dianeseattle
Member
Hi everyone I know and greetings to all the people who don't know who the heck I am. If you're curious, just do a forum search with my username.
I want to update you and make an announcement.
Personally, I have been experiencing extreme physical and emotional pain for the last few weeks. I am very much standing on shifting sand every day. My son is out of my life after having a mental collapse a few weeks ago. There is nothing I can say to him and his personally destructive actions are cloaked by his denial. People who know me know how much I adore him and how much it hurts not to be in his life anymore. Let me say, supportively, that if a person goes nuts, becomes delusional, sleeps in his car so he can avoid you, it doesn't have to have anything to do with anything you said. You might just say, Wanna order a pizza? and that comment will be taken and twisted like a coat hanger until it bears no resemblance to the truth. I know in my experience when people have said something about a conflict, I doggedly searched for the actual reason behind it, assuming that it had to be a flaw in the relationship. But I know now that things can fall apart without you doing a thing to cause it or contribute to it.
I don't want to go into detail about it except to say he has antisocial personality disorder, as did his father. These people used to be called sociopaths, but that's too hard a term for society to understand, so this new name and the same diagnostic criteria were developed in the DSM-IV. If he doesn't come to understand this and get help, there is no hope for him.
Personally, I'm having a hard time not wishing I was dead. But I reach out for help, to the crisis line, the Warm Line, 211, my social worker, and am now shopping for a therapist who can help me work on myself, healing myself from PTSD and other complicated factors. I hope I win.
When stuff like this happens, it affects your friendships and family relationships. Especially when a charming, charismatic sociopath is at the wheel, the only conclusion people can make is that you must have done something to set him off. Well, I didn't. He was a time bomb and suddenly he went off.
His collapse also collapsed all my plans for moving into a house with two bedrooms and getting back to my writing and reclaiming my life. I feel empty & confused and because I don't know what to do, I just mostly stay in bed. Guidance will come in time, but for right now, I am not going to be hard on myself.
But if that wasn't bad enough, a week ago I fell off a sidewalk into a bike lane in downtown Seattle. The city is revising bus stops and in its wisdom, decided it would be a great idea to meld bikes with rapid transit. I probably wouldn't care but what they did was they rebuilt the sidewalk so that right in the middle, suddenly, there's a five- or six-inch deep excavation with symbols of a bicycle painted on. These lanes are about five feet wide, then the sidewalk begins again. Well, if you don't know the drop-off is there and you step off the bus and take a few steps toward the building you're visiting, there is no barrier to keep you from falling off. We have a streetcar in seattle that has a barrier made of metal ropes, that keep you from stepping into the street instead of following a ramp farther away.
So I stepped off the bus and took a few steps, looking up at the number on the building so I'd know which direction to walk. The next thing I know, I was falling, into what, I didn't know. I laid there and felt the searing pain in my left arm along with all the scrapes and future bruises all over my body. I rolled over onto my back and then sat up. I was in pain and embarrassed, and people were rushing to help me. I said I was fine, but finally allowed two people to lift me by my arms to a standing position. I grabbed my left wrist with my right hand and held it close to my body, assuming I had sprained it in the fall. I went on with my business so no one would call an ambulance, since I knew that would be next.
The pain was unbelievable. Once I let go of my wrist and my arm shifted, it felt like someone was taking a knife to my arm. Everyone was kind and let me finish my errand, then I got back on the bus, thinking I'd go home. But the pain got worse and worse. I bypassed my bus stop & went on to the stop outside an emergency care facility where I finally let go and started crying in the exam room. I knew it wasn't a sprain. But I wanted it to be a sprain. I just couldn't have one more thing go wrong in my life, when I was supposed to find a house with one bedroom, just for me, get my stuff out of storage, get my son's junk out of my apartment when he'd been living for the last month. I didn't want my life to stop. I was paying $100 a month for storage. I moved a lot of my stuff out so he could move all his stuff into my apartment during the (hopefully) short time we'd be waiting to get into a 2br house.
Anyway, long story longer, i broke my wrist and my forearm in four places. after the initial visit, I was referred to a hand surgeon, who I already knew from an injury a few years ago. She took more films which gave a slightly different degree of damage. I'm going back monday to have a custom splint/brace made so my arm grows back together right. But it's going to be useless for at least six weeks, and so far, it seems more painful every day.
My support group is nervous about what's going on with my kid, trying to be diplomatic about it. In other words, they think I'm tough enough to take it, so they're not supporting me, even though I am the victim. And if you asked what I was the victim of, it would be domestic abuse--not hitting or beating, but the most unbelievable mental cruelty imaginable, especially given our mother-son relationship, which has been the envy of everyone we know who has a mother or a son.
I feel dead. But here's an important message for anyone who's relating to this personally: this horror is temporary.
It will pass.
I will feel more normal as time goes by and if I get the right kind of help, I'll live a good life. But right now I'm maudlin and morbid and deeply hurt and there is still a lot of cruelty from the other side and his confederates, who are supposed to be my friends. He's cuter and more charming than me and it's much more popular to take his side, which is a story so delusional I can't believe people don't see through it.
I won't fight that battle. I surrender. I am going to back up and take a new path that includes taking care of me. That's actually why I'm writing today. I know this group has been spammed like crazy. I still got emails even though I didn't have to sign in & come here in person. I did write to Kevin, though, and asked him to ban this or that person. You ended up having at least 3 of these robots who were killing the group. If anyone here didn't get the message, you can put anyone on ignore & you'll never see another post from them. Click on your profile photo and then on your name, and you'll be taken to a drop-down menu with an Ignore feature. USE IT. This is the best group around, imo.
As a point of information, I am starting a yahoo group for bariatric surgery patients, but it will be much different than this one. When it's ready to share, I'll send a link.
My hand is killing me so I'm off now. If you reply to this and you're one of my old buds, update me, especially with the number of pounds you've lost!
love
diane
I want to update you and make an announcement.
Personally, I have been experiencing extreme physical and emotional pain for the last few weeks. I am very much standing on shifting sand every day. My son is out of my life after having a mental collapse a few weeks ago. There is nothing I can say to him and his personally destructive actions are cloaked by his denial. People who know me know how much I adore him and how much it hurts not to be in his life anymore. Let me say, supportively, that if a person goes nuts, becomes delusional, sleeps in his car so he can avoid you, it doesn't have to have anything to do with anything you said. You might just say, Wanna order a pizza? and that comment will be taken and twisted like a coat hanger until it bears no resemblance to the truth. I know in my experience when people have said something about a conflict, I doggedly searched for the actual reason behind it, assuming that it had to be a flaw in the relationship. But I know now that things can fall apart without you doing a thing to cause it or contribute to it.
I don't want to go into detail about it except to say he has antisocial personality disorder, as did his father. These people used to be called sociopaths, but that's too hard a term for society to understand, so this new name and the same diagnostic criteria were developed in the DSM-IV. If he doesn't come to understand this and get help, there is no hope for him.
Personally, I'm having a hard time not wishing I was dead. But I reach out for help, to the crisis line, the Warm Line, 211, my social worker, and am now shopping for a therapist who can help me work on myself, healing myself from PTSD and other complicated factors. I hope I win.
When stuff like this happens, it affects your friendships and family relationships. Especially when a charming, charismatic sociopath is at the wheel, the only conclusion people can make is that you must have done something to set him off. Well, I didn't. He was a time bomb and suddenly he went off.
His collapse also collapsed all my plans for moving into a house with two bedrooms and getting back to my writing and reclaiming my life. I feel empty & confused and because I don't know what to do, I just mostly stay in bed. Guidance will come in time, but for right now, I am not going to be hard on myself.
But if that wasn't bad enough, a week ago I fell off a sidewalk into a bike lane in downtown Seattle. The city is revising bus stops and in its wisdom, decided it would be a great idea to meld bikes with rapid transit. I probably wouldn't care but what they did was they rebuilt the sidewalk so that right in the middle, suddenly, there's a five- or six-inch deep excavation with symbols of a bicycle painted on. These lanes are about five feet wide, then the sidewalk begins again. Well, if you don't know the drop-off is there and you step off the bus and take a few steps toward the building you're visiting, there is no barrier to keep you from falling off. We have a streetcar in seattle that has a barrier made of metal ropes, that keep you from stepping into the street instead of following a ramp farther away.
So I stepped off the bus and took a few steps, looking up at the number on the building so I'd know which direction to walk. The next thing I know, I was falling, into what, I didn't know. I laid there and felt the searing pain in my left arm along with all the scrapes and future bruises all over my body. I rolled over onto my back and then sat up. I was in pain and embarrassed, and people were rushing to help me. I said I was fine, but finally allowed two people to lift me by my arms to a standing position. I grabbed my left wrist with my right hand and held it close to my body, assuming I had sprained it in the fall. I went on with my business so no one would call an ambulance, since I knew that would be next.
The pain was unbelievable. Once I let go of my wrist and my arm shifted, it felt like someone was taking a knife to my arm. Everyone was kind and let me finish my errand, then I got back on the bus, thinking I'd go home. But the pain got worse and worse. I bypassed my bus stop & went on to the stop outside an emergency care facility where I finally let go and started crying in the exam room. I knew it wasn't a sprain. But I wanted it to be a sprain. I just couldn't have one more thing go wrong in my life, when I was supposed to find a house with one bedroom, just for me, get my stuff out of storage, get my son's junk out of my apartment when he'd been living for the last month. I didn't want my life to stop. I was paying $100 a month for storage. I moved a lot of my stuff out so he could move all his stuff into my apartment during the (hopefully) short time we'd be waiting to get into a 2br house.
Anyway, long story longer, i broke my wrist and my forearm in four places. after the initial visit, I was referred to a hand surgeon, who I already knew from an injury a few years ago. She took more films which gave a slightly different degree of damage. I'm going back monday to have a custom splint/brace made so my arm grows back together right. But it's going to be useless for at least six weeks, and so far, it seems more painful every day.
My support group is nervous about what's going on with my kid, trying to be diplomatic about it. In other words, they think I'm tough enough to take it, so they're not supporting me, even though I am the victim. And if you asked what I was the victim of, it would be domestic abuse--not hitting or beating, but the most unbelievable mental cruelty imaginable, especially given our mother-son relationship, which has been the envy of everyone we know who has a mother or a son.
I feel dead. But here's an important message for anyone who's relating to this personally: this horror is temporary.
It will pass.
I will feel more normal as time goes by and if I get the right kind of help, I'll live a good life. But right now I'm maudlin and morbid and deeply hurt and there is still a lot of cruelty from the other side and his confederates, who are supposed to be my friends. He's cuter and more charming than me and it's much more popular to take his side, which is a story so delusional I can't believe people don't see through it.
I won't fight that battle. I surrender. I am going to back up and take a new path that includes taking care of me. That's actually why I'm writing today. I know this group has been spammed like crazy. I still got emails even though I didn't have to sign in & come here in person. I did write to Kevin, though, and asked him to ban this or that person. You ended up having at least 3 of these robots who were killing the group. If anyone here didn't get the message, you can put anyone on ignore & you'll never see another post from them. Click on your profile photo and then on your name, and you'll be taken to a drop-down menu with an Ignore feature. USE IT. This is the best group around, imo.
As a point of information, I am starting a yahoo group for bariatric surgery patients, but it will be much different than this one. When it's ready to share, I'll send a link.
My hand is killing me so I'm off now. If you reply to this and you're one of my old buds, update me, especially with the number of pounds you've lost!
love
diane
