Middle Aged Children

I've wondered often about the "Critical Event Show-up" phenom in dysfunctional families where the most problematic of the dysfunctional family members show up at the worst possible moments, without awareness, much less care, of the events they are complicating with the yaddahs of their dysfuntional blahs. However many therapy tools I ply to letting that mystery be, I can't help but wonder about the consistency of the phenom for both myself and my sibs-in-healing.

My 41 year old son is the current agent of this phenom. He has been homeless and living the crack head high life since last October when an outbreak of domestic violence catapulted him from the Urban Homestead and into yet another short jail-house stint. Hubby is still giving him money, so I have a few clues where and how he is doing, but I am plying detachment tools to my still compulsive drive to **fix** him and solve all his problems for him.

The progress I see in this spin of the not-so-merry-go-round is between Hubs and I. Herstorically, Hubby's main contribution to working this cycle has been remote criticism of whatever I was trying at the time. May 2013 is my official marker for detaching from that piece of the cycle. ES was only 33 at the time and Hubs immediately started frantically picking up the proverbial balls I had dropped and running with them. I even prayed for those tactics to work better for him than they did for me, providing him with the support I wish he had offered me back when our middle aged cherub was still cute and still smelled nice.

My strongest body of panic attacks were over ES showing up at the farm to begin bullying the new farm assistant and her son in our absence. He can't pay his own rent, but he sure can tell other people how to run their lives. Even if she had the English language skills for the job, the farm assistant wouldn't be able to handle his crack-head supervision. I amnae even a little confident any of us are safe in his company. He mostly sleeps his life away, but he is often an absolute terror when he opens the door of his sleeping chamber. The text rants are easier to ignore, but still ample evidence that he still views himself as the only Rightie Right on the planet. The rest of us only exist to enjoy the aroma of his non-existant hygeine and housekeeping.

So far the text communiques which started as we prepared for this road trip were directed toward his money supplier, Hubs. After Hubs said no to the last request, ES started texting me for permission to stay at the farm while the children are visiting with the maternal family. I still miss both of my sons terribly, but do not trust ES to leave after the children return and still don't trust him to put their welfare above his latest crack pipe superiority. He cannot stand the company of real children and? ? ? Not going there, even though the court orders banning him from living with the children are now obsolete. No, son, you cannot be the founding father of a crack camp on the lower 40 acres. The State no longer has jurisdiction over who lives on our farm, but I'll bring the State jurisdiction back on line before I sponser that crack camp for you.

Prior to 2013, Hubs and I were easy marks for the kid classic manuever of playing parents against one another. Any time one of us drew a discipline line, ES could count on the other parent to help them circumvent that discipline. Since 2013, I have held the "No More Money" line and ES has remained at a safe social distance since the blowout which awarded me the "Toxic Mom" tribute. We have had minimal contact since. Not quite estranged, but far from loving. His proposed visit still feels more like a manipulation for continued childhood than an adult's concern for an aging parents, but I have been attempting to counter-manipulate toward my own heart's desire that he seek recovery. Just praying for certainty through the stormy sees. I haven't said no to the visit but have let him know the answer will be no if we can't discuss the problems before his arrival.

Since the advent of our second parenting career in August, 2019, I count Hubs and I working to stay on the same sheet of music as solid progress in our family recovery. So far so good? Just praying. . .

Again I leave the mood icon on the rapid cycling median.