Just needing some support today, please

Discussion in 'Substance Abuse' started by Lost in sadness, Jul 30, 2019.

  1. Lost in sadness

    Lost in sadness Active Member

    So, following my last post, I took all of your advice and made some decisions. We came down hard on my daughter and she gets the point. She is engaging in counselling and has stopped smoking and thrown herself into her gym and athletics. As for my son, I cut contact and have not spoken to him for 6 weeks. I haven't blocked him or told him this, it just seemed unspoken and other then ringing late one night to say he could not read a letter I had emailed him which arrived at our house he has left it too. He texted me giving me his new number and I just wrote 'thanks'. I understand he has ANOTHER job and has been there 3 weeks although I suspect he has rang in sick a coupe of times already.

    I will be honest and say that I have thought of him everyday but yet I felt happier not having him directly in my life. I have also changed my relationship with his ex girlfriend after the terrible video she sent me. I have my little grandson once a week. We DO NOT discuss my son at all. She tries to initiate conversation about him on occasions but I do not bite and again things are better for me not being dragged into their constant drama.

    Then...yesterday his letting company called me saying he was £1,500 in arrears and as we were guarantors it needed paying!! We never signed to be guarantors so not sure where he got that from. I let me son know he needed to pay this and somehow he used this as a light to text me. He started saying how he had feelings and how he was struggling and I had no idea what it was like. Asking me why I could not accept him or why I had neglected him. Saying he did not understand. I told him he knew the truth and I was not going to explain myself because if anything I had said or done over the last 5 years was going to help then it would have already. He just put "ok mum, I understand" and that was it.

    Today, I feel heartbroken all over again. Torn. Guilty. I have just cried today that I have an overwhelming sense I have abandoned him just so I can not have to deal with his troubles. It hurts me that he is struggling and must feel alone with no family to support him even though I know the reasons why. Its hard to think of someone you love alone. I can't help to still think he must have mental health problems to still be on this path and I have just left him.

    I don't know how to 'be' with him. How to have a relationship with him, if any....if I should...if I even want to...how to base it, etc etc

    Again, I am terrified he will be homeless...its unbearable and I was ok.

  2. Crayola13

    Crayola13 Active Member

    I re-read your post from February. I think pot has created a lot of his problems. I read about how he destroyed your house. That part is where I would lose it. If you give him money for an apartment, he's probably going to get evicted for destruction of property. Sorry, but that one thing is something I just cannot fathom or understand at all. If you didn't co-sign, then that shows he was crafty and deceitful. He has to learn how his behavior is messing up his life. If you suspect mental illness, help him find a doctor. Tell the doctor to send the invoice directly to you because your son cannot be trusted with money.
  3. startingfresh

    startingfresh Member

    I feel your pain lost in sadness. Yet, as someone looking in and reading your posts, it is impossible that you have abandoned him. I understand the feelings you have but objectively you are taking ownership for the choices he has made. I wonder the same thing about my own son. Why would he make the choices he has made unless something is wrong with him. Yet, I guess it doesn't change the fact that HE has made the choices. Stay the course, go back and re read the postings from others. I just went back and read New Leaf's and it gives me strength.
  4. Kathy813

    Kathy813 Well-Known Member Staff Member

    Hi LIS. Did he forge your signature? That is illegal here. I see from your post that you live in another country. Can you fight this? I don't think your son is going to pay it so you may be stuck with it.

    That is just another reason you can't trust your son or anything that he says.

  5. JayPee

    JayPee Sending good vibes...

    Dear Lost,
    Gosh, I get where you are coming from 100% (I feel like that could have been me writing your post). It's so strange we take on their feelings if they do hurt us verbally or otherwise and same when they reply with a one word text. We read into how we "think" they must be feeling -lonely, sad, hurting etc. I know when I meet up with my son to gas his vehicle I have so much anger and resentment towards him because he's not doing anything to change his situation. We hardly speak. He doesn't know but I look at him and feel so much pity and sorrow for his state of being and it breaks my heart.

    I think for me and maybe for you it's that we "think" we know what they are feeling or thinking, when in reality our thoughts are not their thoughts. My therapist tells me, My sons "do not love me" not given the way she knows in detail how they have treated me. They only know how to manipulate me and play with my feelings. As a Mom who gave my heart and soul to raising my two sons, I guess I just have a hard time accepting they do not love me. But it's really the truth. It's a hard pill to swallow.

    My sons are 30 and 26 and homeless and I do feel like I've abandoned them but all those who "know better", professionals and the like tell me otherwise. They remind me they are adults and they are not "mine". They are responsible for their own destinies. I think that's hard to wrap my head around because I've never seen them take responsibility for themselves. If I had ever seen any longevity in that area I might be able to convince myself otherwise. But I've never seen proof of it. Jobs have been far and few between and last a short time. There's always an excuse why they couldn't keep the job. Someone else's fault they had to quit.

    It's important that we practice self-care. Even do little things that will bring us pleasure or take our minds off of our worries. It feels odd at first when we do this because we think we should be feeling sad and if we're experiencing a moment of happiness or peace we think we are abandoning them or not caring enough for them and that we should remain in a perpetual state of mourning for the loss of what we always hoped we'd have. What a crazy thought process. How is our being miserable, sad and hurt helping anything? It's not and I believe it does take "practice" to push ourselves out of that stinking thinking. I read something recently that said if there are two people and one of them is constantly focusing on the loss of the other, then both lives are lost.

    Sending up prayers and peace.
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  6. Mikayla

    Mikayla New Member

    I inderstand your pain but please know you have done your part. Adult kids with these problems will suck your life and soul dry. I am 61 and finally have put no contact in effect for my 39 yr old heroin addicted daughter. She has bankrupted me and I sold the home I inherited to try to keep her alive. She puts drugs above her children and is now facing a possible 17 yr prison sentence for major drug charges. I helped for years and for what? There are thousands of stories like mine. Save yourself. It's like the story of you and your baby on a plane going down. Put the oxygen mask on yourself first so that you can then save your baby. I will keep you in my thoughts.
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  7. Copabanana

    Copabanana Well-Known Member

    I read this through and I fear I might be harsh. Let me say here, that I am sending you support. But I am supporting you to please, please remember that you deserve kindness and care. And that you matter, too. This is not only about your son's needs and feelings. You matter here, too. Please don't think I am judging or that I don't understand how your heart hurts. And that I don't understand how hard this is. Anybody here will tell you how confused I become and how hard for me it is to not rescue my son. And how I will ignore any pain and distress to myself, to do so. But this does not make it right. So here goes.
    My son has been homeless for the better part of 8 years. I have put him out a number of times. Many of the things you feel, I have felt and feel.
    There are several (faulty) assumptions here. One. You are taking responsibility here for two sides of a relationship. By saying you have abandoned him, you erase altogether what precipitated it, what he did, said, how he acted, you erase. You responded to specific events, behaviors and conditions. You did not abandon him. He is an adult. He has free will. He is conscious and capable. He can change behavior. He is responsible for his words and his deeds.

    Next. The self-blame. That you blame yourself for protecting yourself and home from his troubles, how they spill over, and the hurt to you. Where is it written that any adult need be destroyed by another? Where their home and their space need be compromised. Why would you have to suffer him and his problems, ongoing. Why should your calm be sacrificed? Where is it that you should martyr yourself to an adult who is behaving irresponsibly, be sullied by his bad behavior, by cruelty, criminality or destructive behavior?
    Of course it hurts. Who here made the choice to behave as he has? Who is it that acted in such a way to cut off this support? What about holding him responsible?

    Finally. If he forged your name on a document, that you be responsible for his bills, this is indeed a crime. Just as I am not responsible for credit taken out in my name due to identity theft, I don't see how you are responsible that your name seems to have been forged by your son. This is a criminal act.

    He cannot be protected from this, and you cannot be and should not be destroyed.

    Your son seems to want to be a victim and a perpetrator at the same time. And you are struggling with the impulse to take this on. To take on his terms. That he both victimize you and perpetrate against you and that you protect him and shelter him while he does so.

    I am not judging you. This is what we do. But it is wrong. It is wrong for you and it is wrong for him. The correct thing, in my view, is that your son take responsibility for his life, his misdeeds, and the consequences of same. In this way there is a chance he can change. What is correct, for you, is that you grieve for the time you need and realize that your child is an adult and needs to grow up to be a good man. Sheltering him now will not help him. This is not your fault and it is not your responsibility.

    He needs to clean this up. He needs to become safe for you to be around. He is the only one that can do this. If he can become safe to you, and he cleans things up, that's a different situation. We can take on some of this. We should not allow ourselves to be hurt or eaten alive. And most of all we should not eat ourselves alive, because we want to be safe from our children.
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2019
  8. Lost in sadness

    Lost in sadness Active Member

    Oh my gosh everyone! Thank you all for your replies and the time you take to read the stories of others. Can someone please tell me how to quote sections so I can reply to individuals rather that the whole reply showing....
    I do feel I just want to get off this journey now...I know I deserve to but there is always that nagging doubt that it feels selfish to 'wash your hands' of someone that didn't even ask to be here. My son is so manipulative and it works, I do feel the guilt he wants me to feel, The question I am always asking my husband is "does he know he is manipulating?", I can't help but think he actually believes it. He believes he has been done to and treated badly, pushed out of the family, unloved and thats what plays on my mind and hurts. It doesn't make any sense why someone would continue in patterns that end them up in trouble or homeless etc. He is smart and articulate....why would you continue in destructive patterns and not learn unless there is actually something wrong with you. He has not forged any paperwork, I think he has just palmed off the letting company with a story that the bill will be paid soon and if not his parents will help. To be honest, my husband and I painted a lovely picture of him just so they would let him have the room because we wanted him out of our house, Kinda feel guilty.
    Thank you all. xx
  9. BusynMember

    BusynMember Well-Known Member

    There are people that like being homeless over following rules that society expects of us. They are those little kids in adult bodies saying "Nobody is the boss of me!" And if we pay for them to answer just to themselves, they love it. I believe it is in big part about control.

    They aren't stupid or incapable, but choose not to work. Work is whete there are rules. If Mom will give the essentials, and the kid is the boss of Mom or Dad, they are just fine. They know exactly what they are saying and doing to keep us hurting and guilty. I don't believe they are too damaged to know what they do.

    Also, some people don't value comfort and stability. It is boring and the street or living ion the edge by not paying for a place to live if in one is a nonstop party. It is constant drama and they enjoy this.

    Sorry. I admit I am bitter now. Years wasted and she is still the same. I had to give her to God and I am giving myself to God too.

    Posting here is helpful. It's like a journal for me. That is why I post too often. People are probably sick of me.
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  10. JayPee

    JayPee Sending good vibes...

    It occurred to me the other way to try to think of my sons this way to help me detach. Yes, there physical bodies resemble the children I raised albeit they are young men of course now but there's really nothing inside of them that resembles the children I raised. They are strangers to me now. It helps me to realize they are different people and truthfully if they weren't my sons, not likely anyone I would associate with because of their demoralizing ways.
  11. Copabanana

    Copabanana Well-Known Member

    Nooo. I love your posts. Almost always I agree with you. You are kind and understanding. That you post a lot is a great thing. You have changed the board for the better.

    I completely understand why you post a lot. I was that way too. I am trying to limit myself to five posts a day. After more than four years! There were times years ago I posted 25 or 30 times a day on everybody's threads. I agree with you. It is therapeutic. We change by posting.
    I agree with this. I do think my son has limitations. Poor coping and anxiety, for example. But he has had the most control in the world, over me. Think about it. How we love them. And how we are centered on them, their well being and loving them. Who else does this, in their world? The attention we shower. We make them important like the Pope or the President.
    I think they are in there. I think when they become young men they lose themselves. It's like those Russian dolls that are nested one inside another. The little dolls are in there but all you can see is the big doll. They don't know what to do or how to act either, in a way that connects to those little dolls. They are dominated too by the brutes that they have become. They can't manage either their impulses and emotions.

    They have to learn how to manage (and master) themselves, and to integrate themselves, their littler Russian dolls. Sometimes they never do. But sometimes they do. I don't think we have to believe that this is permanent.
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    Last edited: Aug 2, 2019
  12. Crayola13

    Crayola13 Active Member

    Pot has a way of making intelligent kids behave in this manner. You'll never be able to convince him of it.
  13. Misty@0545

    [email protected] New Member

    I am new here and reading so many of your posts and see that i am not alone. I am so happy i stumbled upon the forum. Lost in sadness i feel exactly what you are feeling and i think thats what stops me from throwing out my son. He only has my mom and i that care about him and tells me about his pain but he is so abusive and destructive. Its the hardest thing i have had to deal with in my life
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