Today is my BPD son's 22nd birthday. He walked out of our house just over a year ago. We'd already bought his present last year, so when he asked his younger brother and little sister to meet him at the park on that day, we gave them the present to give to him.
Since then he came back once to read us a prepared list of all the horrific things we'd done to him, got in my face when I asked him to leave and told everyone we'd thrown him out and called the police on him. (I did threaten him with that because um he got in my face)
-He went through major spinal surgery, which we paid for but banned us from visiting him in the hospital, calling to find out how he was, or contacting his surgeon (note all these people went along with him despite the fact that we were footing the bill
-went to live with a friends parents while said friend went off to university. stayed there for 6 months until they kicked him out. We gave him $ for rent etc but apparently he didn't pay them a thing.
-sent horrible emails whenever he wanted something and we refused to jump anymore. Made him deal with own debt, credit card and car repairs.
-ended up renting an apartment for younger bro to continue at college while we moved away and of course, BPD son honed in on that and is now living there too -on our dime of course.
-offered him a year of college $ to finish up at community college-got a ton of rage and abuse for not letting him do an online law course at $350 a year.
But the positives do outweigh the negatives here.
1. We no longer live in fear in our own house.
2. We've got our dd away from him
3. We can take time to think about our decisions and responsibilities for him and not just jump to fix him or enable him out of fear and guilt.
4. We can engage calmly and keep putting the ball back in his court until he starts to take some responsibility for himself and his future.
5. We give him what we choose to give him without expecting anything back in return and that includes physically mentally and emotionally.
6. We're working on no longer financially supporting him as of June 2014 and will start reminding him of that in the new year.
7. my dh celebrated his birthday on the 11th and it was the first time in 10 years that we didn't have any drama. That was nice.
So we haven't changed him-we've changed the way we react to him. Things that 2 years ago I would never have imagined being able to do-detach with love, walk away, stay calm not feel guilty are starting to become easier. A lot of that is due to the advice on these boards, so thank you for that.
