I haven’t written this week because I have been consumed by grief doing everything in my power trying to keep my mind busy. It hasn’t worked as well as I had hoped but it has given me time to come to terms with the reality that I set my own pain and selfishness aside to give my oldest son what he desires most – a relationship with his biological father.

I would have done anything to keep him here with me. I cried and I hurt. He is now 3.5 hours away from me, he left Sunday. It’s not the same around here, it is so quiet and calm. I miss him so much.

I picked up the phone a couple nights ago to call him home for dinner, and when it hit me he wasn’t just down the street I realized that I was going to be okay. He’s not gone forever, I just won’t get to see him very often.

I am okay.

I don’t know what hurts more right now, my eyes or my heart. It has been so long since I cried this much.

My son called my mother and told her a bunch of lies – she believed him. Since he was born she’s always been sticking up for him, constantly telling me how I’ve done it all wrong. This is coming from the mother who left us with my father when I was four.  She married a man and moved away, tried to have a baby with him, while taking us for visits with her only a couple times a year. This from a woman who never gave me an example of how to be a mother.

Through it all, with no example and nothing to show me how to be a mother, I still prevailed and did the best I could. I was already one up on her by raising my son. When I was 13 and went to live with her she sent me right back to my aunt’s because her husband left her and she couldn’t take care of me – because her husband left her.

Wow.

My son spent a little time with his father this weekend. I guess it looks like he is really leaving. I’m all mixed up right now and have no idea what on earth to do.

I miss my little boy, I miss my son. He is a stranger to me these days and I am so unsure as to how to approach this entire situation. My kid hates me with a passion, and this has been slowly evolving over the past year or so. He is angry with me because he can’t go to the school he wants to go to, or because I can’t drive him 30 minutes down the road to go to the movies because I am having some health problems.

He hates me because I won’t let him play paintball in the yard at 11 at night to bother the neighbors, or wander the streets in the middle of the night with a group of kids. He also hates me because I make him do a chore or two when he gets home from school, or because I make him clean his toilet. He hates me because I don’t have enough money to buy the game he wants, or because I shut his cell phone off for being disrespectful. He despises me for not allowing him to bully his younger siblings, and for taking his video games away for getting an F in science.

Taking basic disciplinary actions to try to gain control over my out of control son has now made me the enemy. He wants his father. His father who has never, since the day he was born, taken the slightest interest in him, or even cared.

I took his phone, video games, and his friends away from him for getting into an “altercation” at school. How dare I. The nerve!

I have now become the enemy, and my husband – well he is just basically non-existent and is ignored by my son. I am lost. Last night on the couch he refused to do the dinner dishes and looked directly at my husband and said “no, you have nothing else to take from me so I’m not doing it.” I thought I’d die.

No one wants to think “okay hey, I’m totally screwing my kid up so bad, she won’t even be able to function by the time she’s twenty!”

Well, I hope no one wants to think that. In all honesty I wonder that a lot. I look at my kids and I see their every day kid happiness and I wonder if that is sufficient. I’m reading a fantastic book right now (I’m actually having a hard time putting it down!) and a character is talking about his basic needs in life that were and were not met, and how it has affected him throughout his life.  It really got me thinking about my own life, my own needs, and how well I am meeting the needs of my kids.

So that leaves me asking, how do you know if you’re screwing up your kid? (Okay, aside from the obvious signs like killing animals or being a school bully, or other weird creepy things that might set off signals that could be heard from across the globe.) What are the subtle signs that could tell me ‘hey, straighten up!’ because I am uncertain as to how my kids are really doing emotionally?

I pay very close attention to what my children need in all areas of their lives, and try to focus on each area equally – meaning one area doesn’t need more or less attention than another.  Of course they have nice clothes and clean comfy shoes, they have good yummy dinners and healthy packed lunches but that’s not everything and I know that!

I have had a terrible time getting my meds right, getting my health together, getting my family together, and keeping us all together. Sometimes it really feels like I’ve totally run out of glue and I can’t find my ground to hold everything together. It’s an extremely frustrating process for everyone in my house almost daily.

To sum it all up the baby has to get tubes in his ears and my 7 year old has to get his tubes taken out, my 14 year old son is still having some trouble getting stable on his meds, and I have been having a terrible time getting my type 2 diabetes under control. It’s been a roller coaster ride for me, and considering I am having major surgery in less than a month I’ve been feeling slightly overwhelmed!

My endocrinologist reviewed my detailed blood work and decided to start me on synthroid,  since my thyroid is acting up. He was suspicious that my thyroid going a little wacky was the culprit of most of my evils these days.  Bingo!

He could not have been more correct.  I love my endocrinologist!