General Discussion Board
This was hard to do, but I think it may apply
Posted By: Carol Hiller <caroldiego@earthlink.net> (209.245.38.40)
Date: Wednesday, 8 December 1999, at 1:28 a.m.In Response To: HELP Abundance people...SERIOUS ISSUE HERE... (Mendi Teats)
My only child threw himself down the staircase to hell with drugs and alcohol, starting probably at age 14, although his father and I didn't know about it for several years. (Yeah, I know, but we were so in love with that boy we were blinded to what was really happening.)
After a few years of saving him from the consequences of his actions, sending him to a rehab place out of state, etc, he came home and continued doing what he had been doing, only upping the ante to voluntary street person status.
His father did nothing but welcome him home whenever he showed up. Deep denial on that man. After a while, I started saying no. I made rules: no drugs or alcohol in my home, no coming home high, that sort of thing. He broke the rules, of course.
So I moved. I moved from a two-bedroom to a one-bedroom apartment (his dad and I were divorced by that time) and told him that because he was deliberately ignoring my rules, he no longer had a home with me to come back to.
He was not happy, but I was firm. Last summer, while I was recuperating from that auto accident, he was in a haze in San Francisco. I could have used some help at home in San Diego, but he was not able to give it. He eventually showed up at my one-bedroom apartment, completely high and beligerent, after his father sent him a bus ticket home.
I sent him away.
This was unbearable for me, let me assure you, but I could not keep rewarding my son for infantile behavior and simultaneously expect him to stop it.
Guess what: it worked. He's been clean for over a year (he says, and his girlfriend confirms). He has a job, goes to school, and wants to spend time with me. Sometime this week he'll be staying over ~ because now I feel I can trust him.
This is all I'm saying, with this awfully long, and probably TMI post.
We all know inside what behavior it takes to be accepted and welcomed. If we choose instead to behave in the opposite manner, we have nobody but ourselves to blame when we stay an outsider. And anyone who wants to assist us in denying that, is also assisting us in staying outside.