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My family

Embrace Today By: K. Wilhelmina Floria

Tears of happiness shall fall,
listen close for your destination call.

A river of tranquility flows through life.

Ride out the eye of the storm, pass the strife.


Saturday, December 18, 2010

My son is mad.

I went to see my son yesterday for his birthday.  He's still in the hospital and they're going to send him to another 28 day rehab and then try to find him a long term rehab for mica patients. His parole officer told him that if he hadn't gone to the hospital she was going to violate him. Then he would of been locked up for 7 more years.  I pray this boy... no man learns that he has to do what he's suppose to do. He's been home for a year and a half if he gets violated he's going to have to do another 7 years.  He needs to love life and realize that the confines of these programs are nothing like being back in jail where he was locked down on 23/7.  But he should know that better then me. He is a grown man and he has to realize mommy can't save him no more he has to save himself.  I need to learn how to let go and let God. I'm his mother and I don't want him locked up. Did I mention his father has been locked up for about 27 years for murder.

When he was a baby I had so many dreams and hopes for him.  When he was a teenager and going through his thing I thought it was just rebellion stage.  Then he was hospitalized and I was told he was schizophrenic.  I refused to believe this.  They doped him up. He fought the staff and sent 3 orderlies and 2 nurses to the hospital, so they gave him even more drugs.

I went to the library and read up on mental illness.  My son had all the signs. I started wondering if I did anything wrong. Even to this day. Is he my punishment for all the bull shit I did in my life.  Before I knew I was pregnant I smoke cigarettes and reefer.  The night before I went into labor I went with my sister and we went to this guys' house, my sister went to get high and I said what the hell and took a couple of drags from the joint.  The next morning I was in labor and gave birth 36 hours later. He was consider a preemie even though he weighted 5 pounds 2 ounces.  On the 19th the doctors had me sign for him to have surgery because he had a perforated abdomen.  The first time my son was held was 28 days after he was born.  I could touch him through the incubator but it's not the same as cradling your child. Not being held had to affect him.
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He was a good baby, but I do remember one night he was crying and crying and I just couldn't take it any more and I shook him.  I didn't know better. He stopped crying for a few seconds and started right back up.  I didn't think it was a problem, but today you hear so much about shaking baby syndrome.  Maybe I fucked his head up.

As a toddler he use to sit against the wall and bang his head.  I would stop him and sometimes he would just sit and stare in space.

When I meet Mr. 23 years and moved into the hotels my son was 3 years old.  He saw a lot, pimps beating on their women.  Drug dealers, transvestites. Mr. 23 and his brother use to take my son on the roof and my son told me years later that they use to throw him back and forth between the roofs.  My son said they use to be high. Now he told me this, after he was sick and had a hard time distinguishing truth from illusions. So I don't know.

 I taught him how to read and write before he started kindergarten.  The teacher he had loved him, said he was so bright.  But we had to move and I moved back to my mothers and put him in the school around the corner.  It was over crowded and the teacher was new, fresh out of school and couldn't handle the class, she couldn't recognize how smart my son was.  I didn't know I could of demanded that he be taken out of that class.  The kids in the class were all left back and bad.  My son stopped doing well and started behaving as bad as the other kids.

We moved again and lived in Mr. 23 years step fathers' basement. The five of us in one room.  I smoked reefer around my children.  I should of known better, but I believed there was no harm in smoking reefer. My son was in 2nd grade and he was having problems. They sent him for an evaluation and it turned out he had above average intelligence but was hyper active.  I refuse medication for him.
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We move again to Far Rockaway.  He just wouldn't behave he would get in trouble for talking, getting out his seat and not doing his homework or classwork. He started to smoke cigarettes and reefer.  He was normal to me he had a girlfriend that was older then him.  Then he started cutting school. He had a friend I didn't want him to hang with, this friend was robbing people, breaking in house and doing all kinds of shit.  I tried to keep my son from him. This is how he ended up staying with my sister and her husband.

After my mother died he came back home and this is when shit hit the fan.  He wasn't going to school, started drinking and doing drugs. More then reefer, later he told me he smoked PCP and after that he was no longer right in the head.  One night Mr. 23 was playing chess with him and my son just started crying, he asked Mr. 23 if he saw those things flying around the room.  My son was having audio and visual hallucinations. 

He was going in and out of hospitals.  I tried to get him in programs but at 16 the availability of programs were limited.  He ended up doing 6 months on Rikers Island. When he came home, he was in a half way house that should have been condemned, it was just trying to get paid from medicaid.  He was in out patient programs but wouldn't comply.

One night he was gone all night, he took my car. The next morning he came in and thought I called the police and was threatening me and the girls.  I told the girls to go get in the car. My oldest daughter was trying to protect me, she didn't want to leave me.  She was clinging to me as we walked down the stairs. We got into the car, locked the doors and I started the engine. Before I could pull off my son busted the back window with a shovel, then the drivers side window as I pulled off.  This was before cellphones were the norm.  I went  a few blocks away to a pay phone and called the cops.

When I got back to the neighborhood, we were in the car across the street. My son was on the roof, with the stick from the shovel, the shovel part was in the car.  He was smoking a cigarette and a cop was under the roof with a gun pointed up at him.  One of my stepsons' friends was trying to talk him down.  The cops grabbed him in the house from the window and took him to the hospital.

Shortly after that he got arrested again and did I think 2 years for robbing someone for $10.  He wasn't taking his meds and ended up beating a CO and was sentenced to a 23/7 lock down for over 11 months.  I wrote the head of corrections and they reduced the time. But every time he got in general population he got himself in some kind of trouble and ended back in the 23/7 lock down.

He came home for a few months and robbed this guy for his Walkman. When the police picked him up he had the Walkman on his ears and was sitting right where he robbed the guy at. He got 7 years for the crime and 7 years parole.  He did most of the 7 years in 23/7 lock down again.  He was in super max prisons with ruthless criminals and he was there for a Walkman theft. When he came home a year and half ago he was so skinny, he looked like a man of 60 years old. Today he looks healthy but he acts like he wants to go back to prison as I mention at the start of this story. I shared all this information because I believe I made my son the way he is. I not afraid of dying, I don't want to go anywhere yet, and today I believe I have plenty more time ahead of me. But if lupus plans to take me out sooner then later, I pray that my son is on his two feet. That he finds someone to love him and take care of him when I'm gone.  So I ask God to keep me alive until that time arrives.

2 comments:

  1. Always remember you love your children and did the best you could. There are no perfect parents and you can't blame yourself for trying the best you knew how to love. God loves you and knows you are a wonderful person. Continue to write with your gift from God to sort out all of that pent up guilt you have lived with your whole life. Love you, girl!! <3

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Embrace today.