I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the gray....

Hello everyone....I have missed a couple of weeks, at least, of blogging. Sorry about that. Not that I've wanted to. Circumstances have thrown me into a major depressive state and I just couldn't sit here and write about it. I'm not really going to write much right now about that particular situation. A lot of things have happened to me personally that caused me to have a near nervous breakdown recently. Thankfully I have such a skilled therapist to pull me through some of it. But it has pushed my progress back and that in itself is depressing. I do plan on sharing this with all of you, but right now it is just too much to write about. It was too much for me to process. 

Another major thing happened and didn't happen to me, it happened to one of my sons. He found out that his wife has been cheating on him. What a horrific thing to find out, been there myself. The details I plan on keeping to myself, but I know so much about how he is feeling. My son was devastated and what really hurt me is that he was more worried about ME and how I would take it. He thought I'd have a heart attack, he thought that it would make me so sad that he didn't tell me for a few weeks. Here he was going through the worst time in his life and he wanted to tell me, but he didn't want to hurt me. Dammit! This damn depression and PTSD is now hurting my family even more than I ever thought. Thankfully, he has since talked to me about it, but the fact that he went through this and couldn't tell me, just KILLS me. I know that he is hurting terribly and the first weeks are the worst. Anyone who knows me knows how close my kids and I are. I am hurting so badly for him. When we started talking about it I looked him in the eyes and I told him that no matter what is going on with me I will ALWAYS be able to handle anything that is happening to him. I am here for him and I always be here. One positive thing about this is that it really brought home the fact that I am still needed, badly. 

I also found out how much guilt he has for the pain he caused me when he was younger. I was just so sad that he felt so much guilt for something that he did when he was 18. Something that he paid for and came out better for. He also had a lot of guilt about not being the best role model and not being around for his younger brother and sister. I told him that that was his father's job, not his. But he was in such pain as he said, "Well dad wasn't there, he didn't care." I had NO IDEA that he felt such responsibility for his younger siblings. Enough to have such a huge amount of guilt. It is just so sad. 

He plans on staying with his wife and I support whatever he wants to do. I know his wife thinks I hate her. I truly don't hate her, but I am furious with her for hurting my son so deeply. I can't deny that. I am also very disappointed in her. Having been on the receiving end of betrayal, I know how devastating it can be in every area. I never thought she would do that to him, especially considering how much he helped her regain some self-esteem after her last boyfriend, before my son, treated her. I also know that betrayal like this is different for men than for women. But as I explained the feelings that I went through, I could see that my son was feeling the same things and so he knew that I understood more than he thought. I support whatever he wants to do, I know that he loves her. But they BOTH have to work on this together. She needs to take responsibility for her betrayal and he needs to understand that it is not his fault. He didn't cause this. Whatever the problems are between them they need to communicate, no one can change anything it they don't know that something is wrong. No matter what problems you have in a marriage there is NO EXCUSE for betraying your spouse. NONE.  My ex-husband was abusive and horrible to me, I had many opportunities to cheat on him, but that is not what you do when you are committed to a marriage. I take marriage vows very seriously. If you feel the need to sleep with someone else, get counseling, together or separately. Or separate for awhile. But don't break your vows and hurt the person you committed to spend the rest of your life with. That is not fair and it is a hurt that never really goes away. Plus if you think you had problems in your marriage before? Try cheating, you'll get major trust issues that are VERY difficult to get through. It is hard to recover from betrayal. I know, I never got over it. I really hope that my son and his wife can work through this. As a mother you want to kick the ass of the person who hurt your child, but I know that it is his marriage and it is his life. I will support him and his marriage as best as I can. If this is what he wants then I want it for him. God knows I want him to be happy. To have your wife cheat after being married for just over a year? That is so insane to me. It brings up a lot of issues, like do you want to waste your time at this stage of your life? Personally, I wasted a lot of years hoping for change that never came. But I can't let my experiences color his. He and his wife are not me and his father. I really want it to work out. I personally want to be able to trust her as well. It hurts me too, I love her like a daughter and I couldn't believe that she would ever do anything like this. It makes me wonder who she really is....did I not know her as well as I thought?

  The day they got married  I said to her at the wedding, during my toast, that I was trusting her with my son's heart. I meant it. Was my trust misplaced? She broke his heart into a million pieces and it just makes me cry for the pain that I know he is feeling. Girl, better be serious about this marriage. Because I will support both of them. I will hope that this is a big bump on a long and smooth road together. That they will be walking that road together for the rest of their lives. But god forbid that this happens again, because I will step in and it will not be pretty. Because when I let loose my fury, it is not good, especially when it comes to someone hurting my child. Every time I think about this, I start crying. No one wants their child to feel this kind of devastating pain, it breaks my heart.

It amazes me how many people take their vows so lightly. I think that is why I never want to marry again. I don't trust anyone to keep their vows as I did. I just don't. It is sad, but true. What many people who cheat don't understand is that they hurt so many people by their selfish actions. We are all hurt by this person that we loved and welcomed into our family. I wonder if she gets that. I wonder if anyone who cheats gets that.

I wish other people understood what it was like to have PTSD!

Right now I am a cross between angry, sad, and disappointed. My youngest son, he's 21, and I just got into a huge fight. We are going to be short on the rent this month. Nothing I can do about it. I have to renew my disability so I got $30.00 less on this check and my son borrowed a good amount of money and apparently there is a problem with some of the things he charged on my card. He, or should I say I, was charged twice for a couple of things. So although he is going to pay me what he says he owes we are still going to be short, shorter than I thought we would be. I originally thought we were going to be around $5-$10 short....well now it's more like $50. The bank will pay the check I'm sure. But it is stressful, especially since my son thinks his unemployment is about to run out. Unfortunately I am doing the best I can to pay bills, of course, they will all cost me more now because I will overdraw my account several times over. 

  If that isn't bad enough my son decides that my daughter needs to give me back my car so I can go back to work. I had to tell him again that that is not why I'm not working. I told him that I actually CAN'T go to work. Then he starts yelling about how hard it was when he was working and everyone was getting on his case and how I was telling him that he was going to lose his job if he kept calling in sick. Oh yeah, did I mention that my son has never been able to hold a job for more than about 6-8 months. He said that I didn't care that he was having a hard time. His hard time was people getting on his case at work. I told him that he doesn't understand that THIS isn't like that. My PTSD is not the same as a usual depression. He doesn't understand. I wish he did, I wish everyone did. It's not his fault, but it's frustrating. My therapist says that this disability is not one you can see, like a limp so it is hard for people to understand that the injury is inside and doesn't show on the outside.

  People think that if you are disabled then you shouldn't be able to walk or function at all. Well PTSD is different. You can function in certain areas, sometimes for a while. But that doesn't mean that it's easy. My son has no idea the trauma that I've been through. I'm certainly not wanting to sit him down and tell him all of the horrible things that his dad did to me to bring me to this point. He doesn't understand at all what was inflicted on me by his father, not to mention other traumas before and after I was married to him. Then I get to listen to my son yelling at me and threatening not to give me any of the money he owes me so that he can find a place to live. Because where he's living in literally HELL to him??????!!!!!!!( We live in a nice apartment by the way so this is about living with me and his sister) That boy has no clue what it is like to live in hell. His father left the house when my son was 3, he doesn't know what it was like living with his dad, the older kids know more as they received their own unfair share of abuse. Not to mention that none of the kids know everything that was done to me at their dad's hands. I mean truly you don't sit down and tell your kids these things. Talk about hurting them. So instead I get to be berated by my own child for being paralyzed from working at the job that I currently have because it triggers panic attacks that he's never seen me have. To almost faint, tremble, alternate between being flushed to having all of the color drain from my face. To feel like I'm going to die. Seriously, he's never seen this, he's never seen me at my job. His sister and brother saw me at the concert where I freaked out....whether my oldest son realized what was going on I don't know. I know that those who saw me were quite surprised to see a side of me that they had never seen before. One that I don't want to ever show again. My oldest daughter knows exactly what it is like to work at the job I have, because she also works where I work and she loathes it. The stress is more than anyone should be subjected to at a job. Truly.

I told my son, as he slammed out the door, that he doesn't even realize what I do for him. He's living in my place, he has nowhere to go. I didn't even charge him rent for quite awhile and he's 21. I just started charging him recently. He doesn't think he should have to pay as much because he sleeps on the sofa many of the nights unless his sister is gone and then he sleeps in her bed. She's gone a lot because her job is far away so it's easier for her. If either of them were actually out on their own, paying a roommate, they'd be splitting all of the bills three ways. Which what they pay me is no where close to 1/3 of the rent, not to mention the other bills and food. He doesn't even get that. I don't think he has ever appreciated anything that I've ever done for him. He just makes me feel like I'm a bad mom to him, that I don't understand what he's going through. Trust me I've tried and tried. There is only so much I can do to help. I am not going to go out and find him a job. I have recommended jobs to him but there is always an excuse as to why he can go to an interview or to even apply. I bought him nice clothes, he either gave them away to his friends and didn't get them back or he lost them. I can't afford to help him anymore. Soon I am going to have to make the tough choice and put him out I think. I mean his life here is SO terrible, according to him. I can imagine how many people would be grateful to have a roof over their head, a computer to use, DVD's to watch, and food in their bellies. But my son....oh it's hell. I know he's depressed and I'm sorry for that. I would be depressed too if I were him, but I also know that much of this is a byproduct of his own actions. I can't seem to get this through his head and since he has NO common sense he's not going to find out on his own.  It's a mess. 

  The way my son just talked to me hurt me so badly. He truly has no clue what I am going through. It's like "Oh mom just doesn't want to go to work".....I have worked for most of my life, I've held 2 jobs, more than once. It hurts me so badly that those closest to me don't understand what I feel or even give me the benefit of the doubt, which honestly....almost re-traumatizes me.