This is not fun.....

I am not having a good day today. I'm not sure why. My wife and I had a good meeting last night at the support group. Compared to all the other people in the group our situation is still so NEW compared to what everyone else has been going through for years, and they have all had much worse situations. I hope we don't have to go through what they all have and I hope we don't have to do the things that many of them have had to do (ie kicking their kids out, preventing them from ever coming home, pressing charges, etc, etc). I don't think we are there and I pray that we never get there. I look at our son now, and I see him trying and succeeding (40 days or so since the last relapse) and I continue to be cautiously optimistic.

I also see another couple there who have put their 20 year old in an extended open-ended program and I wonder, based on what they told everyone he did and they went through, if they went TOO far and are being too strict about it. I guess one never really knows. There are no easy answers and there is no right or wrong way. Each case is different and one size does not fit all.

So, why am I not having a good day? I think its because I am not where I want to be right now (emotionally), and that is all caused by what our son put us through earlier this year (the arrests, court cases, the ER visits, the psyche ward, the in-patient time, and now the never-ending out-patient and meeting cycle). I feel like I am on a treadmill and I can't change the speed and I can't fix the problem to turn the darn thing off so we can live the lives I thought we would. This is heavy stuff, I know, but I like to fix things. I like to make people happy and I want our family to be happy, or at least happier than we are now. We're doing good, and our son is doing much better, and our younger son is fine, but it seems we are all waiting for the next crisis that hopefully will never come but may be inevitable. As our group leader said the other night, we are still in the Early Recovery stage. I would like to know when we graduate away from Early Recovery!!!!