Emotional Exhaustion

Emotionally I’m tired this morning. Last night John was very agitated and Tony and Dominyk lost it at the same time. Bart wasn’t home and it went downhill from there.

It culminated in a two hour discussion with John that began with him trying to call social services to say he couldn’t live here any more, but he couldn't find the number. He wanted to tell them needed a family with less children (thank you, oh so much, professionals, for planting that idea in his head). Even though when he was in a foster family with no children, he pretended to try to kill their cat, he has gotten the message loud and clear from everyone over the past year -- our family is the issue, not him.

Anyway, we just sat and listened and commented calmly (not my style) but refused to give him the number. He had the phone book and spent a whole hour looking for the number to the sheriff’s office. I had to stop myself from chuckling when he was declaring that he was going to run away, get on a bus, and go down to the state he came from to his old hometown. He remembers enough, he says, that he would be able to find her (all this being said while he can’t even find the phone number for the sheriff).

I feel for him, because he has a lot of stuff to work through. He is very very angry at his birthparents for not doing what they should have done, at social services for taking him away from her and at us -- because we are the cause and reason for all things bad simply because we are committed to him. At one point in the conversation he said, “The LAST thing I need right now are two people who care about me.”

We went through the whole range of emotions -- from how we didn’t love him to how he couldn’t wait until he was 18 to see his birthparents to how he couldn’t return to school because it’s too hard for him there.... on and on.

The emotional exhaustion did not come from listening. It came from having to keep myself calm and my mouth shut for 2 hours.

The years ahead with John are not going to be easy ones. But as I told Bart, I’d rather be his parent than be him.