Before I begin, I will admit...this is a stinking long post. I may lose you. It may not feel relevant to you, and it might be a hodge-podge of my own emotional processing. I appreciate you for sticking with me, even when I ramble.
Thank you to my friend Suzanne for unknowingly being part of my synchronistic moment, and thanks to my friend Sara for helping me to process it.
I've been reading a spiritual book that reminds me to look out for synchronicity, to be aware of the ways in which the Divine sends messages for us to hear, and the odd ways in which they, at times, appear.
I've been worrying about my kid a bit. He's struggling again. He has challenges with mental illness and addiction. His life is pretty scary sometimes and really hard and uncomfortable.
A friend on FB posted a seemingly unrelated sign. It was a post about abortion and gay rights. It said "If the fetus you save is gay, will you still fight for its rights?" We had us a bit of a discussion on this post. I was expecting a bunch of pro-life furor and was all wound up. I'm a liberal if you hadn't noticed. Not religious, pro-choice, and fully-fine with people who are gay. But that's not important, nor will it ever be.
So over the course of a few hours, I was thinking about the hypocrisy of all those sanctimonious religious folks who want to ban abortion, and condemn gay people. I was thinking about how if we're so all about "brotherly love", we need to accept people as they are, and as they come into this world. I got my knickers full up into a good twist. Cuz that's what we do when we polarize. That's what we do when we hold tightly to an opinion as if our life depended on it. So I have to tell on myself here for being so totally and utterly human that I felt ill.
Here's the synchronicity, the message, what the book told me to look for, what the seemingly unrelated topic brought to me. I had an "ah-ha" moment, as Oprah would term it. Clear as day, a message came through my head: "That's EXACTLY what you've done with your very own son. You've tried to form him to be something other than who he was born to be...mentally ill and wild."
I felt ashamed of myself for being so judgy of those "other people". This message had nothing to do with abortion, or with gay rights. It had to do with how all of us, me included, so often wish other people would be other than who they are. Sit with that. Even when they are what we term "bad people". Oh sure, there are laws and people must be protected and such, but how many people can you name right now that you wish were different than they are now? How many people marry someone with the intent that they will change them? How many relationships in our families and with friends, struggle because we keep trying to make each other different? Becoming different is a personal, internal journey, not something someone talks us into. Sure we have teachers and guides, but change is up to us ourselves.
So I've been sitting with my guilt about how to truly come to a place of acceptance and joy about my son, just as he is. His struggles, his unhappiness, the chaos *I* see as dysfunctional and maladaptive. How does one learn that? I was taught in social work training to focus on strengths. But we go to work in jobs that focus on deficits and problems. We are told to catch our children being good rather than focus on the crappy stuff they do, but how many of us are really good at that?
So I have to sit with and idea that I'm also wishing *I* was different than I am. More loving, more accepting, more capable of seeing the beauty in all things. Just more. And right now, I'm not. Which is also just one more form of me being not accepting of ME. I wish HE was different. I used to wish he would take his medication and get ongoing therapy. I mean, I did that FOR him all of his life, and then he quit. But even then, it hadn't really made our lives any easier. It hadn't really helped like it was advertised to.
I wish he had been accepted at school, by my family, by strangers. I wish he had been invited to birthday parties. I wish he had friends. I wish he had been happy and not always loud and angry and violent. I keep wishing he was different. I keep wishing that my parenting experience had been "normal" and not so fraught with strife, appointments, assessments, medication trials, IEP meetings...HELL. I wish he was happy, I wish he was stable. I wish we were closer. I wish I wish I wish. I'm no more accepting of the way he came into the world than those "conservative folks" who think being gay is a choice....who even if they understood the person is born that way, see it as an illness or a flaw or still just wrong. I'm no different. That's how I view mental illness and addiction and brain injury. As wrong and unfair, and just shitty. It hurts me deeply when he hurts, so I rage against what hurts him.
I want to be at the place where I can say, "yes, this is challenging, but there is brilliance here in the chaos".
My kid is a genius. He's creative, and artistic and he approaches problem-solving in unique and amazing ways. He's a survivor. He has handled and survived stuff I cannot IMAGINE that I would ever come out the other side of. He is passionate. He is humorous. His heart is as squishy as they come...no matter what type of spikes he displays on the outside. His intentions are as good and as pure as anyone else. I secretly (OK, maybe it's not so secret anymore), applaud him that he doesn't take an ounce of shit from ANYBODY, and that he can spot bullshit from a mile away, maybe even from space. He says exactly what he thinks without a filter, without apology, without putting a frosting coating on it. It's abrupt, but there is some beauty in it, some lesson in it about authenticity.
I believe his spirit volunteered for this gig. He's a teacher. A teacher of compassion, empathy, patience, understanding, and of seeing past the surface. He's physically beautiful. An amazing male specimen of handsomeness.
In spite of one incredibly edgy life, he's healthy. He's strong. He's talented. He can do construction-type work without ever having been taught...he just knows how. He's bold even if he may have fear. He's invented and reinvented himself and started over hundreds of time. He's learning ways to adapt and work around barriers, and to improve and grow. He's been on his own since he was 17...and for the past 9 years has lived independently from me, in other cities (some of them, freak-nasty huge cities) without a cent from family. That's impressive.
And yet...where is my focus? On the abrupt swear-word-laden, blast-in-my-face communication style, the addiction, the financial and employment and housing turmoil and all of the messiness that goes with the challenge of loving him.
I love when other people help by pointing out his strengths to me. I see it with new eyes and I can't tell you how appreciative I am of something other than "God, he's such an asshole, how do you stand it?!" When other people can see his bright light that shines through the crap. I love that. And it helps me see it too.
So whenever I get all uppity and full of myself about how "other people ought to be", wow, does the Universe stop me short and holds up a mirror to my face. "There but for the grace of God go I" and "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone...". Lordy, but we need to just love each other, and see the light in each other's faces.
I'm so grateful for the friends who stand by me...even when *I'M* harsh and rough, and unloving and judgmental...and am thinking I'm NOT all those things but just can't see it.
I'm going to share with you a bit of some email back-and-forth with a dear friend who I was processing some of this with. I print them here because maybe someone else has these thoughts that a "good mother" should never have. But have them we do. Learning to be authentic is the journey.
Speaking of letting go, how's your boy? He would have been around 12 or 13 when I met you I think, but I can't remember if I ever met him. I have a couple of pictures of him, one from a xmas card one year. Not having lived with all of his challenges, all of the struggles and harsh exterior aside, he's such a beautiful soul. Who knows why this time around has to be so hard for him (and you...and everyone in his path). 
I check out his page every once in awhile, to see what projects he's working on. The table he found in the alley...that made me cry, could feel his joy. It reminds me of working at the prison. I loved those men so much, it was like a bunch of enormous four year olds, and depending on the day, they would try so hard to figure out how to be in the world without causing harm. Then on a another day, they'd throw the biggest tantrums you've ever seen. 40 years old, six and a half feet tall, so broken, but no one deserves to be thrown away.
I think his most recent rampage at me was what he needed to break the tie that had re-established with my visit. It's like, we need a tie...are supposed to have one...can't maintain one.
And in his defense, I realize how super challenging it is for me to not always be trying to "fix' and "advise" and it's super hard for me to view him as a grown-ass adult (cuz, as you say, there is that element of forever 4). Sweet soul, fucked-up exterior, mal-firing brain.
Last night, I was having this ipiphany (can't spell) of my own hippocracy. (still can't spell...forgive me father, for I have sinned). I was all up in arms about how stupid people are (in reference to that sign I just sent you about abortion/gay rights), and was all high and mighty about how we need to accept people as they are, love them as they are created...and then a big ole smack in the middle of my forehead (Like...WOW, I could have had a V-8!). I thought about blogging about it, but it's just too raw, and I don't want him to accidentally read it, but it struck me, how utterly and completely I've failed at learning to love and accept him just as he is, just as he came into the world. How I've fought to make him different than he is, to fit in with everyone else, I've failed to foster his strengths. He's so damn contrary and mean and abrasive, and he's so hard to be in relationship with, and I have seen since day one how very few people like him, how he wasn't invited to birthday parties, excluded from stuff over and over and I just wanted his life to be EASIER and COMFORTABLE and HAPPY and in the process, I pushed on him to be other than he was capable of being. I didn't know for certain he wasn't capable, but damn...I'm not different than those who think gays should "make another choice" or the people I went up against who told me he would be fine if only I was "enough"....strict enough, consistent enough, lenient enough, nurturing enough...enough of something.
I ache that he suffers...that he suffers much to his own choices (medication and therapy is a tough, tough gig that usually doesn't yield stellar results in cases like his, or the side effects, expenses and follow-through required are not possible for him)...he doesn't see that his meanness um, shall we say, puts people off a tad?
I love that he's a survivor, but I really am facing right now, my struggle to let go of the desire that he was different, that we were different, and in the process of the misguided and impossible wishing, that *I* was different...enough...more...less...able to rejoice and accept all the wonder that he is and let the rest fall by the wayside.
One of my very favorite things, I shit you not, is realizing when I'm wrong. I love that I have enough brain in my head to get to that point, and then I say it out loud, and it just feels so human. And yes you are different, because a lot of people will never acknowledge their failures, if that's what you want to call them. You grow and grow and grow, while many sit stagnant in their own personal cesspool of fucked-upness and never bother to look more than half a centimeter out from their own selfish eyeballs. You are absolutely, perfectly "enough". And then some And some people ARE stupid, bless their hearts.
What I've noticed about your boy, in all his extremes (as much as a facebook page will show) is that he has such capacity for great enthusiasm and joy. It doesn't look pretty or tidy and he will never ever fit in anywhere, but I don't think that ultimately matters. He's got a magnetism for sure, and you can be certain you did five million things right that he's able to make it in this world at all.
He came out sort of "push me/pull you". I love you, I need you, get the fuck away from me. I'm VERY VERY smothery-protective. I hate that he suffers and feels pain and can't "get it", and probably never will. I DID, manage to get over rescuing. He get's no financial assistance whatsoever. If I won a lottery, I think I would buy a little house where he could live if he so chose. It would "be there for him", cuz I think having a roof is kind of a basic security right if at all possible. And food.
I've never known exactly where he "needed me"...he moves the target. He needs to KNOW that I'm close enough...he's a bit like a cat...it's all on his terms. He displays a second or two of shining generosity and compassion...every 10 years or so. I also managed, I think almost fully by now, to cease being is Rx mood stableizer. That almost killed me. Literally I think. I screen calls, listen for voice, need, issue...give it time before returning calls, let him work things out. He finds series of others to be his mood stableizers...they can only handle that gig for a very short time. He hates being alone, and hates being with other people, who quite simply, fail to meet his every need.
He taught me to do a lot of things differently from how I was raised because it simply wasn't possible to let that pattern set in again too deeply. I would be a liar if I said I wasn't inadvertently always trying to raise him just as I was raised, while claiming I wasn't.
I was sent a child I had zero idea how to deal with. I CAN say, I did my very best. With what I had and what I knew and what I was able to learn on the fly.
He never wanted to be held or snuggled. He nursed like a possessed demon, then shoved me away. Ran to me with scraped knee for a bandaid, then slapped me and went back out to play God...sounds funny now, doesn't it? Never was. Well, almost never. I DO have a sense of humor that has sustained me. He got that from both me and his bio dad. Humor could save him too.
I think you need to blog about it It's a beautiful, raw love story, really, and it's a testament to your strength and love that you're doing it exactly right. And good for you re: quitting the mood stabilizing job, because you know that mood will not be stabilized! The part of his brain that allows that kind of intensity is also the part that allows him such awesome creativity and artistic energy.
If you've made it to the end...bless you for hanging in there with me. This was one BIG-ASS synchronistic message, and it would be a shame to waste such a rich opportunity
As an added selling point, you get a "free" photo of your visit. Well, almost. On your way to the elevator, you have to stop in front of a gray screen, and have your photo taken. Then it is placed on a phony background. See ours above? So genuine. Here's what we really looked like...cold and wind-blown (but still very cute).
