I caught up with an old friend recently. He’s going through some major issues with his family. I won’t detail them here other than to say they involve in-laws, exes, a stepchild and behavior problems. It’s ugly. Courts have been involved. Police have been involved. CYS has been involved.
The situation doesn’t seem to be getting any better over time, either.
I feel bad for my friend. I didn’t offer much advice. Mostly I listened. After we spoke, I was upset. His situation reminded me of problems my family had that involved exes, stepchildren, courts and behavior problems.
I don’t like to make predications about the future since I’m so often wrong. But I see see some similarities that lead me to think this is not going anywhere good.
I spent the next two days thinking about our conversation until I finally grasped why it upset me so much. It unearthed memories of my stepbrother. I spent years trying to help him. He was a pathological liar and had many behavioral issues. He would run away from his mother to live with us. We’d help him get back on track with social skills, schoolwork and behavior. Then, he’d run away from us to return to his mother (when she was not institutionalized) and he’d fall back into his old ways. Then he’d come back to us and we’d start all over again.
After a few years of this, I gave up trying to help him. I’d been burned too many times. I was probably around 13 years old when I realized that nothing I did was going to fix him.
He lived with us, on and off, for 4 more years after that. I did my best to keep my distance from him altogether during that time. As his problems escalated, I moved further away from him.
My stepbrother died a few years ago (I suspect from an overdose). In hindsight, I now believe that he had mental/emotional/behavioral issues that we could not remedy without professional help. Perhaps medication, childhood development therapy and intensive psychiatric care would have helped him. We will never know.
The other bad memories were from our struggles with my stepson and his behavior problems. There were difficult years with many sleepless nights, emergency calls and us trying everything we could to help him. Eventually, we gave primary custody to his father because we nothing we did seemed to be working. We thought living with his “real” father might help him. It was a painful decision that broke apart our family.
With all these thoughts and emotions swirling through my head, no wonder I felt upset.
And yet, I sleep easily at night because I know we tried our best to be good parents. We were actively involved with both kids. We played with them, read to them, help them with school, relocated to better school districts, supported them, made dinner every night, attended every baseball game/ dance recital/ school event, loved them, disciplined them, supported them etc.
They were decent kids. We were decent parents. In the end some things turned out OK. Some didn’t.
It’s easy for me to say that I wouldn’t put up with what my friend is dealing with today. I have the benefit of my own experience. I also had my wife, my family and my time as a stepfather. Being a single man on my own who is not involved makes it easy to say “you need to walk away”.
But it is rarely that simple.
If it was, my friend wouldn’t be in this situation and I, in the past, would not have lived with my situations as long as I did.
No matter how things eventually turnout, I think there will more troubles and pain ahead for my friend before his situation eventually get resolved.
For that, I am truly sorry.