I hate you

 

I am still NOT Ok.

 

A student asked me a questions about my wife.

Today I said one of my passing things I say about my wife and how I treat her. 

A student raised his hand and asked me to tell them more about my wife. And I said, "you guys don't want to hear me describe my wife and talk about her....."

Of course, if you don't know kids, they are all about listening to anything we have to say about anything that has to do with our lives. So, I took this opportunity to give these kids a little life lesson. And here is what I said:

"My wife is one of the smartest people I can think of. She has a bachelor's degree and three master's degrees. I am telling ya, she is a teacher's teacher and she knows more than just about anyone if it has to do with early education. She is very intuitive with her kids and will know them inside out within a week of being their teacher. I always say that I had to learn how to be a teacher but my wife. . . . . well she was born a great teacher and getting the certificate was just a formality.  

She is the best person to see any problems with any decision I am about to make. Even though I make all the decisions in our marriage, I never ever make any major decision without running it by her because she gives such great advice and is the world's best devil's advocate. I depend on her to help me see all that could go bad and to let me know what to look out for. 

She is super creative and comes up with ideas that I could only dream of. Now I am the guy she depends on to make her ideas come to life but she really is the inspiration behind what I can do. It feels pretty good because she praises and talks me up to her friends and that really gives me a lot of confidence. I don't really know if she realizes how important that is to me but she does it and it is important.

She is a fearless adventurer. I am introverted and probably would never leave my house if it was not for her. But she is my safe place and I feel secure and comfortable around her. She has taken me to places that I would have never gone by myself. She is classic for just taking off for the day to just go anywhere that we have never gone before. And every single time, I think of how much I would have missed out on if she was not taking me with her. We have seen the Phantom at the Pantages Theater in Canada, We have been to Niagra falls. I have gone to Vagas twice and flown to the Bahamas with her.  Just this year, we took a cruise to Alaska . . . .I would have never been able to do those things myself but she gives me the courage to do those things and experience life more. 

She calms my mind and helps me to relax. My mind rages with thoughts all the time since I am a bit ADHD ( I am in denial). Seriously though, just holding her hand or sitting next to her or having a long hug is enough to relax my entire body right down to my very thoughts. They just seem to relax and go away so that I can be in the moment and enjoy her touch and embrace. Sometimes it is the only moment of the day I can shed that anxiety and that is extremely important to my health both mentally and physically. "

Then I smiled and said," Finally, she is the prettiest girl in the world. I could have started with that but it seems like it would not really mean as much if I didn't tell you all that other stuff first. To me she is not just pretty. . . . she is Beautiful.  

You see? Probably not because I don't think I have even scratched the surface of just how much I have married up when my wife decided that I was worth marrying. Man did I luck out on that one!"

Found on my phone.

I found this on my phone and I don't remember even putting it in there. I must have been ranting when i was walking it off one day and I had it on voice to text. This looks like these were issues that we were struggling with at the beginning of my son's mental health problems.

So here it is.....

 Our family is being torn apart so what can we do? Well.....We can't do this, whatever this is, anymore. It's putting too much stress on our family and is tearing us apart. It is so hard at home. He doesn't do anything to help our home. He can be verbally abusive and mean.

He blames us for a lot of our problems and pretty much all of his. He says that we are to blame for all his mental health problems and that we are not doing enough. He was pulled from school and chauffeured to therapy appointments and scheduled for Autism testing and admitted to hospitals for evaluation. He lives at home with no responsibilities and when asked to do simple chores he fights like a bear to not do them and then accuses us of trying to make him our slave.

Isn't it right for us to just want a kid to be able to take care of themselves? Isn't it reasonable for us to expect that having a child that is not mentally retarded or developmentally challenged to learn to care for himself in the society and to move out to be on his own? I am guessing it will be hell to do that to him and he will hate us for it, but I can live with never talking to him again if I know he can take care of himself.

Our mental health is suffering. It feels like we are starting to debate who's mental health is more important and who will just have to suffer. I feel like it is us that is expected to decline while he hides behind his as a justification to not do what he needs to. 

I am worried about my wife's mental health. She says that if we can't get him independent and out on his own that she will leave. If that happens, my mental health with suffer to the point where my physical health will decline, and my life will be shortened. I WILL not be healthy without her.

Sometimes I feel like he wants to find someone that will agree with him so that he can use it to get his way at the expense of the rest of his family. We have another boy too. Do you know that? What about him? What about his life and his needs? It seems we are working with our oldest boy's issues to the expense of our youngest boy. 

Right now he seems to only want to stay at home forever and not do anything but drain us of resources and mental/emotional energy without contributing anything. He says things like his mom is lazy and sits all the time and does nothing so why should he. He tells me that it is not right that I do everything and that it's not a healthy relationship if I do.  I know I am talking in exaggeration, but he has told me that he doesn't want to work and doesn't want to go to school and doesn't want to leave home and that with his issues he may never will.

He says he is not being heard and that his side is not being told but that is not true. It's just we have a side too.

Because you want to know where I am at right now? I have a son that is saying his mom is toxic by being licensed, self-centered, lazy, impatient, and verbally abusive on one side and he hates me because I am supporting her more than him.  Then my wife is saying we have a lazy, narcissistic, manipulative, son that just wants to mooch off us his entire life. And he hates it that I agree with her. I am in the middle trying to just keep my family from falling apart because I am scared to death of my wife leaving me because of the stress and my son not being independent or hurting himself, maybe even killing himself, because he thinks that is better than being an adult doing adult things. I am worried I am not giving my other son the time and effort that he needs to become an independent adult. And I am worried that we will suffer for the rest of our lives with this stress. 

I am trying to hold back the Mississippi with a dam made of sand.

I have struggled with wading through the waters of mental health for quite a few years and it seems to have grown to the size of the Mississippi. The current is gaining strength and the water is rising.

Swelling.

At first, I had tried building a dam with the only thing I have to use and that is just sand.

And it worked ok for a while but the Mississippi is relentless. It swells and rises. It beats and pushes. The dam was beaten and pummeled until just a tiny trickle managed to push through to the other side. Well! That was all it took for the water to take advantage of the weak and tenable hold the dam had holding it at bay. The water took its chance and rushed through the break and tore away at the sides more and more to gouge a Grand Canyon of free-flowing water.

And I was there being buffeted and pushed and screamed at by the water and spray. I frantically worked to fill in the space and built it back up. I fortified it with more and built it higher and thicker. I hit it with all the energy I had and the fortitude of my determination and patience and grit . .  to which I have considerable amounts of. 

But the dam I am making is still sand and sand is sand. Is it not? It was just a matter of time before the relentless pounding of the waters would break through again. 

And it did.

And I fought back again. 

And again. 

And again. 

Then, I tried to stem the flow and to see if diverting it would do anything. I gave it another path off to the side. Maybe I could get the water to do something. . .  maybe be more productive. . . then, it will not batter and push and pummel the dam with such persistence if I could move it in a different direction. So I tried to maybe change the flow of water into a water wheel to try and get it turning and rolling around a bit. 

It didn't matter though because sand is sand. 

I fight and battle and work my ass off to keep back the waters knowing in my brain that it is insane to even try this and that it is a losing battle and that it will never work. But my heart . . . in my heart I fight. I fight until my hands bleed and my muscles cramp to hold it back .... to keep it from happening. I am doing this all the while crying out with tears streaming down my cheek because I know the futility of it all. I know it in my mind how useless it is to use sand for a dam. I know that no matter how many times I hold back the water it will keep getting through until I have nothing left.  The heart doesn't listen to the mind with stuff like this.

 My heart is refusing to accept this.

What is the saying? It is insanity to do the same thing over and over and expect it to change. 

I wonder if he knows.

I wonder if he knows that in my mind I have come to the conclusion and accepted that we are at the point where what he wants cannot happen and what we want is never going to be what he wants. He has been thinking of suicide on and off for over two years and we have exhausted all possible help and interventions that we can think of. But in my mind, I will always remember when dad told me that if a person has decided that they don't want to live that there is nothing anyone can do. They will just die. 

He was talking about the elderly but the more I am in this season of my life with my son, I am seeing that with some people that commit suicide, it is the same. And that is where I am with this dream of the Mississippi. 

But there is more. 

I live in fear of what I might find.

I wake up every morning and wonder, is he still here with us?

Then I am at work fearing a visit from the police with the devastating news. 

Every text I receive gives me a stab of fear wondering if it is him. . . . if he is having another episode.

Then I come home from work and wonder if I will see his car in the driveway.

And then I reinforce the dam to try and hold back the water for the day.

And then the next day I do it all over again. 

Day after day after day after day. . . . . 

And I am in so much pain thinking. . . . wondering . . . Fearing. . . .has he decided already and I am doing all this for nothing because of what my dad said all those years ago?

No. My heart will not accept it. . . . will not give in. 

So I keep going and going and going. And who knows when I will fall. Who knows when I will have nothing left. 

Who knows when my nightmare will be a reality. 

Love IS enough

Have you heard the phrase that love is not enough to make a relationship work? I mean you will hear it every once in a while when a person is running down a path of destructive doom in a relationship. When they are confronted about it they will scream that love is all they need while the other will say that there has to be more than just love to make things work. 

I used to go along with that ideology. You know- that love is not enough to live life with another person. 

But now . . . . now I think I am looking at this wrong.

After reading through my previous blogs, I think I may have been wrong about what loving another person truly means. And you know what I believe now? Love is enough if you know what loving a person really means. 

Love is not just an ethereal idea that just floats around and exists outside of living life. Love is an action and a state of mind and heart that motivates a person to behave and act and think in a very specific way. I have been saying lately that love changes a person's thinking from "me" to "us". But I don't think that really does this concept justice either. 

I will say that I am doing things and moving our lives forward for us when I talk about my wife and me. But that is not really true.... not in my mind. Not in my heart. In my mind and heart, I think of my wife as being me. Isn't that weird? She and I are so entwined with our thinking and our goals and our motivations and our wants and needs that it would be hard to tell the difference between us. I have grown through the decades of being married to understand on a spiritual level what it means in the Bible to be "one flesh." You are so much one person that to love them is to love yourself. I literally have emotionaly, mentally, and almost physically bonded with her. Does that make sense?

So, loving "the one" is more like doing and providing and supporting them because in doing that you are doing it for yourself. You are making your life so much better and happier by adding this other person to you and making yourself bigger and more full as a person. You have more perspective and more depth and more value and more drive and more insight and more. . . . just . . . everything. 

Am I explaining this well? No, not really. 

Because in my mind and in my heart and emotionally and spiritually, I truly believe that if she would suddenly tragically die, it would be much like having an arm amputated or a leg missing. It would be literally be losing a part of yourself. It sounds so romantic (and it is right?) but this is where I think a lot of people fall short of really truly finding their one person that they will spend the rest of their lives with. They have not deliberately taken the time to find themselves and understand themselves and to find the one person that will complement and bond to in order to become that better more full person.  

So, love is enough. You just have to learn and feel and be in love. Truly be Love with the person you choose to bond and love. 

If any of this makes sense. 

No progress without healthy debate.

 Here is an exchange I had with a person on Facebook. They made this no argument statement:

What we need is to eliminate anyone in the education industry being a government employee. At all levels, in all cities, counties and states. 100% private school choice with vouchers. Nothing short of that will satisfy me. Or fix the "system", because that's what is broken.

So here is my response. I basically challenged him to explain why his stance would be the best solution by bringing up issues that have consistently been a problem with Private schools:

Why do you think that would work? How would you regulate discrimination practices of Private schools based on income or performance of the students? How would you make sure tuition is used appropriately and without fraud? How will you keep pay competitive enough so that teachers don't have to have more than one job just to make a living? I just have not seen private schools show any progress in education. There are exceptions but it is not the norm. I am all for doing something but what needs to be done needs to address a lot of these issues. It might fall into a blame game, but I truly feel the biggest obstacles to education is family structure/culture and poverty/single parent homes.

His response:

there are no perfect systems, but I would trust parents and students over government indoctrination teachers 100 to 1. And the good ones would get paid good and the bad ones would find a new career.

And while I agree other obstacles are real, the government system has been proven to be an almost complete failure due to the unions.

So I challenged him again:

Do you truly believe teacher indoctrination? Of what subjects? What topics? Is it on the teacher's own or is it curriculum driven? Do you think the recent generation really would be able to develop schools for better outcomes today? Why is that? Is there proof? And what exactly determines good vs. bad teachers and how can you accurately and consistently get reliable measurements for bad vs good teachers? Just as a side note, how have the unions caused the government schools to be a complete failure? Is it the unions or is it the government and the unions are actually fighting against them?

And this is the moment where my challenges to his ideas met with this common response to challenging a person's views:

you obviously live in a different universe than I do if you don't already know the answers to every question you just ask. Let's don't bother trying to communicate.

And that was it. Without responding to anything I challenged him with which were legitimate and real problems that occur with what he was saying, he basically told me that if I didn't know already then I was stupid and not worth talking to. 

Isn't that the way nowadays? People would rather just say that if you don't know already then you must be blind or stupid or "drinking Cool Aid" or some dismissive statement like that. It is all just a ploy to avoid having to stand your ground with reason in the face of someone challenging your ideas. Can progress be made this way? No. 

I asked those questions because those are the most common issues that arise with these topics that are counter to progress, and I wanted to know what he thought the solutions were to them or if he could actually prove that those problems he stated truly existed in the first place. Instead of standing his ground with evidence and rational ideas, he decided "let's don't bother to communicate." He really missed an opportunity here, don't you think?

This is my frustration with trying to have good solid debate and compromise. If this guy truly had great ideas and good reasoning for why private schools could work to save our education system then he missed an opportunity to teach or sway my idea on the topic. I was honest and genuine in my responses. I am pretty sure that was clear. I was not derogatory or inciting. I will say, too, that he didn't drop to name-calling or insults which was nice for a change. But the end is the same. No progress or exchange of thoughts that move a problem forward to a solution. 

So here is my last words on this to him and I am pretty sure when he said it is not worth communicating further, he will never respond back:

Well, that's the issue, isn't it? I have not seen this so-called indoctrination in the schools I have experience with. I am not even sure I know what indoctrinating you are talking about. I am guessing it is more so in very liberal cities and states like California or New York. Do you know firsthand or have some basis to this other than a couple of YouTube or snap chat or Instagram references? It seems like this sort of thinking is ruled by a very small minority as far as I can see because they speak louder than the rest. If it is specifically in the curriculum, then what does it require a teacher to teach that is indoctrinating? I am also very serious about the measurement of what makes a good or bad teacher and how good this type of measurement is in validity. I also wonder what entails a union making a system fail and what specifically the unions have done to cause the education system to fail. If I live in a different universe, then by all means, give me the resources and data and research to bring me up to speed on what has been determined to work and are best result practices for a more productive set of citizens.