I've been looking so long at these picutes of you...

So the Prince and I are now friends on one of those social networky site thingies. After confirming we are friends I go over and check out his page. Every other "update" he has posted makes reference to smoking pot. As in: "Anyone wanna blaze?" "smoking a blunt right now" "Smoking the Buddha" "Got Weed?" Etc. etc. etc. He also has a bunch of pics of himself up there. Most pics show him swigging either beer, wine or vodka from the bottle. Other pics show him clearly intoxicated. There are even a few pics of him and his friends rolling joints or blunts or whatever it is they call them these days. Lots of nice shots of water pipes and bongs strewn about on tables. Lots of action shots of them playing beer pong.

He is also "friends" with friends of mine and numerous relatives, cousins etc. One of my closest friends had a post up about the new JZ album. My son responded to it by writing that the new album is F*cking Sick. Oh, the pride and joy, just warms a mothers heart. I wrote him a private message about how he might want to tone down his musings on the site because leaving a trail like that for future employers, school admissions officers, etc. can easily access it and hold it against him now or at some much later date. No response.

He called me a little while ago after friending another old friend of his fathers and mine and was laughing about a pic the old friend had posted of his father, how young he looked, etc. I then asked him if he received my email and that how he should consider taking his drug use announcements down just a notch. He was getting annoyed and kept trying to end the conversation. I explained that while he clearly sees no problem with illicit drug use, that maybe he would want to be concerned about how it could be held against him and that maybe he shouldn't be so proud of it. He told me I was aggravating him. I then told him then, at the very least could he refrain from friending MY friends and family. His response was that they were his friends and family too. Touche. I then asked him, could he at the very least refrain from leaving comments that involve the F word on my friends sites. I think this is pretty much where the conversation ended and he hung up on me.

It is times like these that I see how very damaged he is, and how he really did stop maturing when the heavy drug use started. OK so, yeah he smokes pot and wears it like a badge of honor. Where I don't see this as something to proud of, apparently he feels the need to let the world know that he is OK with it. I don't know why, after all of these years and after everything we have gone through, I still feel embarrassed by his drug use. I want to take heed from Lou's post earlier this week about how I shouldn't feel the need to explain my son and his disease. But yet, even though I know better, it still makes me feel like such a failure as a mother.

After the conversation with my son, I just sat in my car and cried. Not the desperate, sobbing cries of years ago, but just silent tears, just enough to maybe release some of the sadness that so deeply fills my heart. Time to remember to let go again, and leave it to G-d....