN BE

TODAY

I WILL EXPERIENCE

ALL OF MY LIFE

STANDING ON MY OWN TWO FEET

TODAY

I WILL NOT USE

PEOPLE OR THINGS

IN UNCARING, MEAN, OR SELFISH WAYS

TODAY

I WILL FEEL MY FEELINGS

AS THEY REALLY ARE

WITH JOY, PAIN, SADNESS, OR FEAR

TODAY

I WILL FIND HAPPINESS

IN GIVING UNDERSTANDING, LOVE, AND HOPE

TO THE WORLD AND OTHERS AROUND ME

TODAY

I WILL LET GOD BRING PEACE TO MY SOUL

AND I WILL SHOW MY THANKS

FOR BEING GIVEN

TODAY

                                                               ©this poem has been copyrighted