It is so nice to have your update @hope . I think of you quite often as you were a good hand up for me to grab when I first was on this site and so desperate for a bit of calm in my life. I will always wish you and your son well.
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Today Iām doing alright, as always a feeling of wistful sadness and longing for my little boy at four years old, for some reason that age is just adorable. I know I canāt go back there. I wish I could just live in the moment as we are told is most healthy, but I think being an aging mother with a severely mentally ill adult child, still living at home, always will, always has, is a special kind of sadness that nobody understands. My son is 32 and has Sz paranoid type, ADHD, OCD and generalized anxiety. I think about him every day all day. My only peace is sleep. He isnāt very difficult, but he just has no life, and well, yes, he can become quite irritable, which is not his true nature. Poor guy. Whatās to become of him? Iām his only friend. His mom.
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Itās nice to see you here again @daquilamarguerite1. Your words are how I feel today, with my son being only 22. I have a strong feeling Iāll have the same words to describe how I feel when my son is 32.
Weāll survive this. Some how.
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@hope, thank you for your kind words. Youāve gotten me through a lot of minute-by-minutes too.
Imagine how isolating it must have been for the generations before us, without the internet and forums like this to support us, and help us to feel less alone? I canāt even imagine how hard it must have been for those families.
Actually, I can imagine.
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Hello all, also have a 32 year old son. Most of you know my sons story. Lou is currently forensically committed. As far as I know he is treated with respect and kindness.
Our family is doing well, my daughters are good. It is hard fo our family, we are sad because we have lost a son to the system. Maybe we will have news about him at some point. Lou is not responding to our our calls, he is very flat.
AnnieNorCal
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Yes. Iām afraid youāre right. I donāt see my son ever living indepently. He doesnāt need an institution, but he will always need the support of family. I wonāt push him out on his own. My motherās first cousin was the same way, just always lived at home. Itās far better than the alternative, incarceration, or worse . . .homelessness. As long as he takes his medication, and he does because he gets that shot (really sad that thatās our only option, hard core antipsychotic meds and others, a cocktail), heās not a difficult person, he suffers mainly from negative symptoms. He has fixed delusions that can get out of hand, but swears heās never heard voices. He has pretty bad thought disorder, poverty of speech. And withdrawn.
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Heartbreaking. That would be soooo hard to bear, losing one to the system. Iām so sorry for you and your son, and all those who know and love Lou.
@irene, @Cerium Same here. My son doesnāt drive or even ride unless he really has to and Iām the one who would drive him. Heās been on the same SO since 2013. He stays home and doesnāt have a social life. Very exhausting and depressing for me and the exhaustion is definitely a side effect of my emotions of sadness and anxiety. I prefer staying home with my honey rather than going out.
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An exchange I just had with my son:
Him: I lost my pocket charm, Iām going to have to get another one.
Me: Hmmm. Where do you think you lost it?
Him: Iām pretty sure it quantum-mechanically dematerialized. But it could be in the bathroom heating vent.
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Wow! I love the two possibilities!
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I love that he even admitted the possibility that it could have fallen in the bathroom vent!.
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There is always hope but we also accept that we canāt solve all problems. At some point, we will have done all that we can do. I wonder, though, has his doctor ever considered clozapine?
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Without this forum and NAMIās Family to Family, I would not have been able to get my son from point A to point C. My plan was point B, my sonās plan was point C. Point D may be where we end up later without either of us trying. Of course thereās a lot of the alphabet leftā¦
I do think the suggestions made on the forum that we family members push back on the most, may be the suggestion we need the most. In that I failed, when I have the opportunity in the future I must work harder on getting him on forced meds.
I really wish I had known from the beginning that if a suggestion made to me on this forum made me angry - it was probably the one I needed to hear the most.
I also wish I had understood the importance of my journey continuing along with my sonās. The mom in me wanted to stop my life entirely and help his life get on track to plan B. I can hope that my efforts at least contributed toward his plan C.
When I joined this forum my name was hope in small letters because all I felt I had left at that point was just some tiny bit of hope. Didnāt have a clue what I was hoping for - its a journey without the destination or even your current location written on the map.
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Your changing thoughts and understanding as this journey continues is normal. I can look back and see things I would have done differently if I had known then what I know now. You are a good mom, but yes, you must take care of yourself. We can retain hope for a better future even while we acknowledge that we cannot fix everything.
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Saturday 8:29pm central, beautiful evening, sitting on back porch with my love 30 miles away from my wife for the weekend in my second home, drinking coffee, smoking many cigs, wine and cheese without a care in the world, happy and contentā¦
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Exactly - we have to find a way to find this in our lives.
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There is a part of it that feels like we are setting something down in order to get ourselves moving forward again. We just canāt let ourselves think that way. We need to find contentment within our lives.
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about 10 years ago, fate or divine intervention and match dot com?
another great night on the back porch tonigh, she: army brat, world traveler, never married, no kids, only child, wow, lol
I vote for divine intervention. What a wonderful support you have found.
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Son actually wished his father a āHappy Fatherās Dayā. Granted, he referred to him by his first name, rather than āDadā, but weāll take it.
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