Teen troubles

I didn’t realize how much of my focus was on him. Worrying about him. Checking his bed in the middle of the night to see if he was still there. How drained I was from the constant power struggles. He really put me and my husband through a lot of pain for the last year.

I love my 16 year old son very very much. Tuesday was the day that we finally did what we’d contemplated and threatened for so long. The final final final straw had finally happened and we did it. We enrolled our son in a boarding school for troubled teen boys.

I will write more about him and what happened with his life later but right now this is more about me and recovering from a year of abuse from him (not physical abuse, mental and exhausting (up all night ) abuse!).

This is the second morning since he’s gone. I know it will be a rollercoaster of emotions over the next 15 months while he’s gone, but right now I feel relieved and happy that we finally made this move. We literally exhausted ourselves trying to help him and none of it worked. It would work for a few weeks but then he’d be right back at his games. We need help and we finally accepted that fact. It didn’t feel like we gave up or that we failed. We just need more help.

We will be involved with him and the staff for the entire time. We get to see him occasionally and talk weekly and write. We pray he learns and grows.

We’ve been consumed with him. Now we need to focus on us, our marriage, our 13 year old son who has been somewhat neglected because he’s a good boy, and because the oldest took so much energy. Time to refocus on healthy habits and drop the old bad ones.

I started this year off alcohol free and the stress of this made that extremely hard over the last month. So today I am going back to no alcohol and no more smoking! I picked both back up over the last month or two and they don’t serve me well. And now I have no excuse to “need” them.

So here we go again, round 100 of me attempting to live my best life… my healthiest life, and my happiest life.