loss
WORST- A man I knew in my twenties always said “I’m gonna name my first three kids woulda, shoulda, and coulda.” As a mom about to send her first born off to university, these three words circle round and round.
There is much I wish I woulda done, there is as much I know I shoulda done, and then there is the reality of that I coulda done.
But, at the end of the day, there is only what I did do, and what I left undone. We celebrate his leaving tonight with a dinner, a going away present of a footlocker stuffed overflowing of necessary dorm type stuff, and, probably, maybe, a round of best and worst.
He has been a very high maintenance child. He has been an amazingly fun child. He taught me well powerlessness and highlighted my desire to control. I have often not known how to parent him. I have often not been able to give him what he needs. Profoundly gifted, incredibly sensitive, a ‘product of a broken home’. Since he started experimenting with alcohol at a summer job two years ago, he has become increasingly narcissist, and the craziness that is addiction has seemed, to me, to permeate his world, and infringe on mine. Sanity has been my goal this summer, and thru that work, and those rooms, and that surrender, I have come to that place of knowing we are not his safety net. Knowing that does not take away the sting of the loss.





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