Now that yesterday is over and today is here and I am well rested and relaxed, I can look back and yesterday and determine why it might be that I felt so much stress. I realize today that it was because I was repressing the fact that we have two important court hearings this week, one for John and one for Mike, and I was trying not to think about that. That was looming over my head but I was trying to keep from dealing with it.
The hearing for John is about giving him "permanent foster care" status until he is 18. I wish there was another answer for him, but I think institutionalized care at the Boys Ranch is probably the only thing that will work for him. He still is refusing to take his medicine, the very issue we were dealing wtih when he had his downward spiral this summer. It is not the decision that I am bothered with, but the fact that so many times the judges and others have been critical of us. They look at us as if, "Why do you have so many children if you have a son who is bi-polar and assaultive, both verbally and physically?"
Well, obviously, had we known that when we were adding children, we would not have done things the way we have. But from the time John was 8 until he was 11, we didn't have any issues like this with him. By the time he was 11, there were already 4 children younger than him in our home. He didn't completely out of our control and big enough to be dangerous until we had 6 kids younger than him. It wasn't as if we said, "HEY, we have a houseful of kids and so we want to ADD a violent one."
It makes me very sad that John is unwilling or unable to make the changes he needs to make. Every setting he is in he is aggressive, angry, and refuses to take his meds unless he is in a controlled environmnet. But we have to do what is smart and safe and we can't as a family live as victims of domestic violence with a person who is unable or unwilling to change.
The second hearing is about MIke who is attempting to manipulate the situation so that it gives him what he wants. We are not going to say much -- he's less than 6 weeks from 18 and they are treating this much differently than when he was younger. But he knows that I believe that he is finding a new way to run away from the situation he is in, so if someone else figures that out and doesn't give him what he wants, it will be our fault once again, even if I don't say anything.
Those are the thoughts that were running through my mind yesterday, an undercurrent of stressful thoughts that I was attempting to repress. This morning though, I have faced them head on and know that after the hearings are over this week, things will settle down again into something more emotionally manageable.
Sometimes I question my own sanity in being so transparent on this blog. I wonder if other people wouldn't handle things better than I ... if possibly I wasn't cut out for this. But then I talk to others and in my situation and read their blogs and realize that we are all consistent in our response . . . because we are all human.
Some of us just hide it better (or more intentionally) than others.
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