It isn’t easy to set boundaries and it is even harder to hold them. My son is off the rails again...another relapse and more wreckage. It could have been much worse but it also didn’t need to happen. I am really being forced to look at how my desire to help others just seems to get in the way of their own life circumstances. I want something better for them, so I get in there and really try to support them in finding something better, but they don’t want to do better, they want to do what they want to do...
And so here we are again. He has crashed and burned. A broken foot and black eye. Charges pending most likely. And I am expected one more time to bail him out. One more time I am supposed to come to the rescue and be the kind and the ever patient mother while he abuses me and manipulates. It is brutal loving an addict. It is just fucking savage.
But there is something to having life help you be done. After my last go round with a hopeless alcoholic/addict, I gained some skills. I mean, I didn’t want to gain those skills but apparently the universe thought that I needed them so I got to go many rounds with someone who pathologically lies, manipulates and cheats. I got to be exposed to someone who has no acquaintance with the truth and appears to be incapable of feeling anything for anyone else.
I didn’t know at the time I was living in that particular hell that it would prepare me for this most recent hell with my son. I didn’t know I was going to need mad boundary setting and holding skills...but turns out I did and do. And I have them this time.
One of the things about surviving narcissistic abuse is that you either succumb or you heal that which allowed you to become involved with the narcissistic fucker in the first place. And lord knows I have done a great deal of fucking work over the last two years. Work that I apparently would desperately need to do in order to move into this phase of my life where I have no more fucks to give, not even about my own child.
I love him with all that I am but I do not like him a great deal of the time. He is angry, belittling, hateful, argumentative, hurtful, unkind, deceitful and completely disrespectful. And I do not have room in my life anymore for anyone like this, not even my own kid.
Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for ourselves or anyone else, is to allow them to bear the full brunt of the consequences of their actions. This is hard to do with anyone but with your own child it feels impossible. But one day, if you are lucky, you wake up and realize that if you do not get out of the way, you will be so part of the problem that you will not be able to ever extricate that which is yours from that which is theirs. And that creates a death spiral for all involved.
I love my son and now the most loving thing I can do for him and for me is to walk away and allow him to figure out his shit. He is smart, he is resourceful and he has skills. And the reason he has failed this far in life to actually put all that to good use is that I keep rescuing him. I have kept hard, really hard consequences at bay with money, cars and places to live. But I am all done with that now. He is going to have to figure it all out, without me.
One of the best things I have ever learned was that my worth is set by my own actions...or inactions. If I am being treat badly it is because I am allowing a person in my life to treat me that way. And no matter who they are, they are present in my life because I am letting them be present in my life.
And I believe I have finally learned that boundaries are not mean or hard or really difficult...if you keep in mind what you believe you are worth, if your own life and best interest remains solely your responsibility. Then the holding of boundaries gets so much easier.
The most loving thing I can do for him is to let him have the full brunt of the consequences of his actions. The most loving thing I can do for myself is to walk away so my temptation to “save” him again is far enough away that I am do not act on it.
We teach people how to treat us. And we allow the situations and the perpetrators of less than treatment and abuse to happen in our lives. If we are adults, we have the means to exit abusive situations unlike when we were kids and had few choices. But unfortunately it takes a very long time for us to realize this as adults. We allow the feelings of our own childhoods to keep us stuck in abusive patterns with people who are supposed to love us because it is the familar hell, and avoid that unfamiliar heaven.
Today I walk toward the unfamiliar heaven and pray my son does too. This path is not easy but it is most likely to lead us both to a better future. I mean, I know my path will and his will too if he can let go of being a perpetual victim in his own life and see that it is him that is making him so unhappy.
It is a hard place to dwell when the boundaries you have to set and hold are with your own child. I mean there is no one else on earth I want to support, love, be with and help on this planet more than my kids. No one. But I also see how very much my desire to love, support, help and be with them has hurt them. And that we are all in this place in life now where my continued involvement and failure to hold boundaries is damaging us all.
Part of holding boundaries is being able to let go. To let go of your role, your part, and your desire for things to work out differently than they are. I can no longer afford to do that. I can no longer engage with him on any level, so I must walk away. It isn’t what I want. But it is what I must do. And I know, from my more recent hard experiences, that my life will continue to soar and evolve in direct proportion to the amount of boundaries I can hold and things I can let go of...
Again...still.
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