Silence

A few weeks ago (may be it was a month ago?) I briefly wrote about the goings on with my son and how much I hate mental illness.  The "goings on" continue through today.

Unfortunately, time is not always the best healer.  Sometimes the more time involved not mending a relationship can intensify the pain and deepen the damage.

Even if he apologized today, I would not trust him.  Even if he apologized tonight, my heart would be guarded.  I do not think I can handle one more of these melt-downs he has.  At least not today or this week or this month.

My son will be 27 years old.  He should be mature enough, responsible enough, man enough to make this right.  But, it seems like he stopped growing emotionally when he was 15 and the mental illness took over.  I keep reminding myself of this to avoid extreme hardness and loud anger.  My losing it surely will not help him or rebuild from the splinter of the bridge left.

Since a few weeks ago he has included my husband in his rants.  The worst came via text message, all in caps (of course meaning he was yelling), addressed to my husband saying "you stole my Mommy" and "you changed her forever into a cold, hard-hearted person."  Twist the knife he did.  He keeps flipping back and forth between delusional and crying out, then becomes abusive in his conversations.  

I realize that my son must be hurting deeply.  This melt-down has been the worst between us and I do fear the worst because I have not seen him quite this way before.  The math equation of mental illness+drugs+alcohol+the loss of a father+the abuse of a step father+terrible choices and life experiences=his lashing out at me.  But, I can no longer tolerate his treatment and words this way.  Each day that goes by where we do not talk, I cannot see his face or hear his voice, or even know how he is doing is very difficult and painful.  I am choosing silence. If that makes me cold and hard-hearted, then so be it.  I hope one day he will come to his senses and realize how much his family loves him.  I hope one day he will come to his senses and realize the preciousness of being loved.  I hope and pray daily that his difficult life and mindset does not take him away before being well.  I will continue to hope, yet will remain silent until he makes amends.  He usually does, but not yet, not this time.

~Wendy