Last night my emotional roller coaster dipped below my normal threshold which it occasionally does, but has not done in quite a while. Last night was one of those nights in which I lost control and started shouting the things I usually control myself not to say!
"I hate this life".
"Why am I trying so hard to save this family?"
"I hate all of this and I do not know why I bother, you should be out there living on the street instead of making your sisters and I suffer like this".
"Most parents would not tolerate this disrespectful insolence for as long as I have".
Then the worst thing a parent can say, "I hate you!".
This was in response to a fall out over the fact that my son has not cleaned up all his mess from his poppy preparation, only some of it, for weeks now. Instead of accepting that he needs to clean up more, he challenges me and turns it into a role reversal in which he is telling me off as if I am in the wrong.
Statements form my son hit me hard and disgusted me and that is why I started to react in such an irrational emotional way. My reaction was much more than anger and disappointment, it was also a deep sense of frustration that I have no control over his behaviour toward me or his sisters. I would almost be able to accept that I have no control over his personal decisions that affect his own body and his life, but when I have no control over how he treats me or his sisters and how I have no influence over what he deems as acceptable behaviour, that frustration is overwhelming at times. That is when I snap.
This is some of the onslaught I experienced from my son:
"I am doing it for you, I really really really don't want to do it."
"I told you, I told you, I told you".................(so many statements started with him shouting those three words aggressively at me that I do not even remember what followed all the "I TOLD YOU"s).
"I am clean, because I have had no opiates for two days, but smoking legal highs, drinking and popping pills, that is normal."
"You need to stop being such a cunt. You are insulting me because you don't see my achievements, You never appreciate when I am clean".
"Having no opiates is not nice, having the the runs, feeling like shit and you don't even care".
"You are selfish."
"You are in no way supporting me, it's all a lie".
"You should not criticize me for my drugs when I am doing it for you, sacrificing everything for you".
"You have no authority to be a cunt, you have a responsibility to make me wedges or chips or whatever I want when I want, midnight or any time, because it is your duty".
"You have given me no motivation, nothing in exchange for drugs, except being a selfish, cowardly, cunt of a mother who doesn't give a damn that he is doing this all for her".
Some of these statements were before I snapped and some were after and there was many ugly words being thrown about last night. It started because he did not finish the job I set out for him ages ago. The job that has been waiting weeks to be done and a few days ago it was halfway done. Because of a simple chore set by a parent, he retaliated and tried to put me in the wrong. Boundaries are always being crossed and I pointed that out! Because of this completely disrespectful behaviour I refused to make him dinner (the girls and I had pizza a few hours before, but he does not like pizza so I said I would make him something later).
When I started to walk away from the situation the remote control was flung at me with such force that I could hear the air swishing by me as it missed me. The last time, years ago, I got in the line of fire of a remote being thrown I had a split lip! Don't get me wrong, these more physical aspects of my son's anger are not every day behaviours and in fact do not happen very often. He has never laid a hand on me or his sisters, but as I said in another recent post, it is all relative, and it is not the number of times he has been aggressive or in what manner, the fact that he has been aggressive towards me and his sisters is enough to make it wrong.
Tomorrow he sees his key worker with a possible visit to the GP as well. Wednesday we are being visited by the Social Worker along with a member form the Family Solutions team to "see" whether or not we are the right "candidates" for their service! I am tempted, oh I am SO tempted to say on both occasions that I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!
Or do I keep on persevering and being beat down in hopes that soon someone will get through to him? Do I wait and see if he gets into the community rehab in Dec/Jan? I really honestly do not know how much more I can take, how much more I can allow. I have been at this point of inner conflict before, many times before! Each time I feel I am closer to my breaking point. No matter how strong we are, we all have a breaking point, yet I am consistently trying not to reach that point. Then I ask myself, am I really doing that? Am I fighting so that I don't reach my breaking point, or am I ignoring the writing on the wall and simply allowing things to continue as they are?
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