Two steps forward, one step back..

Nothing is ever easy. I am still trying to work my way through the red tape and get the Prince admitted to a short term stay at a residential facility. I am close. I was told today that a bed will be available on Tuesday. I am hopeful. I also received a phone call from his old program today. They have heard from some very reliable sources that he is actively using. PCP this time. I don't understand it. Where is he getting it? Where is he getting the money? I guess he really does need to go away for awhile and get his head on straight. I spoke to his grandmother and told her to make sure she is keeping a close eye on him and not to let her guard down for a minute. He must be sneaking out of there or stealing from them, or something. I just don't know anymore.

Let go, kel; let go.

I'm a loser baby.....

I have been tagged!!! I love it when I get tagged... it makes me feel... loved, accepted..... I know, I know, Can you say Pathetic-Loser-Co-Dependent???

List 7 songs you are currently really into and then tag 7 people.

1- Hurt- Johnny Cash or Nine Inch Nails

2- Dear Lover- Social Distortion

3- Walk it Out- DJ Unk

4- Glamorous- Fergie

5- This aint a scene, it's an arms race - FallOut Boy

6- I Miss You - Blink 182

7- It's Not a Habit - K's Choice

My musical tastes are influenced by a combination of my mood and whatever music La Petit Prince is into. (Can you tell which songs he turned me on to?)

Let me see who is left that hasn't been tagged???

I tag: Vicarious Rising, Working Mom NYC , Dr. Jeckyll vs. Mr. Hyde, Trudge, and RedHead Gal. Have fun kids.

So on to other things. The Prince came over for a visit last night. He brought the puppy. She is so cute and fun. He threw up when they got there. He said he was car sick. He made a HUGE mess all over my bathroom, of course yesterday my cleaning lady was there. He said he had thrown up earlier in the day also. My mom-in-law is a southern lady who cooks with lots of butter and fat and fries EVERYTHING. I need to call the doc this morning and have it looked into. I worry he could have an ulcer. He had gotten a haircut and he was showered and clean shaven and he looked good, he looked young. He is still SO heavy, he talked about losing some weight and then did some push ups. He is strong. He challenged me to see who could do more. I am too embarrassed to say how few I was capable of doing. I have absolutely ZERO upper body strength.

I am still in limbo as to his placement for his short term residential stay. They are now waiting on a bed for him. It is getting ridiculous. I am tempted to say F- it. Get him into an alternative HS setting, there is a program close to my job that has a great reputation, and they have a real small staff to student ratio, and I believe they can get him out of HS. They also have a zero tolerance policy as far as drugs and alcohol are concerned. They do not drug test, but if he is caught with anything on him, or if they suspect he is high, he will immediately be thrown out of the program. I am just not sure he is ready for that yet. I don't want to give him enough rope to hang himself, but I would like to see him start to acclimate himself back into the real world.

It is just hard to know what the right decision is to make and I hate that I am so on my own when it comes to making these decisions. AH is still giving me the silent treatment and it is just so sad that he is not concerned about what is going on with the Prince.

On a lighter note, it is a beautiful spring day here on in the Northeast. I am meeting some great old friends in Manhattan for dinner after work. These are my "gurlies", the ones who love me unconditionally, for all of my flaws and issues, who can laugh with and at me and I feel the safest when I am with them. This will be a good day.

I will let you down, I will make you hurt

Things at home aren't good. It is downright HOSTILE there right now. I guess AH was ticked that I stayed at a friends on Thursday night. When I got home from work Friday afternoon, he announced shortly thereafter that he "was going out". I asked where, he ignored me and stormed out of the house. Whatever. I guess this was retaliation. I was happy he was gone. It was quiet, La Petit Prince had a friend spending the night, so I ordered them a pizza and caught up my shows that I had DVR'ed. I was happily asleep by 10 p.m.

He worked Saturday so me and the little guy went to spend the day and night with my parents. We stayed until this morning. AH is not too happy. Making him happy has long ago stopped being a priority of mine. He has not even bothered to inquire as to what is going on with the Prince. Where he is going, when he is going, etc. And I am not going to offer him up the info either. La Petit Prince is going to California this Friday to spend some time with my cousins. He is really excited. I am going to miss him terribly. I have never been away from him for more than a few days.

So things are still in limbo with the Princes placement. Last I heard, his file was on the docs desk to be reviewed, then we have to hope there is a bed available. It occurred to me over the weekend that I am severely depressed. This is not a great news flash, I have been taking anti-depressants for approx 6 or 7 months. But this is bigger than that. It is deep within me. Down to bone depressed. I am stuck in this incredible dark and bad place and know that I must make change and move on with our lives but for the life of me I am just STUCK. Cant fish or cut bait. The way that we live is so incredibly unhealthy. Dysfunctional doesn't begin to describe it. I feel physically sick when I think if the pain and damage that this has done to my kids.

I am hoping to use the time alone next week to do some long hard thinking and planning, get my house on the market, actively look for a place to live. When both of my kids come home, I want to be able to present a new life plan for us. To start healing as a family. To start trusting each other again and to let go some of the pain.

Fire woman your to blame.....

Last week I posted about the Prince being thrown out of his program. They will take him back if he goes to a short term residential facility for a few weeks. AH was off last Wednesday so I asked him to make the initial call to the place I decided on and to get the ball rolling. You know, I thought it would be nice for him to act like a f-ing father for a change, to MAYBE take just a little pressure off of me for once. So he actually made the calls. He told me they accept my insurance and they had to speak to the Prince to do an intake over the phone, and they needed to get some information from his day program and they would let us know.

The Prince readily agreed and called the place and did the intake. I asked AH if he had called the day program to get the info. He said No. Not yet. This was now Friday. It is sometimes hard for me to not be a spiteful b*tch and say F- it. I wont do it either, let him handle it. But of course, my maternal instinct thankfully always takes control and I do what needs to be done for my Prince.

So Monday morning, almost a full week later, I make a million phone calls, get the release forms faxed to me, get them notarized, have my son sign them and finally get them all back to his day treatment and they go about getting the psych evals, his records, etc. It takes them some time and they finally fa them to the residential place late Tuesday night. I call to follow up with the new place and they dont have them. Fifteen phone calls later and his program refaxes them Wednesday morning. A committee must now review his case and decide if he is a good fit for their program. In the meantime, anticipating needing it, I get his immunization records, get him to the doctor for a physical, etc. When the Prince was a little boy, he was exposed to tuberculosiss and will now always test positive on a PPD so he must go for a chest X-ray once a year. I had this done on Wednesday also. Well guess what, the lungs were clear for TB, but he has pneumonia!! Who knew?

So yesterday the residential place calls me and tells me after careful consideration, the committee has decided that based on the Princes history of family violence and aggression, plus his firestarting tendencies, they do not think his is a good fit for their program and they will not except him, and they recommend a long term psychiatric residential facility for him. I was floored. Family violence?? Firestarting? Are you sure you have the right Prince? Perhaps you have mixed up his file with another Prince? No, they are sure. Turns out the AH I am married to told them this!! Can you imagine? I mean, seriously... what was he thinking?? They had a fight a year ago that got physical when the AH came home drunk from work, and attacked the Prince. I had to throw myself between the two of to get the AH off of him. He left a mark on his neck and the school called CPS the next day. He neglected to mention these little details to these people on the phone. The firestarting was when the Prince and his friends made a molotov cocktail when he was at the height of his using. They never did anything with it thank G-d. Now I am not defending my son, he has alot of problems, substance abuse, depression, a possible mood disorder. But he is not a threat. When he was using, he was unpredictable and I didn't feel safe around him, but when he is clean, he is harmless.

So now I am back to the drawing board. I have to find a new place. Had AH done what was expected last week, he would have been rejected by last Friday and I would have had him placed by now. Or had he used his brain he would have been admitted this morning to my first choice place. I never thought I could be capable of feeling such hate and disgust for another human being.

I kiss and tell all my fears....

I went to a surprise 40th Birthday party yesterday for one of "our" old friends. The man of the hour went to HS with AH and was in our wedding party. I was friendly with his wife back then and we were also in their wedding party. We saw alot of old friends that we hadn't seen in awhile. AH doesn't keep in touch with any of his friends and doesn't make much of an effort to make new ones, and I long ago stopped making the effort for him. It was interesting. Mostly everyone got fat. Don't know why that is always what I notice, but I noticed it.

I spent the afternoon talking to the wife of one of his old friends, who I always got on well enough with over the years, although there would never be a great friendship between us. About an hour into the party, and she was half way through a "box", (yes they served wine from a box) of Zinfandel wine, I was ready to choke this women who conversation skills do not go any further than how trendy her daughter dresses and about how perfect her parenting skills are. This is when I usually bring up the Prince and his issues. She was flabbergasted, and you could see that look on her face that you have seen a thousand times before, thank god this will never happen to HER child.

At least this provoked a change in the conversation. Now do not get me wrong, addiction is normally my favorite topic of conversation, but this woman was so ignorant it went beyond scary. She wanted to know every detail, like did I know his friends, (yes) their parents (yes) did I spend enough time with him, did I check his room, was I on the PTA, was he involved in sports, (yes a million times over). She was looking for what WE did wrong. because, clearly, kids from good families with a solid support system and involved parents, do NOT turn to drugs. I tried to be nice, and explain the disease aspect, the hereditary/genetic connection, (her husband had always been a heavy drinker, and I knew him to abuse drugs back in the day, and from what I could see of her pounding down the wine at 2 in the afternoon, this is something she needs to be aware of) but she wasn't having any of it. I sort of kind of yelled at her at this point, that perhaps she is putting way too much emphasis on her children's clothing and not being aware of the bigger picture out there in the real world, where kids get addicted to drugs and alcohol and have sex and get pregnant. I am fairly confident I wont be invited back to another party anytime soon.

So last night I caught a bunch of the Addiction project short films on HBO. Good stuff. One of the shorts told the story of a woman and her seven year battle with her daughters heroin addiction. This was a beautiful young women, high honor roll, cheerleader, popular, musically gifted, the perfect child. Except that she was filled with self hate and only found relief when she was chasing the dragon. The mom articulated how I felt at the party. She spoke of the stigma attached to having an addicted child and how people looked for what she had done wrong, etc. I respect these families for putting themselves out there for the world to see (and judge) to help educate. These little film shorts, or something like them, should be mandatory viewing for parents when their kids enter middle school. Something has to change to help pull these peoples heads out of their asses. It can happen to your kid too. I promise!

The exodus is here....

First off, I want to thank all of my blogger buddies for your words of encouragement and support on my last post. And especially to you Tab, for sending all the love. You are the best girlie!!!

So the Prince was thrown out of his program last night. After his little temper tantrum Friday morning, they sent him home for the day so as for him to not disrupt the rest of the kids. They called me later in the afternoon telling me that his latest urine came back dirty, again, and to not bother sending him in on Monday as they had to have a crisis meeting to determine what his status in the program was.

We met with them last night and they had decided to release him, as he was no longer making progress, and they would rather give his spot to someone who is actually interested in helping himself. It was sad and upsetting. The Prince was visibly upset. I don't think he saw it coming. They really like him there and he gets away with alot because of it. At the end of the meeting it was decided if he was willing to do a short term residential program, they would consider having him back when he was released. He called me last night and seemed interested in doing that and we spent some time on the phone researching the various suggested places online.

This morning, all hell broke loose. The Prince called and told me he was going out today. He was officially "free" and he was going out with his friends. Yeah, over my dead body. He is for all intents and purposes an unemployed high school drop out on drugs. I argued for a while and am actually too drained to even get into the long gory details of it all here right now. It led to an argument with the AH. He needs to sit down with his parents and set up some guidelines and boundaries for this kid. I can not do it anymore. It is just too hard. This kid acts like a spoiled 13 year old. The perpetual victim. Its never his fault. WE did this to him. He is 17 he deserves his freedom. He cant even buy his own cigarettes. It is just ridiculous. He is ridiculous.

So now I need to find a place that will take him. I am just so tired.

There are too many questions....

I had a really dream filled sleep last night. So many of my dreams were so clear and vivid. I always dream a lot and I usually remember them, but last night I actually SAW my blog in my dream and myself posting to it. Do you think that means I feel guilty for not having posted and that maybe its time to post again??

Sometimes I really feel that me, and my family get so much shit in this life. Yes, I know we aren't perfect and a lot of the crap we are forced to endure could have been avoided with better lifestyle choices and better choices in general. But still. Do you think everyone feels that way?

At the moment, my father who is currently receiving chemo for a recurrence of his pancreatic cancer, who had a massive paralyzing stroke at age 49, has been in the hospital for the last 2 weeks and has just been diagnosed with parkinsens disease as well as being an insulin dependents diabetic. He is so weak he can not walk, support his weight or even sit up in bed without assistance. This is the condensed version of his many, many ailments. Today is my moms birthday. I am sure she celebrated it alone last night with half a gallon of wine. She told me when how sad she felt to wake up alone on her birthday, she and my dad have been happily married for 43 years. The cherry on her birthday cake will be visiting my 41 year old brother in the hospital today where he is having his 3rd toe amputated or possibly the remaining 3 toes amputated as a result of his diabetes which he refuses to control or accept and he thinks drinking a 12 pack of beer each day is acceptable normal behavior. He has not worked in close to 3 years because his amputations never heal because he never treats the diabetes. It is a vicious cycle. Oh, and he is also going blind...

I just hung up the phone after a screaming fight with my Prince. They are trying to do everything in their power in his program to get him out and to help him graduate. He refused to take a second math class today. He is failing math. He will not graduate because of it. I will have to pull strings and call in favors to get him into a program this summer that will offer him psychological and educational support to get him out of HS. I will have to fight like hell with my district to get them to pay for it. I work in education and I know the right people so I can get it done. But he is just refusing to do anything that he doesn't feel like doing. He outright refused to go to the class. They will probably not keep him in there now and they sent him home for the day. I had a screaming crying fight with him, he started getting loud with me and cursing at me, I once again told him I will not accept that from him any longer. It went on and on. I spoke to the family counselor, and told her, that I am basically ready to give up. F- it. If he doesn't want to help himself I cant do this anymore. I am so done. If he wants to be an addict, a drop out, fine. Go for it. I cant stop it. But you will not take me down in the process. I will not be spoken to like I am a piece of shit. I will not keep bailing his ass out and get him a job. He needs to learn how to be a man and not a child. I just cant take anymore. Oh... and his urine came up dirty for coke a week or so ago. Nice.

So, okay that is my immediate family. My little prince is starting to feel the pain of what he has seen the last few years and his school work is suffering and his whole attitude is changing and he is having a lot of problems. He is in therapy and responding to it. The AH is still slowly drinking himself to death. He sort of comfronted me about my relationship with the Italian. He wants to know why I would rather hang out with him and the little prince and the italians kids than with him. I said something along the lines of not being Julie the cruise director from the love boat and if he wanted to do stuff with his kids then he should plan it. You think he might have pushed the issue a little. But nope. He just went down to his room and I assume started drinking. Whatever.

It just seems there is so much wrong and bad with my life. And others just skate through without a hitch. Maybe I need to shout out some gratitude to remind myself that it could always be worse...

• My father is still here to wish my mom a happy birthday today
• My little prince scored a hundred on his science test yesterday he was so happy and proud
• The beautiful diamond earrings I bought for my mom, she deserves something sparkly and pretty today
• Deep down I know that this too shall pass
• Letting go
• My HP who must have a plan
• I have MY heath, and a good job and a few good friends that help take care of me.

I hope the rest of you out there are having a better Friday than I am.