It's All Downhill from Here

Freddy was smart in ways I would never be, he was strong and able and I wanted to think that he had potential. I’m his mother, of course I did.  I decided then to prepare him to take his GED test instead and then figure out where we’d go from there. I printed out a practice GED test and gave it to him.  He made a 60.  I was heartened and thought he didn’t have far to go and we could do it.  The neurotic half of me however felt his opportunities might be limited by having a GED and I just didn’t know what we should do. 

Freddy and I talked it over ad nauseum and I did some research and talked to my stepmom and I’m not sure how we landed on it but we decided that Job Corps was the best course of action for him.  He could get his diploma or GED and obtain a technical certificate and I left that decision to him. He decided on welding and I felt that was just as good a choice as any.  He had to wait until his sixteenth birthday which would happen two months after summer and that left us both at loose ends for the next five months. The preceding events were weeks of agonizing and my crying over how I’d failed as a mother.  Freddy’s tears and beating himself up over not being smart enough or good enough to be “regular. It was tough and now it meant that he was home alone with Tucker for that time while I was at work and Harlow was at school. 

Einstein, FTW!!

Once the wedding was over, I almost shrunk into myself even more if that’s possible.  My relationship with my son was deteriorating and his problems at school were coming to the forefront.  Freddy had been held back in first grade because I was moving jobs and he had gone to three different schools that year.  When we landed where we landed the teachers and counselor recommended that he repeat the first grade for his own good. At the time, it didn’t seem like a huge deal but it came back to bite us in the ass when he failed 7^th grade and summer school was not an option because he couldn’t make up the necessary work.

He came to me with tears in his eyes and was so ashamed of himself for failing.  I tried to tell him that this was just as much my fault as it was his.  I had been so wrapped up in the disaster we were living that I’d let my motherhood duties slide.  Although we had fought through his ADHD with no medication and I had spent so many hours advocating for him at school, it just quit being as effective in middle school. 

I tried asking the principal for a 504 representative to help with a special education plan for my son but was told that wouldn’t make a difference, he’d have to repeat the 7^th grade.  The principal and my relationship had declined into an adversarial association. Freddy had gotten into trouble for fighting and for being restless and disruptive in class and the principal had little to no people or management skills and there was no gray area to him. Kids were either good ones or bad ones.  It should be noted he took a demotion the following year and was no longer the principal.  It didn’t help us however, Freddy was doomed to repeat the 7^th grade and what made it worse in a tiny town with the entire K-12 in one building, he’d be in the same classes all day with his little sister. 

I was cleaning the bedroom and hanging up clean clothes and I had pulled Tucker in to talk to him privately about Freddy. When I told him what had happened and how upset Freddy was and he could see my obvious upset, he told me that Freddy was playing me.  I looked up at him in complete disbelief, stopped in my tracks with hangers in my hand.  Of all the reactions I thought I’d get, this one did not occur to me.

“Playing me?!”

“Yeah, he’s playing you.  You’re his mommy and you always rush in to defend him even when he’s wrong.  You’ve turned him into a first class momma’s boy pussy that comes crying to momma when things don’t go his way.”

“You know even if that’s the case, even if I decide he’s being a little player and pulling the wool over my eyes, what do you suggest I do? Put him in the same grade with his sister?” I looked at him with what I know could have only been interpreted as disgust on my face. 

He studied me and was silent for a tick and then quietly said, “It would teach him a lesson.”

“Yeah,” I said. “What lesson is that...that I don’t give two shits about the fact that he’s been struggling and he’s been affected by our lives being drastically and systematically flushed down the toilet over the last four years?”

He came unglued then.  Seriously unwound.  I could see it coming and I knew as soon as the words were out that even though I meant them, it was the worst possible thing I could have said. 

He got up off the bed where he’d been sitting and came towards me, “You think I have ruined your lives? You think that everything is MY fault when all I’ve tried to do is support my family and take care of them?!”

I just looked at him, I couldn’t speak. I was paralyzed between wanting to say, “Yes you egotistical, maniacal sociopath.” And “Honey, that’s not what I meant.” 

Freddy

There is time to explain now the powerhouse that is my son.  Again, we must name him for the interest of storytelling and though I do so love his name, we’ll call him Freddy.  My Freddy is an enigma wrapped in a mystery shrouded in controversy...yah not really but he is a handful.  When he was 3 ½ and his sister was 1½, I left their dad.  He worshiped his dad but couldn't understand what was wrong with him either.  He wasn’t the attentive Daddy he’d always been and was often hateful and angry.  He had descended into a very real, very frightening meth addiction.  There has been much talk swirling in the family about "whose fault it was" and blah blah blah but let me just come clean right now.  The first time he ever did that shit, I was with him.  Some friends of ours we’d gone to dinner with had stopped and picked some up when we'd gone out one night and he asked me had I ever, and I told him I had. He asked, “Is it ok?”

I said, “I guess so if you want to party.”  We did it together.  We did it every other weekend then every weekend then the weekends began to stretch over Thursday to Monday and I chose to pull myself out of that headlong descent into fucking madness.  He did not.  I realized it was too much and my children needed me.  So after a year of trying to get him to quit and trying to give him help he didn’t want, I left him. It made my little man upset that Daddy wasn't there anymore and he blamed me.