The Hardest thing Part 3

Today is the last day of my temporary break in my self depricating humor and blaming the worlds woes on celebrities and gravity. Tomorrow will be right on schedule for Funny Stuff Friday  If you want something to make you smile you want to check out the categories  ” it’s juicy” or  ”potpourri”.  Today I am going to let you in to one of the most personal issues of my life. It’s a long post and probably not funny to anyone. I don’t apologize. If you haven’t read part 1 and part 2 , you probably should do that first (click here) or your not going to really understand what’s going on in this post AT ALL.

Warning this is the longest and hardest of all, what you will read below if you chose to read is a horrible painful series of experiences, you  may very well find most of it offensive and terrifying. This post contains mature content and subject matter, it contains foul langue and the story is sadly true.

So we moved back to the woods, my son is taking about 3 different meds to help with all his new alphabetical diagnosis and we got the bonus of daily shots for human growth hormone so he could grow. Excellent.  New schools again, new people to teach. A new chance for him as he was now older to make friends and he had been mainstreamed so this was good. No longer did anyone ever even think of aspergers let alone autism when they saw him or diagnosed him instead it was more behavioral or emotional issues.  To say he did good in school would be a lie, he struggled. Hard. He never really had a foundation of education to build on. He spent all his time in offices and suspended from 1st grade up. With a spattering of patience but truly he was so behind.  So what would you do, if you were forced for 8 hours a day to sit with adults who expected you to look at alien things and acted like you already know it,  who danced around you and had an eagle eye.  You act out. It’s what your good at. Show your butt and get kicked out more, because your really good at that, you have experience at it, it’s a science.  He’s not stupid.  I fought more and argued more and basically forced them to avoid removing him and he knew it, so he would go over the top if a test was put in front of him rather than look like an idiot on paper.   He also struggled with peers.  Remember he had only had 1 friend and that was in part 1, they had long since moved but stayed in touch.  He was lonely and ready to follow anyone that would accept him.  But they didn’t even steer him down the wrong path, instead since he was smaller, and socially uncomfortable they bullied him. Mercilessly. Daily, not a second that he was out of the house was he not under fire.  We gave him all the speeches, support, and  all the therapist all the meds.  But you could see as he grew older something was not working out, he was constantly in pain, emotional deep hurting pain. The kind of pain all the hugs in the world wont cure, especially since I had only gotten 4 hugs from him in his life. Remember in part 1, the “don’t touch him thing”.   The years were rolling by and we were truly just doing the best we could to keep him entact, physically and emotionally, and hoping for education.  Around 5th grade at an IEP meeting it was put very clearly for the first time, to stop it. Like any mom, I wanted to see my son graduate, I expected it, even with his problems.  They pointed out there was little to no chance of that ever happening.  He was always suspended the week of state tests, you know those tests that if the schools don’t do good on they lose funding, odd how many “not so bright kids” got suspended every year for those.  He was passing, not because he earned it, but because the teacher didn’t want him again, or some crazy, push the kid thru the cracks law which I am sure involved funding.  The new Psychiatrist was awesome. My son liked him they bonded, he worked hard to try new things, and work with Dusty, he listened to him.  This is also the Dr that asked me about his family mental health issues. What? Dude I am wiggidy whack but not a looney tune, big difference.  My mom, well that’s sketchy, my dad, nope fine, my siblings nope they are alright. What about his father, I looked at my husband.  A slap in the face, he didn’t have my husbands DNA. So I had to go back and think about the man that did. How could I have overlooked this?  My ex-mother in law, god rest her soul, had serious mental health issues. Not the go to the therapist type.  The institutionalized for years type. The get your kids taken away and can’t be alone or drive for the rest of your life type.  Surely this couldn’t have anything to do with my son.  It was suggested my son may be suffering from depression with serious anger issues.  What’s the alphabet for that? Oh good he still gets to keep all those ADHD, ODD, ED and we are just adding new stuff. Awesome.  Seriously who wouldn’t be depressed in his situation.  But it was different, we explained that he wasn’t always down, sometimes he was invincible like super man with the most hilarious outrageous activities and ideas. This meant he didn’t have depression right?  We started to track it to make sure.  Then one day we got a call. To the school. Like every other call on every other week for the last 7 years. Only this time it was serious.  My son had gotten up from his class and walked out, walked into another classroom and loudly stated.  “Mrs. %&$  is a bitch and she needs to die.” closed the door and went into the bathroom where he broke down sobbing.  I was so pissed.  We sat down with him and calmed him down. Then immediately sat down with the Teacher.  I explained to him that she was someones mom, someones sister, and he had no right to say that about anyone.  How would he feel if someone did that to me. His father read him the riot act about respect and women, he had heard it all his life, this time it was harsh and firm.  I pointed out that this teacher ( even though I didn’t care for her he would never know that).  Dedicated her life to helping to teaching, and that she was a mom to a little baby. Did he want to take that mom away from that baby?  He cried more.  The teacher said she accepted his apology, but admitted she was scared.  The principal pointed out this was a terroristic threat and he would be suspended for 3 days.  We went home that night and something had turned something had changed.

Let me clear it up in case anyone is wondering, we are strict, harsh parents.  We punish hard and we mean it. As I said in post 1, no matter what your disability is, you have to function within the rules of society or you can not be part of it.  So he was to write a 3 page report on women and violence and the importance of respecting women, that was part 1 of the punishment, and if you think that’s not hard, remember my kid at 13 can’t tell time or write or read cursive, and math was an enigma. Although he could read at a high school level.  Odd huh? We explained that another part of his punishment would be us cleaning out his room since that would be his new hangout.  Sending a kid to their room when they have a phone, stereo computer and TV is NOT punishment in my book.  He would have his bed, books and a journal. That’s it.  The problem is when me and the DH went in to clean out Dusty’s room we found some disturbing things.  Our youngest childs stuffed toys, decapitated, and maimed.  A few articles of of clothing that not only did we not buy but were not his. We looked at each other and every bad thing that can run thru your mind did.  But the worst part was when we moved the things in his closet to find what could only be described as ” incendiary devices” . Yeah. There were a bunch of soda bottles with liquid hooked up to wires, that lead to a micro chip laying next to a lighter.  My heart crumbled, and panic, fear, and a whole lot of pissed off took over my body, I chocked back the feeling swelling up in my throat.  I knew this would be hard.  My husband examined and dismantled the “sudo bombs”.  We went downstairs.  We asked the son we fought so hard for all these years what that was for?  He said he just liked making bombs. In his room, he said it like, ” I like goldfish crackers”.  This wasn’t our first run in with him and fire.  We held back our tempers and tried to cloak our fears.  “Son, do you realize you could have blown up the house?”  ” Started a fire, your little brothers room  and sisters room are right next to you, what if a fire started  and they couldn’t get out and died.” His answer was that he would kill himself. I said you realize that wouldn’t bring them back right?  “So wouldn’t it be better to not do dangerous things, especially in the house.”  He looked at us like we were speaking another language.  From somewhere out of the darkness a thought sprang thru my head and out of my mouth, it over road my being mommy. ” Do you want to hurt the people at school, was this for them?”  His tears said it all.

As a mom, I would fight to the death for any of my children. Know that. But as a member of society, I can not put the life of my child above the life of anyone else. No matter how bad it hurts, no matter how much of that mommy instinct tells you to. I could not let my child hurt anyone, be it a child or adult.  If I knew there was a child in my other children’s schools that was thinking this way I would never let them go back.  I would hate the parent that turned a blind eye, that was so damn greedy or pompous or scared that they ignored the signs that lead to the pain or injury or god forbid death of another.  My husband and I went to another room to have a “holy shit moment” and collect ourselves as how best to deal with it.  Dusty took all the choices away in a split second.  He grabbed a pair of scissors and drug them across his wrist. So in the blink of an eye, my husband was on the floor with our son in a life and death battle for a pair of scissors. I was on the phone calling 911.  We calmed him down and when the police came they looked at us like we were insane for calling the police on our own child. I got on the phone and found a stabilization unit, we drove him there, that night.  The intake administrator asked him a series of questions, and he answered while never looking at her. When she said do you want to hurt or kill anyone, he said yes, when she said who,  he looked at me and with an evil smile said, ” I don’t want to say cause she’s in the room”.  Needless to say he was admitted. I left that night needing to vomit. I came home and sat in my shower shaking and gagging.  This is what hell feels like.  My son, my baby, my little warrior, he verbalized that he wants to kill me and he meant it.  My husband tried to comfort me, but there is no comforting a mother who knows her son is truly capable of this act.   The hospitalization only last 10 days ( thank you insurance company).  We went every day, and attended all the parenting classes and group therapies. And he was miraculously healed.  He was now bi polar with bonus psychotic tendencies.  Whats worse than autism? That.  The Dr’s gave him about 6 new meds, and took the, lets dope him  up to the gills and blame the parents therapeutic method.  Within 10 days he was back in.  This time he was going to stab his dad with a plate he had smashed, and was thoroughly upset that I locked him out of the house and warned his dad, who was on his way home. The police got there the same time as his dad, and Dusty cried, he said he had to kill his baby brother, to save him, because the voices were going to get him. But if he killed him he would be safe.  I will give you a moment to choke that down. What do you do? Clearly you send your kid right back to the same place, mental health crisis until.  The very smart female doctor called me and said I needed to come in because my son hated me and she needed to talk to me to find out what I had done to make him hate me so much.  By the time I got there he was in lock down because he had tried to stab a nurse with a pencil and broken out the “unbreakable glass” in the observation room.  I was taken into a room with several important people, remember the school ambush thing. Yeah same thing but with Doctors.  They questioned my love for my child, asked about abuse, questioned our parenting.  No matter how insecure you feel about your ability to handle being a parent this is the rock bottom.  It’s not even worth attempting to explain what lengths you have and would go to for your child.  Then they brought him in the room and he climbed into my lap like a little baby, and said, ” Mommy, I love you, Dr ^$^& is trying to hurt me, she’s done horrible things.”  The Doctor was shocked, their admin apologized to me, and miraculously  he was again cured at the 14 th day as per our insurance.  We also got note in the discharge paperwork. ” patient is not to be accepted back to this facility under any circumstances, as his condition is out of our scope of care. WTF does that mean?  This is a mental hospital, he has a mental condition, and he’s “beyond your scope of fucking care?”   Oh but clearly he is within our scope of care right? Cause we totally went to medical school, NO, so just like friends, family, Doctors, Teahers, the hospital had now said, NO.  This time when picking him up, he was UP, way friggin UP, he was superman, he was gonna be a rock star surfer/skateboarder.  As we exited the building we did as we always did every day of his life and tried to build it into a teaching experience. “Dusty, so what did you learn?”  ” I learned to say what they want to hear, and to turn them against each other. they are stupid and easy to manipulate”.  Remember where I said my kid wasn’t stupid about 300 times in this series. Well clearly he is not, he may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.  I could write a book on the next 3 years of our life, but to save you, I will just say, It involved ambulances, various mental hospitals, including 1 that was an entire state away because it was the best, because we wanted to drive 8 hours every weekend to be with him, because we wanted to follow an ambulance carrying our son to another mental hospital that hadn’t placed him on the ” too screwed up to help list”  instead of taking our daughter to the airport to fly her first time to congress because she had been the only 1 in our state to get nominated for this honor.

I am so sorry Samantha, you were the first thing I ever did right, and instead of happily helping you pack and driving you proudly to the airport, I was behind an ambulance and a young scared sophomore in high school had to “catch a ride to the airport and fly across the country alone.”

The 4th hospital he was in, during a visit he was punching himself in the arm, when we asked why, he said it was because he was going to get an orderly fired.  The next day, the hospitals lawyers called, there had been a claim of abuse. My son had bruises and was hurt by an orderly. Do you know what it takes to do the right thing? I had to ask where the bruises were, then I had to explain what I had seen my son do. I had to stand on the side of the man doing his job which meant go against my son. No matter how wrong it was that he was doing this. I had to go against him, again.  The next hospital decided that he was so far beyond crisis, and this was a permanent serious mental health condition that my son needed to be institutionalized.  Not like when he was a baby with that fortune telling guy. But instead in the same State Mental Institution that his biological grandmother had lived in for so many years. He could get out, when he was better.  The worlds viable danger to himself and others were on the papers.  We had to drive to some stupid office building in our county and sign something.  In the parking lot I almost collapsed. I stalled all I could, I was shaking and sweating and crying. My husband with tears in his eyes, said, ” I can’t sign it honey, I am not considered his dad by law.”  He was right, some hospitals wouldn’t share info with my husband and no one would let him sign anything.  I guess being the dad meant being the sperm donor that hadn’t seen or heard from this kids and didn’t care. Because in their eyes it did not mean the man who gave everything, the patient, understanding, loving, never giving up dedicated man. The man who never questioned the cost of any facility or travel, but only how it would benefit his son.  Yeah that guy, the guy who picked me up off the floor one too many times when I just couldn’t handle things and let me  break down in private.  They guy who thru the past 7 years had never missed a meeting, never raised a hand. The man who cried and begged for his son to be ok, he on paper was not his dad.  So this was up to me, how could I? I fought so hard for so many years. As he held me up and reached for the door, his cell phone rang.  A judge in our county had ruled that since our son was in a hospital in another county ( 3 hours away) that they couldn’t institutionalize him because the law was written that you could only be judged in the county to which you reside.  Thank you Judge. ( for now). So he went from there to another private pay hospital. When they were tired of fighting the insurance he was “cured”.  He came home. He had missed over 1 1/2  year of school at this point, and since we had to tell them why he didn’t come back after the teacher incident, they didn’t want him back, so he went to “alternative school”.  It was a lot different, this is where bad kids went. Not SPED kids.  They tried to make arrangements and accommodations but since their biggest thing was making bad kids into good kids they weren’t really ready for it.  Plus Dusty had new skills, he was psychically bigger than me now. ( shout out to the human growth hormone shots).  Also he had all this cool and expensive training on how to be seriously manipulative, and saw no one as a threat anymore. He had medically hospitalized peers in some of the mental hospitals, but since our insurance ran out he was all cured and safe and junk.  But he was home.  We could do this, we always have.

My daughter was now a senior in High School, when we asked her what she wanted for a graduation present. ( expecting to hear car or trip to Cozumel)  She said something so unexpected. She looked at me and my husband and said. I know I will be 18 in a few months, but I want to be adopted. Here is her quote as best as I can remember, ” You see, your my daddy, you will always be my daddy, you taught me to ride a bike, you helped me with my math, you punished me when I was bad but still loved me every day. When they call out my name at graduation I want it to be yours, because your my dad. I want my diploma to have your name on it, because your my dad, and I am proud and lucky to have you.”  Needless to say, there were a lot of tears involved.  My husband had brought the subject up to me before, years before, how proud he would be, to legally be their dad, but he would not adopt just 1, how would Dusty feel to be the only 1 in the family to not have our name.  So for the first time in her life, and probably the last time, my daughter had a long private discussion with her brother and asked him to do it for her.  He did. Luckily if you remember from part I had worked in the legal field, and a friend of mine handled the adoption, the kids took the tests and passed. We took the tests and passed, and it was done.  I questioned my husband as to why he would do this? That would tie him forever to a kid with special needs, he answered, I guess I’m nuts too, plus that’s my kid.  I bring up the adoption thing because it becomes important later. There are lots more papers to sign.

So we are all functioning like a family. ( note the lack of the word normal, because there is no normal family thank you very much).  We had our daily get called the school because of him and all that jazz, whatever, punish, behavior programs, blah blah yaddy yah.  So one afternoon I had told Dusty to unload the dishwasher.  ( we always worked on life skills, cause if you can wash a dish you can get a job)  I had succumb to the blatant painful sucky  fact that I would never see him walk across the stage at graduation or even go to a prom, his scores on testing showed him  functioning on a 2nd and 3rd grade level in all subjects except reading where he was above grade level.  Did I mention he isn’t stupid? But he really has big issues with tests, combined that with the fact he hadn’t really had an education since those grades, but instead just a holding cell at school.  So yes I had chore charts in my house, everyone had chores, and if you didn’t do them right you did them again, and again and again. Because as my husband says, “practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.”  I wanted my son to have basic life skills, like laundry, cooking, dishes, sweeping.  It was probably way too important to me, but he was going to be an adult soon and if I couldn’t fix everything I could at least teach him to survive.  So I tell him to unload the dishwasher, and he rolled his eyes and muttered in disgust. Maybe that’s ok for some people, but I did mention we are strict right?  I did mention I don’t care what your problem is, you have to function in society. I got up and went to him and said, “unload the dishwasher please”  he pushed past me and said “fuck you”. Holy freaking don’t even go there dude. I am not that momma.  I grabbed his shirt and began leading him to the sink, he shoved my arm off and said, ” what are you doing?” ,  “I’m gonna put soap in your filthy mouth and watch you unload the dishwasher.”  He put his hands on my chest and pushed as he yelled fuck you again.  I took my right hand and drew back, and slapped him straight across his face.  Yeah judge me, go ahead, I can take it.  By this time his little brother had run upstairs in standard dusty is having an emergency protocol, and his big sister who was also taller and bigger than me was at my side. As he balled up his fist, and drew back to punch me, I raised my finger and said, ” Samantha if he hits me and I go down, whip his ass”  Please understand I do not in any way condone or excuse anyone ever striking a child, or violence of anykind, however I do believe when that child is nearly a man and decides to take a stand as a man and man handle a woman or in this case his mother, he needs to see strength not fear that would feed into his power trip.  He cursed, threatened to gut me like a pig and dance in my blood and then reminded me not to sleep. Then he left, I called his dad, he came home.  Dusty didn’t.  As the night grew on, we became worried, we called the police. I told them what happened and they said that running away isn’t against the law, and we got the ” learn how to parent your kid” look again.  The next morning I called the school and told them he had ran away so if he showed up to call, if not that was why, and that we had called the police and they said, “oh well”  The school told us to go to Juvy and sign papers on him as a runaway ASAP.  So we did.  But I knew I would find him, see we did our detective work and he had little social interaction so it wasn’t hard to figure out from his cell phone who he was calling then to trace that to a location.  We borrowed a different car so he wouldn’t recognize us and went to that neighborhood as school let out. I figured he would come to meet his friends. I figured right. I called the police and said he had a standing order and we found him, they said good we will throw away the order, and I said No, you will come and pick him up.  They were shocked I wanted him picked up. I was shocked when we saw him pull a knife on the cop.  We ran towards him screaming NO NO put the knife down, luckily for once he listened as the cop was drawing his gun.  He was taken to juvy on the charge of being a runaway.  2 days later he had court, in his orange jumpsuit with handcuffs and shackles.  The other cases were abuse, drugs, burglary, my kid was in jail because I had him arrested for running away over doing the dishes?  As I watched my baby boy with all his problems paraded into the courtroom looking like a hardened criminal I cried again deep inside.  When the judge read the charge his lawyer ( we were ordered to pay for even though we put him in jail) said it was an accident your honor, his mother slapped him and so he had left to find safety. The female judge who makes Judge Judy look like mother Theresa turned her fiery eyes on me and told me to stand. Shaking. Scared, and knowing I was wrong I stood up.  The Judge asked me if I struck my son. I told her,  “yes your honor I did, I slapped him solidly against the cheek with force.”  She looked at my son and asked him if I hit him, he said yes, then she asked him why, ” he said cause the bitch was gonna put soap in my mouth for telling her to fuck off because I didn’t want to do the dishes.”  Without missing a beat, she said, well your lucky she only slapped you in the face, that’s disgraceful and no person let alone your mother should tolerate that from anyone. The attorney brought up his school issues and even though he didn’t understand it blanketed over his mental health issues.  The judge ordered a recess so she could make some calls and check his files.  When court resumed, she made my son stand and she said, ” I don’t know who you think you are, or what your diagnosis is, but I will tell you this. If I were your momma I would pop you too, hard, daily.  Also my bailiff reported that as you were leaving my courtroom you said, ” fuck this shit and fuck that judge?”  Needless to say, his fate was sealed.  ” he proudly said yeah I did so what?”  so what?  big flashing read arrows of what not to say to a pissed off judge.  ” I will tell you what, you have 2 weeks in jail to take some time to think, think about how hard you have it in your middle class home with a family that fights for you even when you don’t see it, and maybe you can learn some manners.”  Jail is different than hospitals. there is no family day, or therapy, you sit, you stew, you think, it sucks. I would like to say my son was scared straight.  But I would be lying.  After a couple days he decided to go with what he knew, the nuthut route.  So he told us he purposely played up being crazy to get put in a hospital because you got ice cream and field trips at a hospital not in jail.  Considering his problems were at least 52% medical we actually backed this.  He was placed in another hospital but this time by the court.  Where he learned some cool new tricks. Cutting himself, and getting what he wanted by saying his rights were being infringed upon. He even drug the ACLU in and came up with some trans gender rights infringement crap. Which made family therapy oh so much fun. NOT. Yeah he had heard of some thing that would allow him to have a lawyer to get him the right to manipulate people around by saying he was gay or trans gender, this also gave him fodder at therapy to say how we were suppressing his gayness by not accepting him because of our staunch religious beliefs. Actually it was laughable.  Remember me and God broke up, plus seriously we are not the type of people that judge others on their sexuality, religion, or race. We just aren’t. But was my son a master manipulator who would go to any lengths to get his way.  If I had my choices would my son be gay? No. He would graduate, go to prom, college, date, get married and life would be butterflies and unicorns.   But would I rather have a happy stable gay son then a son that is so screwed up black and decker can’t help.   Most definitely and if I even thought this was the case I would have gotten on board fully.  After a couple months, they caught on to him. Which apparently really pissed him off because he sent another patient to the ER and the next week, a nurse.  The hospital had my son returned to Juvy and the judge who placed him there with the recommendation that he be State Institutionalized due to profound mental health issues.  It took months, expensive lawyers and 2 battling judges arguing over who had jurisdictional rights to send my kid away. While he sat in jail, with no meds, no therapy, and no school, he really lost his mind. At one point one of the judges said they would send him to bootcamp. Dusty was for this until he found out they would cut his hair. So he pulled the ultimate in Nutbaggery manipulation.  He made a break for it and ran thru the jail butt naked skipping and screaming, ” it puts the lotion on it’s skin or else it gets the hose again.”  Did I mention he wasn’t stupid? And yes it’s OK to laugh, that is priceless. No haircut but express route to the big boy State Mental Hospital. Last stop, he was committed, legally committed, on papers. My baby.  He did well there, meaning he used his expertise in manipulation to get home fast and  become sane.  Once home the school system decided he would go to a special school for kids that didn’t have a chance in another county and they would pay for it just to keep him the hell away from their school. Dusty was 4 months short of legal age to quit school in our lovely state.  So he went.  I wont get into the fact he had a ” teacher/therapist/creeepy nutbag bitch who crushed on him and talked about sex with him alone a lot. And when I found out how I told her she needed to watch what she was doing and stay away from my kid. And how she convinced my son to turn me into to CPS ( child protection services) for among other things attempting to run him over with my van?  WTH?  Anyway 3 days into the whole drama he came clean and said that she wanted him to do it, and they made it up because I said she would get fired for having explicit sex talks alone with my child. It didn’t matter anymore. He had endangered the welfare of my youngest child and brought so much drama and hate and violence into our house that it wasn’t a home. If he hated me so much just go.  I gave up. CPS, laughed it off when we as an entire family showed up at their offices 3 days in a row demanding they handle this asap. The school was threatened, I saw a lawyer and blahdy blah.  Did I want to fight for him anymore? Seriously I fought for him on his behalf his entire life, and we were so minuscule that it didn’t matter if he tore us all apart.  It proved there was nothing important on the planet, not one person, whose life meant more than getting what he wanted right that minute.  I fought all these years and this was the biggest slap in the face of all. School got out, and by law he didn’t have to go back. No diploma no GED no thing. I made him promise to take GED courses and get his GED. Yeah ok.  The pretest showed he couldn’t qualify for being in the same room as the test let alone pass it.  So I spent the next year explaining how important education was, choices, options, trades, jobs.  We got him a state ID because NO I would not sign for him to get a drivers license, as a car is a weapon, and I couldn’t take a chance of him not being responsible and hurting another or himself.  He had learned our address and his date of birth but still couldn’t write in cursive and was tripped up on the difference between county, country and state.  As I helped him fill out job applications I realized how big his deficit was.  Like knowing the difference in a.m. as opposed to p.m.  No one locally would hire him. They had pretty much watched the journey of his teen years unfold in our small town. My youngest son was told on the pee wee football field during his first game that his brother was in jail.  During a youth baseball game he when he was up to bat, we heard, your brothers crazy instead of swing batter batter.  We didn’t keep it a secret, it wouldn’t have mattered. No more than it is acceptable to chain him up in a shed out back would it have been acceptable for us to pretend this didn’t happen.  When people would see us, they would tell us, we saw your older son walked down the road wearing “eyeliner”  OMG NO…  I would say really? was he stabbing anyone with it?  They would act shocked because they had no idea what it was like in our world. What it was like to pick your battles because you would need the strength for the next hospital or court date and his putting on guy liner after he was out of the house was not earth shattering. Did I like it? Hell no, was it worth world war 3, again Hell no.

The little family country corner store decided to give him a job, but he could never remember his schedule or read what he had written down, so he would show up first thing in the morning and hang there all day whether he was on the schedule or not.  Problem is, he creeped  people out.  He became stalkerish. He made people nervous. Oh yeah and he didn’t do his job.  Even though he wanted it really bad. Like in our life they found it exhausting to remind step by step every little thing.  He lost his job 1.5 weeks in.  I found out his only job was to take out the trash. Hard job right? In his world it was, you see, a bell would ring if someone walked, in, or a cash register would open or someone would drop something and there were always people everywhere talking, and since he needed to be accepted  he would rather talk to the people and the people felt uneasy with the fact he had no social skills and would blurt oh things like, ” oh yeah the time I was in the mental hospital I beat up this kid.”   They apologized to us. The had thought they could give him a chance and possibly mentor him.  We had learned everyone thought that. That clearly it was just our deficit of parenting or lack of mentoring and they could surely do it better.  Wow I remember feeling like that, a long time ago, with judgement on others.

A week before he turned 18 he left again, not to come back.  We watched the surveillance cameras at our house that night and saw how he went around the house gathering things and throwing them out the windows, not just his stuff, all of our stuff, and how he walked around outside and picked it all up until he walked out of camera range.  Did I call the cops again? No. Why? Seriously whats the point, he will be 18 in a week or so, the cops didn’t care when he was a little kid, plus the entire lawyer bill again, we were broke, dead ass broke, because during all this I got some crappy diagnosis that involved me not working, and needing surgery, the brain type.  Basically he made a choice. We didn’t sleep well, we worried, we guessed, I threw up in the shower a lot. 2 days before he turned 18 he showed up in the yard with a cop, in a cop car in his cop uniform from another county.  He explained he had met this cop and this cop had taken him in and was going to be his mentor and guide him.  I invited said “out of your jurisdiction hiding a juvenile cop into my house”  While Dusty gathered whatever stuff he had forgotten steal when he left the last time. This cop passed judgement on me before he met me, no telling what Dusty had told him. But something didn’t set right with me about this cop. I knew cops, no one would do what this man was doing. Clearly he thought I would be intimated by his little uniform and car. Apparently Dusty forgot to be honest and tell him I fear NO ONE. I made him count Dusty’s meds and made him sign for them, explaining there was surely a street value and I didn’t think it wise Dusty have them in his possession but how important it was he actually took them.  The cop agreed. Creepy cop.  The next week the cop called us, Dusty had taken off in the night, to parts unknown he needed to meet with us the next day in his jurisdiction.  That night Dusty called from a cell phone saying the cop got him drunk and took his wallet and there were pictures and possibly sex involved and that the cop was a bad guy and he was on a bus to a place 4 hours away to see a girl he met in a hospital a year ago. Instinct tells you to go kill said cop. Experience tells me, sadly, my kid will say or do anything to get what he wants no matter the consequence.  We met the creepy cop.  We got Dusty’s meds back, none had been taken. He said he wouldn’t let Dusty take them with alcohol, seriously? Alcohol? You know how old he is Mr Law Enforcement officer. He also said yeah he let Dusty drink and there was a fight with his ex boyfriend and the guy didn’t like Dusty and so Dusty left.  I walked away got in my car. My husband managed to stand there and talk to that predator piece of shit. Then he screwed up, and walked up to my window and said, ” I hope I didn’t offend you I was doing the best I could to help him to be his mentor, I waited until he was over 18 to bring up sex…  As tears of fire burned down my cheeks and bile in my throat, ” I said no, your a sick mutherfuckin pedophile who preyed upon a weak kid who you thought no one cared about. Get the hell away from my car before I kill you.” I meant it.  I drove off. I also reported the entire incident to the “place” he worked, and where he still works, because he’s someones cousin in this small backwoods shit hole.  You can now add COPS to the list of people who wont stand up for your child, you know the Doctors, teachers, principals,hospital  list. yeah that list.

My son called 2 days later from another cell phone he borrowed to tell me it didn’t’ work out in that town but he found the girl and they got married, but her parents wanted him to leave so they bought him a bus ticket to New Orleans.  What? Ok I knew the married part was BS cause you can’t do that in that time frame and you have to have ID and stuff, I had his ID, the cop gave it back to me during our meeting after my son ran leaving it behind.  But New Orleans? OMG that’s terrifying. There was no talking him out of it.  We would get sporadic often late at night calls from my drunken homeless son, drunk dialing his mom,  he would get arrested and convince them to take him a shelter where he would leave.  We couldn’t keep up, we just cried at every call.  Then at Christmas Eve he showed up at the door. Looking horrible with dirty hair dyed black hanging in his face, piercings in his face and he had dropped a considerable amount of weight.  Honestly he looked like a crack head.  I ran out to the car and invited the man who had driven him to me into the house, offered him coffee.  I needed to see if this guy  was creepy too. He wasn’t.  He and 2 other artists in NOLA had taken my son in, made sure he ate, and slept safely.  They didn’t allow drinking or drugs and Dusty had become a street performer. The guy said his family lived about 40 minutes from us and he was going home for the holidays and offered to bring Dusty home too.  So happy, he’s safe, only if for  little while.  I made him shower, ran out and bought him personal hygiene products and clothes.  He explained he was a fire twirler. Since he couldn’t afford the gear he would light his socks on fire and spin those and he was really really good ( your allowed to laugh here also) and this fantastic guy that lead a group of performers like circ de soliel  wanted to send him to fire spinning school in New York and they had to leave but he was gonna ride the bus and meet them at the big bridge in New York when he got there.  NO SHIT. terrifying right?  I explained how dangerous NYC was, how big it was, how filled with people it was and how hard it would be to find someone there when he didn’t have a phone number or address.  He said no mom it’s real, look it up on the internet.  Christmas was not good, his foul language and refusal to wear clean appropriate clothing along with his outburst made it that way.  The day after Christmas I tried to be supportive of his new “career”, we got on the internet and googled this guy.  The Fairy King,  yeah that’s dudes name.  In short time we came to sites and videos this guy makes, where he claims to be some pagan god/king thing… Ring Ring Nutbag calling.  Then we click on one of his videos. It’s about me.  How?  It was a scathing hateful video of him spewing hatred on ignorant people who throw their children into the streets and turn their backs in the name of religion. ( what how did that come up again?)  After a tirade about how I was the anti christ the video change to this poor “indigo child” with psychic powers, and how he needed his followers to raise up and support this child with donations to him, so he could take care of this child and mentor him. ( notice creepy theme of mentoring by weird men?) I held my laughter back, barely, and said, ” honey, this may not be the best thing for you.” He got so mad he slammed objects in my house, punched more holes in the walls  and cursed me for again not supporting him. I said Dusty dude, this is a cult, a real life bonifide cult, a Jim Jones drinking Kool aid lead by a mad man cult.  My son then threatened to beat up my elderly paralyzed  mother because she said, ” OMG this isn’t good honey. ”  So I told my husband I am taking my mom home, this Holiday is over, and Dusty has to go.  Not just because of the Fairy King, not just because of his hygiene, not just because he threatened my mom’s life. But because out of the corner of my eye I saw my 8 year old do the run upstairs and hide protocol from all the years gone by. I realized that was not ok, and just as I wouldn’t sacrifice Dusty when he was a child, or leave this world and abandon my daughter when she was a child, I would not, could NOT sacrifice the emotional safety of my youngest child.  He did not need to be in fear anywhere let alone in his own home and from his own brother.  My husband took Dusty to NOLA.  I came home and threw up in the shower, I cried, punched a pillow and then got a grip.   We had consulted a Dr and a lawyer and our only hope of having any influence in Dusty’s life was to have him declared an incompetent adult, not so easy but it could be done. This meant he would be legally forced to live in our house against his will. That meant all his fury would be daily unleashed upon not just us, but my youngest child. I had to make a decision.  The decision was clear. NO.  Is it the right decision. I don’t know, but it’s what my mommy gut said to do, for the physical and emotional well being of my other child. Just as I had fought for Dusty I would now fight for the Prince. The stakes were too high,  the risks too many.

I am wrapping it up here, and your saying thank goodness if your even still here.  But my son came back home, he needed “sanctuary” he had gotten in  a fight and had been beat up, he wanted to come home, to straighten out his life. He came home, he lasted a month, he destroyed my house with holes in the walls. He destroyed our calm with his screaming of foul words. He crossed the line when I caught him smoking dope in his room.  I left him off easy as I didn’t call the cops.  But the last time I saw my son was the night the cops drug him out of here, again.  My husband had just had a minor sugery but was not to lift anything over 5lbs, he was chopping wood, I asked my 18 year old son to help his father at least offer, he told me to fuck off he was playing xbox. I pointed out his father paid for the xbox, the clothes, the house, the TV and he could go out and help.  It ended badly with him picking me up and throwing me to the ground and preparing to beat me.  That was the last time I saw my son. You see that was the night my husband for the first time in all these years nearly lost it.  He ran in, he saw what happened, and immediately called the cops and put OUR son out on the street willingly for the fist time.  He forgave or talked out any issue, but this one, no.   My husband then said something I thought I would never hear.  Son I have loved you with all my heart since the day I met you. I will always love you, but you are NOT a man,  you are to leave this house, and you are never allowed on this property again without prior permission and my presence because if I see you hear again without that, you go to jail. We didn’t have Dusty arrested, and we haven’t brought ourselves to patch all the holes in the walls he left.  That was months ago. I  hear from my son when he wants, he calls from random cell phones, and tells me he  has roommates or where he is living or that he has a job as something or another, the next time I hear from him it’s an entire new game with new characters and that other stuff fell thru. He called me 3 times today, and twice yesterday. See in his mind nothing happened. He’s a grown up man and doing grown up things and I am just mom. Not the hurt crushed soul ripped out mother that throws up in the shower when he suffers. I am the one with advice, and funny jokes, who loves him no matter what.  I am also the one most of his anger and vengeance is directed at.

Sometimes I look those holes he put in our walls, that we somehow haven’t managed to fix. I run my hand over them to touch them to feel him, to try and absorb his anger away, like some how it will help him if I can take it away. Sometimes I dream  he’s my little boy again and I did things different and I was able to kiss his boo boos away, to help him, to guide him to teach him to love him more, to love him enough to make it better.

Sometimes I sit alone in my quite house, and cry while I ask God to look out for that little boy of mine. Yep, me and God made up.