Catch me if I'm falling, says my son...

[aliceyalice]

my son, the Gnu (as we call him in the family), has been diagnosed with so many mental health disorders. you'd need a moving van just to carry all his various mental health records around. He was one of those newborns that screamed for six months straight no matter how many bottles, burpings, changings, and hours of cuddling him in the rocking chair you devoted to him.

he was a perfect terror from the moment he could wield his baby bottle to smack the cat on the head (always prefixed by his calling her sweetly, "here...kitty, kitty" and always followed by his giggles). in preschool, he was referred to as a 'seriel biter' by all the nursery workers (we changed nurseries about once a month, as they regularly kicked him out). by the time he was school age he had set the neighbor's house on fire (b/c that neighbor told our Gnu that he did not want his lawn mowed for five dollars), exposed himself to the policeman down the street's 6 year old daughter (Gnu was 8 yrs old), and broken into the other neighbor's house and stolen his pet monkey (he was 11 then, and achieved such notoriety by then that the police all knew him by name).

he went to several different schools escalating from normal public school, to public school's emotionally disturbed classes, then behavioral problem schools, then behavioral problem boarding school with weekends at home to finally a school where he lived on the premises for two years straight.

from the time Gnu was 6 until he was 11, he lived with my mother and her husband. they had convinced me to sign custody of Gnu and his sisters over to them during a traumatic divorce. i discovered that they were abusing Gnu and his sisters almost as soon as the ink was dry on the custody papers. from 11 on, he lived at the boarding schools. he was in therapy from the age of 4 onward.

at 18 years old, Gnu 'aged out' of the final school and i had him move in with me. he went wild. he began doing drugs, meth, marijuana, crack cocaine (he claims he did, but i am really only positive that he did marijuana, because i actually saw him smoking it, and he loves to tell stories to provoke a reaction), running through neighbors' yards at three in the morning, just crazy stuff like that. i tried setting ground rules: take your meds, go to therapy, apply for ged classes, no drugs, a 11 p.m. curfew...but he refused to follow even one rule.

in fact, he seemed to delight in flaunting the fact that he was breaking the rules. i couldn't get anyone to help me with him and so i moved out and continued using his SSI check i had gotten him signed up for on his rent and using my paycheck to purchase his groceries and incidentals.

he called SSI and lied to them saying that i spent all of his money going on shopping trips (his rent was $618.00 monthly and he received $630.00 monthly form SSI, and the left over money went towards buying his cigarettes.) so i told him to get a new payee and washed my hands of dealing with his financial responsibilities. by then my family was positive that i had mis spent his money.

they believed what he told them...until he went to live with them. first he lived with my mother and her husband. he charged $300.00 worth of porn to their cable account, did drugs in their living room, brought a BB Gun (which looked like a real gun) into their home and conducted drug sales from their front porch. when his chaeck came, my mother took half to pay for the cable bill and the other half to repair her computer whiuch had gotten a virus mysteriously freezing on a porn site after Gnu used it.

he called me right away telling me how she had stolen all his money and spent it on a dress. she called me to tell me she was sorry she had believed him and told me she would do what she could to convince the rest of my dysfunctional family members that i should not have been disowned by the family. (it took two years for my grandmother to understand that i had not stolen his money and begin speaking to me again).

from the time he was 18 until the present, he has always relied on me to find a new place for him to live. he has lived in over a dozen places in those two years, each time, breaking the rules, getting caught doing drugs at firends' houses, rehabs, homeless shelters, and other programs and getting thrown out. he has been in jail three times. recently my boyfriend told me that he believed i was only hindering my son by continuing to take responsibility for his shelter and mental health care. he said i needed to back off and force my son to be responsible. i need to stop catching him when he falls and let him hit rock bottom.

so i let my son get kicked out of the last rehab and did not provide him with new places to stay, or assist him in obtaining a new identification card when he 'forgot' to pick it up when he left that rehab. he called me often to let me know he was living under a bridge, or in a 'homeless camp' and that he had been thrown out of a 'carnie camp' by the other carnies when he painted swastikas on all of their trailer doors. there are entire cities that he can no longer safely go to in our state, because the residents there have threatened to shoot him on sight or have him arrested. he called me to say he had been shot and only after six different households were involved in searching for him and worrying about him (and my boyfriend had driven me to two different hospitals on opposite ends of town and searched the alleys of the neighborhood he had called us from) did we discover he had been on LSD and he had only hallucinated that he'd been shot.

now my mother has arranged a home for him with a friend of hers named 'Bear' (he's native american) Gnu called me several times to tell me about how Bear's wife was flirting with him. of course i told Gnu to tell her the flirting made him uncomfortable and discourage her. but, i think he really initiated it. a week ago he called me to say that 'Bear' had hit his wife, 'Jessie' and now Jessie and Gnu were staying with her family. when i talked to Jessie, she confirmed this information. two nights ago, he called to tell me that Jessie might be pregnant. he's been sleeping with her for less than a month. no matter how i beg him to use birth control (and he promises to) he tells me he keeps 'forgetting' or it's 'inconvenient'.

i gave the both of them a scary lecture about babies who never sleep and cry alot, and how babies leak from every orifice all kinds of fluids, and the price of Huggies, and how important birth control and education is...i'm pretty sure the scary lecture fell on deaf ears and that they are trying to have children...


i am at the end of my tether...

[Jennifer]

I do not doubt that you are at the end of your rope? Sounds like you deserve to be and it also sounds like you have done everything that you can for your son. It is going to be up to him to decide how to live his life. There is nothing to do for him except let him go. I know that is a hard choice, but if you do it, the whole family needs to follow your lead. He needs to stand on his two feet and want to change. I do not know how you have dealt with it so far and I do not think that anyone would think less of you if you decided to cut ties with him. It is for his own good. He is not interested in being saved just in being taking care of.

[aliceyalice]

i just got off the phone with him. he admitted he and Jessie are trying to have a baby. he said he knows i would like a grandchild and it would be a lovely christmas, birthday and 'forever' present. of course i told him the best gift he could ever give me would be an announcement that he had completed school and was off drugs. he had Jessie confirm to me that he is off drugs. he said he will be looking into school and has applied at dunkin donuts. naturally, i have my doubts...he makes promises so often like this, that i never believe a word of it until i see gods honest proof! (such proof has yet to materielize.).

i told him that a child should come after an education, car, career, housing and marraige. his response was something to the effect of, "well, what's done is done.". i have a dreadful feeling i am going to end up babysitting a whole lot. and i'm way too old to be dealing with a toddler! (patience in dealing with small children has a shelf life. when i am with my boyfriend and his 4 year old daughter, and she starts a good tantrum going, i flee to the serenity of my nice quiet computer room and lock the door behind me!)

guess there's nothing to do from now on except cross my fingers and wait for Friday's pregnancy test results. it seems to be only a matter of time, though. if this time it isn't a go, they'll be trying again. i think i'd better clarify that i am not Mary Poppins and have no desire to babysit the baby, no matter how adorable it is (it is destined to be a pretty baby as both my son and Jessie are such looking individuals). but i also know i am a sucker for a cuddly baby and will have a terrible time sticking to my guns. (boyfriend's daughter can always draw me out of my computer room hidey-hole by telling me stuff like, "i love you, alice, you're the only one who laughs at my burps."...and who can resist that?!).

[Jennifer]

Is it even a possibility to cut your son out of your life? He sounds dangerous to himself and those around him. Has he ever attacked you?

[aliceyalice]

oh, yeah. Gnu dislocated my right shoulder by the time he was eight years old. he has physically attacked most everyone in our family, including my grandmother who was in her seventies when he chased her around her house yelling, "how do you want to die!" and brandishing a knife.

he hasn't hit anyone in the family, though, since he was eighteen...and he's nearly 21 now.


right now, he has moved in with a friend of the family's wife. the friend took him in and Gnu began an affair within a week of living there. the friend hit the wife and she left him, taking Gnu to live with her at her parents' house. he calls me often to let me know that they are trying to conceive a child.

i wish he would just take his Abilify and go back to school. he worries me to no end!

[Jennifer]

Agreed, but at least he has a place to stay now and someone else to take care of him. You can worry for him, but in the end he is going to do what he wants to do. Hopefully, he will find his way in life.