Day Ten: Healing Through Divorce

My son turned 8 yesterday. He has a long list of mental health diagnoses, most of which are violent. I have been trying to get someone to listen to me since he was 18 months old. I always got “boys will be boys” or “terrible two’s are the worst!” No. SOMETHING. IS. WRONG. WITH. MY. SON. They finally listened to me when he tried to stab my oldest when he was 4. He was diagnosed with Intermittent Explosive Disorder because he was too young to diagnose with anything else. So we had to ride that wave for a few years. At 6 he was diagnosed with Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Impulse Control, and Anxiety. In January we took him to Chicago for a brain scan to see what else was going on because medications aren’t working. He’s on 2 mood stabilizers, 2 stimulants, and anxiety medicine. NOTHING is helping. The scan added a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD and they recommended a daily vitamin and fish oil.

FISH OIL?! I’m raising the next Dahmer and you want me to give him a friggin vitamin?! The vitamins stabilized him… He has been stable for the last few months. Sure, we’d have some bad days, but nothing like they had been. It was daily that I was getting the crap kicked out of me. We were calling crisis or the police DAILY. Police caught him beating the crap out of me on their body cams once. He’s been hospitalized twice in the last year. Once was because he was combative with police. The last few months have been great though. We have a routine (change in routine usually sets him off) and we stick to it as best as we can. He gets therapy regularly and sees a psychiatrist regularly. We also have county help for extra support for him. But he’s been stable.

Until Corey left. That’s when all of this started with him again. Not as often as before, but just as bad. The whole dynamic has changed in our house. It wasn’t just my world flipped upside down, but his too. It’s a change in his routine. It’s a change in what is happening inside our home on a day to day basis. It’s no longer seeing someone you’re used to seeing every single day since you were 18 months old. It’s having pain you don’t know how to recognize or process in any way other than anger/violence.

I came home from therapy today to police at my house because he was being violent with my daughter. Yes, she’s older, but she didn’t have anyone here to protect her. Corey was always here to do the protecting. And because I was at therapy, I wasn’t here for her. She has her own trauma to deal with and here she is having to take this on too because he’s not here to help me with it anymore. I literally cannot take one more thing right now.

I have a husband that walked out on me. I can’t find a job because I’ve been off work taking care of my son for 3 years and nobody wants to hire me. I’m raising the next Dahmer. I can’t even get through a therapy session for my own healing without calls that my son is putting holes in my walls and breaking doors and threatening to kill my daughter. It’s all entirely too much right now and the one person who was supposed to be by my side through it all decided to leave. So I’m left to deal with it all on my own. And I’m so tired. I just want to get through this hard part. I don’t want to go through the process anymore. The process is bullshit.

So here’s to day ten…