Second Entry-VENTING

I feel like times are passing me by, and I just don’t understand it.  Got a text the other day from my sister in law.  This is my wife’s sister, Tina.  When Cheryl passed away, Tina and her family were living in an extra home on our property.  I was agains this from the get go because she and her husband and five of her seven children are drug users.  They fight constantly and don’t have jobs.  After Cheryl died in March, I let them stay through the end of May, and then told them they had to make arrangements for another home, that the boys and I needed our privacy, and that I could not keep paying the extra utilities for them, as well as helping to feed them, transport them, etc.  It was just too stressful.  They refused to move, and I had to evict them.  Tina showed up in court with a forged note saying my wife left the property and the kids to her.  It was laughable, because we bought the property together after marriage, so I am the sole owner, and Cheryl would not have done that anyway.  The judge, who knows us personally ruled in my favor and told Tina she was lucky he didn’t charge her with forgery and perjury.  I haven’t spoken with her since that day in August.  The text she sent was asking for money to build a shelter because they are living in a tent.  I told her, truthfully, that I didn’t have any money to lend at this time, I am on disability pay thru January, we’re just skating by.  I did offer her free lumber that I have and am not using. 

She started a text campaign, that it is all my fault she and her family are homeless and living in a tent in the woods, I stole "their" property, etc.  Okay,  first, as I said, Cheryl and I bought this property for cash 13 years ago.  In all that time, neither Tina nor her husband have worked.  They have been welfare recipients the entire time.  I have literally given them thousands of dollars, two vehicles, and places to live down through the years.  But it’s my fault they have nothing.

I spoke with Brad today about his hanging out with the same people he gets high with, and told him in no uncertain terms that if he is getting high, he must move out.  If it is a case of he’s trying to quit and unable, he has to seek professional help immediately, but he must remain drug free and in school, or I will not let him have the truck I bought, pay his cell bills, or allow him to live here any longer.   If he fails a drug test, or refuses to take one when I tell hiim to, he also has to leave. I told him, that I haven’t seen signs of drug use in him, and was not accusing him, but the fact that he is back with the same crowd concerns me.

He got mad, said I’m trying to force him out of the house.  My response is that I love him, I want him here, and I want to be part of his life, but that he KNOWS that I will not tolerate drug use, and he was told that last time he ran out and then came back home.  He then tried to guilt me for saying I will throw him out with no place to go.  Again, the decision rests with him, and how he decides to behave.  He’s 19, not nine, and old enough that it’s time he understands that I am not required to keep going around in circles, repeating the same cycle with him.  Nor am I required to give him the truck that was bought contingent on his behavior and grades, or keep paying for a cell phone. 

For some reason, people seem to feel that they are entitled to everything.  They don’t take responsibility for their lives or actions, and when it jumps up and bites them on the posterior, it’s everyone’s fault but their own.  They assume the role of society’s victims, instead of using a little healthy introspection and dealing with their own issues. 

I don’t know what Brad’s decision is going to be, probably will be running off again in a day or two if his former pattern holds.  But he knows, or he better know before he makes a rash decision, that this door will no longer be open to him.  If he spends the rest of the winter living in the woods, I hope he has a good coat.  If you’ve read my earlier entries, I think it’s pretty plain that I live for my sons, nothing on earth means more to me.  It just comes to a point that to continuing to let him come home and have another chance is enabling him, and teaching him nothing.  I can’t be a base of operations for this kind of behavior; I refuse. 

I just don’t get it.  We raised all our kids the same, with the same rules, instilling the same value system; everything.  Tina, I am sad to say, I don’t care about.  She is not, and never has been my responsibility.  But Bradley just confuses me.  How does a person get so off track from the way they were raised?  I keep praying morning, noon, and night for him and I believe that ultimately he will be all right, but I have to do my part, and that means sticking to my guns and not letting him live here, yet behave however he pleases.

Anyway, there’s no one I can talk to about this stuff with his mother gone, so you guys get to hear me go on about it.  Thanks for listening and for being so supportive