My Blues
Grieving a Son Who is Living
I am in an extended period of grief for the loss of my relationship with my son right now.
He's walks around living and breathing carrying a piece of my heart.
At this point he doesn’t have much regard for the piece of my heart he carries.
Without this piece, the rest of my heart works to compensate for the gap.
It’s exhausting.
The missing piece carries the deepest love and sometimes, the deepest pain I have ever experienced.
This is my blues.
My heart is tender these days.
In some ways, I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.
I’m happy to be writing and to have a community of writers.
I have more peaceful moments and for these, I am eternally grateful.
And then, I think of him.
Worry.
Tears.
Wipe them.
Keep going.
What choice do I have?
I don’t have time to hide under the covers.
I missed enough time during the years I was lost in motherhood.
I just woke up.
Years of feeling invisible, doing an invisible job does strange things to you.
When I sit in community with writers and artist working together
feeling seen and heard sharing kindness, encouragement, and vulnerability,
my heart leaks gentle tears, emotion overflows.
Nurturing, giving, and kindness is a part of who I am.
Without it, I feel lost.
For a time, I lost myself in it.
When you give to the point of burnout, it changes your brain.
Chronic stress changes your brain and your heart.
Too much of even a good thing, can make you sick.
Givers sometimes give too much.
Giving too much can turn around and slap you in the face.
There should be balance in all things
There are times when love carries you too far away from your center.
There are moments I wonder why God matched my over-giving heart with a son who can not be filled up.
There are people in this world who the more you give, the more they take, the more they require, and expect.
Is that human nature?
From fifteen-thousand miles away, he calls me every.single.day.
Dozens of times a day. I don’t answer. He texts.
We have moved to mostly e-mail, or I call him.
My phone remains on silent.
The phone ringing, anyone’s phone ringing, triggers me.
My heart rate goes up.
My nervous system has been overwhelmed for years.
Seeing his name on the caller ID stimulates the amygdala in my brain.
Will this be a fight or flight conversation?
Will my nervous system explode?
Will this call comfort my senses, knowing that he is in a good place today?
Boundaries between us have become a must for me to maintain a semblance of mental and physical health.
Boundaries though painful, are necessary if he is ever to grow.
There are no guarantees.
He mostly ignores my boundaries.
I build a more lofty wall.
He leaps over it.
The dance becomes exhausting.
No matter what I try,
what I read,
what kind of therapeutic mumbo-jumbo I speak,
nothing changes the dynamics of our relationship.
Being his mother is the ultimate test of unconditional love.
How do I reconcile that a piece of me has brought me mental and emotional harm?
It’s not like he’s a boyfriend or a husband, I can brake up with.
but if he was…I would.
How do you process words of hate that come from a piece of your heart?
Why do I ache for someone who has drained life energy from me for years on end?
Because he’s my son.
I can't think of the state of the world, without thinking about how it affects him.
I can't watch a tender part of a movie without tears and thoughts of the pain he has endured for most of his life?
When I think about our society, white supremacy, and capitalism, how it disregards people with disabilities, it makes me feel more empathy for him, and others like him.
I think of how systems are not set up to support or engage people who struggle most.
How will he survive when I'm no longer around?
I have to start preparing for that.
He has to prepare for that.
The world will not bend to his will.
His behavior is indicative of someone who believes he's entitled.
It’s grandiose in nature.
The world we live in is the antithesis of his thinking.
No one will lay opportunity in your lap, especially if you’re a black man.
As black people, we are expected to work above and beyond our counterparts.
Our behavior must be beyond reproach, without blemish just to stay in the game.
Our voices must remain gracious and respectful.
I know that’s bullsh*t, and millennials don’t buy into that social construct.
His belief system clashes with reality.
Intellect without executive functioning makes success more difficult to attain —not impossible, but harder.
Obsession with wealth and success could be a good thing.
However, it creates frustration when everything doesn't play out the way it does inside your head.
It’s hard to know what’s autism and what’s pure stubbornness.
That has always been the case.
When he was a teenager I would say, “Is it autism or assholeism?”
They can look a lot alike.
From the day he was born, I poured love into him.
An autism diagnosis, I prayed would not define him, and yet…
Here we are with a few it's road dogs, ADHD, mood disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder.
An alphabet soup of diagnosis and we are never one hundred percent sure which of them is correct.
He hates me right now.
Are you even a real mom if one of your children doesn’t hate you at some point?
No one talks about this part when as girls we’re being conditioned to get married and bare children.
I realize this anger is projection.
Everything that has gone wrong in his adult life, in his mind, is my fault.
Self-responsibility is not a construct he can wrap his head around.
His version of the story and perception of things is valid if that is what feels like reality to him.
My version of the story is different.
I’m not a perfect mother by any means, but Lord knows I have given above and beyond the call of duty.
I did the best that I could with all of the resources I had available to me.
I searched high and low, and would not accept the words, “that’s not possible” or “we can’t do that.”
I can't count the number of mentors and friends who have tried to be there for him.
He eventually slams the door in their faces.
You can’t help someone who doesn’t want help.
Nothing in his life is the way he feels he "deserves" it to be.
I feel that, because his life is not what I would like to see it be.
I am a hopeless optimist.
He will figure this all out for himself one day.
But maybe he won’t…ever.
I have to accept that.
I have no control over his destiny. That's between him and God.
Sometimes we have to step out of the way and let God handle things.
I’ve been telling myself that for at least ten years, and yet, there I go, trying to help God out, again.
But I’m tired. Worn out, actually.
He will be 29 in September!
When you become and adult and have the freedom to make your own decisions, it is YOUR life and whatever YOU decide to make of it.
God has tried to show me in so many ways that I can't save him.
A few days ago, after an expletive laced rant, via text in which I was blamed for everything, and told what a horrible mother I am, and that he “f-ing hates me.”
I powered down my phone, and found myself short of breath.
Was I having an anxiety attack?
I don’t know.
My husband encouraged me to do some yoga poses and eventually, I got my breath back.
Of course, I know the things he said are not true, but it still hurts and it’s wearing on me.
He intended to make me feel his pain.
I woke up the next morning.
The sun streamed through my window.
I took deep, yoga breaths.
Inhale to the count of four, from my stomach, my chest, my neck, to the top of my head.
Exhale for six. Rinse and repeat.
Mornings are always better, especially if the sun is shining.
Just hang on until the morning.
It will change your perspective.
What happened the night before was a sign.
Let go! Let him go. It's time, to let go.
Now, please remind me of this next week when I am ready to forgive him…again.
Thank you for reading my words and supporting my work. My post are free because I want more eyes to have access to read. However, I am writing to earn a living to create independence for myself. As a mother who has worked for “free” for so many years.
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This is so real and raw. Thank you for sharing. I had to deal with a sibling with bipolar disorder, for years before a diagnosis. Growing up was like walking on eggshells but my mother pampered him. He will be 52 soon and he is still a child, who is never at fault. And my mother still enables him.
I mention all this to say that setting hard boundaries with him is necessary, and you are doing right by him by settling them. You do not deserve to be spoken to that way. Yes, some of it may be his disability. But you still deserve better. 💛💛💛
Some people have to learn the hard way, but they still learn. You are doing the right things.
Your piece touched my soul. It reflects what I've been enduring for thirty years. My son is now forty living at home, in the garage studio we built out for him. Years of alcohol, drugs, jail, homelessness, have drained me in ways I'd not thought possible. It's not over and I have accepted that it will end only when one of us passes on. My husband and I are loving him by not trying to change him anymore. Doesn't work. Like you, we tried everything when he was young but he chose another path.
We love him but we don't like him most of the time. Thank you for sharing and stay strong.