Thursday 10 January 2019

I don't even know where to begin.

* I started this post last week - then the carpet was ripped out from underneath me yet again and I fell to ground... I am working on getting back on my feet so I am finishing this post before I start another for which the title would actually be more relevant. I was going to include it here but there is just no way to do that.*


We just came back from a week away in the southern sun. Eat, sleep, knit, swim - repeat for 7 days. It was lovely. We took Kate and Randall and while Kate was mostly fantastic and enjoyable to be around Randall was so hard to be near. He was unhappy, sullen and resentful for much of the week. We let him do his own thing as much as possible because I did just not want to deal with the behaviour. I am pretty sure he drank himself into a pain free oblivion most days all with all the other hurting people at the all-inclusive resort we were at. We knew it was happening, we commented but short of holding his hand for 7 days we were really unable to stop it.

We have watched him struggle with alcohol already and he isn't even legal age yet. He leans towards alcohol and drugs because they numb his pain and although I get that, it breaks my heart to realize that  he will likely struggle with the issues for the rest of his life. He doesn't seem to understand the destruction they can cause even though he knows that his parents drug use is what brought him into the foster care system to begin with.

We talk and we talk, we provide examples from his life, we share news stories and yet we can not seem to get him to understand why his choices are an issue. It is so hard to stand back and watch the train fall off the tracks and to be completely help less to stop it.

Kate was better, there were some rocky moments for sure but she is 12 and that sort of explains everything in and of itself. She did not really make friends while we were there. There were other kids but she seemed unsure of herself so we just hung out together. We played cards and banangrams together while we drank mint the in the lobby. It was a good week for her I think.

I know that this is likely that last vacation we will take as a family and so I tried to hang on to it, to make it good even though it was really hard at times.