Fool me once…

Bless my child’s heart.  Keep a lookout for his safety.  Let him have enough food and shelter in a storm.  But not at my house.  Never again at my house.

There is such a mixed feeling involved in relationships that are abusive.  More than that, when the abuser is your own child, there is guilt, shame, responsibility, anger, helplessness, even this weird sense of sympathy and a need to justify why your child had to do what they did – make it understandable or something.

My son has been homeless since last Christmas, when I had to have him leave my home for stealing from me.  He’s been back twice when he needed a place to sleep.  The first time, we had had 8 inches of rain and I did feel so bad for him.  It’s so hard for a mother.  I never know where he is, and unless he posts on Facebook, I don’t even know if he is okay.  So when he called, after almost three months, I was so grateful that I let him in.  Evidently, so he could case the joint.

I should have known better.  My son does not have a good track record in my world.  He has stolen from me for the past five years.  We go on and off; he appears to hit bottom, comes to me for help, starts to make progress toward where he wants to be, then something happens and it all falls apart within days.  And in those days, my stuff goes missing. 

It makes me feel like a callous, unfeeling mother that I cannot allow him in my home ever again.  Not, at least, without tangible changes in his world.  But I am so tired of feeling victimized.  I think I’ve learned finally, at last, that where he is right now is not in a place where he can even consider others.  He is so desperate to fill  his own needs.  (Okay, this is me trying to justify where he is.)  The truth of the matter is that in this moment, the child I raised and tried to instill a deeper truth and sense of purpose in, that I love with my whole heart, is a thief.  And he doesn’t care who he steals from.  And I have to somehow let him go, with love and compassion, but even minimal support must end.

How will I get through this?  It’s not so much the gone stuff, it’s the deliberate saying ‘no’ to his infrequent requests for help.  It’s having all this love that spills out just for him that cannot be manifested in the normal ways we show people we love them.  It’s the pain of crying every night that your child is so lost and you are so helpless.  I can’t even offer him shelter in a storm. 

And it’s always that unanswerable question – why?

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Personal Boundaries

I’ve been thinking a lot about personal boundaries lately.  How to keep them safe, when to stretch them, how to be graceful about them (putting them out there and making it known the line is getting pushed) and what to do when they are ignored.  This is so much a part of living fearlessly and being intimate.  All of it goes into trust.  But my personal emphasis right now is on self-respect and responsibility to myself.

I’ve had a couple of incidences lately that have violated my boundaries in large and small ways.  Taken individually, I think that the relationship between myself and this other person would have been able to build some kind of bridge to healing and helped us grow together to become closer.  When I brought up the issues, though, what I received was flat out denial and lies. 

This makes me think that I have become more invested in this relationship than the other person.  I keep assuming that they care about me, and that they want what I have to offer and, in order to get that, will respond in kind.  What I have come to realize is that they want what I materially have to offer, but feel no sincere motivation to be reciprocal or respectful.  In the past with this person, I have tortured myself with what might happen if I stood up and held my ground, and then allowed myself to be emotionally manipulated.

I can’t do it anymore.  We want different things from our relationship and our lives, and I can’t be a party any longer to my own destruction.  So, tonight I will set the boundaries really, really far away from the reach of my home and heart and make clear the conditions upon which I would be willing to spend time with this person down the road.

The hardest part is that the love won’t ever stop, and I had to choose between two griefs – losing him, or losing me.  Maybe one day…

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Crocus

Something is eating my crocuses.  Not the white ones, and the purple ones seem to be it’s second choice, but the mixed whited and purple striated ones are gone.  History.  Eaten down to a stump with not even a leaf left.  I wonder, do the the different colors taste different?  It’s kind of sad, because they got a late start.  While my neighbor’s daffs and even tulips are blooming, my little garden just started with the crocuses.  They got one day, and then they were food.

My son called a couple of weeks back, sobbing, asking for a place to stay.  It seems the GFs parents were tired of supporting him.  It has been almost a year, after all, and it’s probably not his fault that he hasn’t found a job yet.  I relented, I took him in.  All was well for the first week and a half or so.  I had jobs around the house he could do for money.  He was polite, considerate, followed the rules.  Then came the day I told him I had no more jobs for him.  Wow! NY minute!  It all came back.  The sullenness, the name-calling, the taking over of my living room, just the general pissiness.  Loud music, refusal to talk, especially about future plans.  I told him he has to find a new place to stay.  It breaks my heart that he and I fall back into that parent/child dynamic so quickly.  It also breaks my heart that he hasn’t reached his bottom yet.  I no longer think he’s doing drugs (hard ones, anyway) or drinking, but he seems to think that others should provide for all of his desires and needs.  I fear that he will be chronically in this socio/economic mental place.  How do I give him non-judgemental love?

I miss my little boy.  I miss my flowers.

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