Quote:
Originally Posted by Faking sane
My son has gone through periods where he refuses to speak to me for months at a time over something I have said or done. I don't usually know what it is, and he refuses to tell me. It breaks my heart. I know that feeling. Luckily, he has great love and admiration for his sister, who usually talks him out of these long periods of rejection.
It is quite possible that your son has PTSD as well and that just the thought of you triggers him. It could be that he just wants to leave his painful past behind him and not think of it again. Selfish, yes, but consider where he got half his genes...
If you know his address, you could look it up on Google Earth just to get a vague idea of how he's doing. Worry is always something that consumes me whenever my son goes "no contact". Seeing what kind of neighborhood he's living in might also give you some clues. Maybe he's living in a nice neighborhood, in which case you can't be a complete failure because you created and nurtured him to the best of your ability and he turned out OK. On the other hand, he could be living in some ghetto, strung out on drugs to escape his reality. In that case, the separation might be more because he doesn't want you to see that he's failing to cope in a functional way.
Blaming one's parents for one's difficulties is a normal part of being aged 15-26/7/8 for buys (they mature slower than girls in this area, too). The fact that he's taking it to extremes isn't surprising given the extreme environment you both lived in, but there will likely come a time (if drugs aren't interfering with his a ability to reason), that he'll come to see that you did the best you knew how with what you had to work with.
I am very sorry for your loss of all these years with him. You're not the only one, not by a long shot!
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
|
I would say you're right about the PTSD. His father never touched him, but he never paid attention to him either. Not until after the divorce then suddenly he was Superdad. I doubt if Eric uses drugs unless it's a development that happened after the rift. He didn't drink, use drugs, or smoke when we had a relationship. Actually he was pretty tight with his money so I can't see him
wasting it on drugs. I did Google Earth his address and the house was in an area with trees and what looked like ranch homes. Certainly a decent area from what I could see. He has a Master's degree in mathematics but the last I talked to him he was working in a nursing home as a patient care tech. I suspect he, like me, has low self-esteem and that was a more comfortable job that the competition in his field. Thank you for the kind words. I really needed them.