Depression?

Yesterday I woke up sad. I hardly ever wake up sad. But for some reason all of the thnigs that have been happening with me physically and in our family caught up with me and took me down. I wondered if I was clinically depressed and couldn't shake it for several hours.

But by bedtime I was back to an even keel and could move forward.

We have of course been struggling ever since the unnamed one went to jail about whether or not we should let him move back in when he got out of jail. We both battle so much the idea of not having homeless children that we were having a very hard time making up our mind. But we could not think of a single reason to let him move back in other than that we love him and that we don't want him without a place to go.

The irony though is that on Thanksgiving Day he announced, after living here for eight months and not obeying our rules, continuing to be rude to us and blaming us, and taking advantage of us every day, he said, "I wish I would have adopted by loving and caring parents." This was right after he announced to all of his siblings that they were "F**** up because they had S**** parents. And that was preceeded by his refusing to come have dinner with us and then posting on his facebook that he had to spend Thanksgiving alone. Sad face.

So, he took away the only reason for us to let him move back in. The fact that we are loving and caring people is the only reason we give him chance after chance after chance. We have had to make the decision to not let him live here over and over again. Every time he promises that things will change, and each time his behavior is worse. So, being the "unloving uncaring people" that we apparently are, it's time for us to say no again.

I know there are many of you who have had to make the same choices. They are not easy ones to make. But having made the decision last night, I am feeling better. Not because I like either decision, but because the decision is made.

I want to write him a very long letter explain it all to him, but with his combination of RAD and FASD I'm not sure it would make a bit of difference. But the gist of it is this:

We have two choices.

We have a son who we love who hates us, blames us for everything, uses us, and has no emotional connection to us. We can say he can't stay here and the feel guilty.

OR

We have a son who we love who hates us, blames us for everything, uses us, and has no emotional connection to us. We can let him move back in and have him completely disregard all of our rules, tell us what bad parents we are in front of our siblings, make his siblings anxious and nervous, have him tatooing them, piercing them, and supplying them cigarettes, and have constant battles with stuff that goes missing. We can hear about how horrible we are every time we confront him about something, and we can be told we aren't loving and caring. On a daily basis we can have strangers in our home without our permission, we can have "inscence" burning in our basement, and we can have things going missing. We can be blamed verbally for every mistake he has ever made as he recites "facts" which are completely untrue. WE can be begged and begged to loan him money that he never pays back.

I wish there was a third option. But over and over again for 7 and a half years he has proven that there isn't. No matter what we do we can't get him to respect our rules, appreciate anything we do for him, or even comply with the basics of what we ask.

So we only have two options. We hate both of them with all of our being. But I am not sure that anyone, giving those two options who has a house full of other impressionable kids, could choose the latter.

Should I feel like a hypocrite when I talk about "relationship vs behavior?"