This has been quite the year. I rang it in seeking out medical facilities for a family emergency. In February I suffered a pinched nerve–debilitating pain that resonated for weeks, my thumb and index finger numb until eight weeks had passed. There’s been that whole threat-to-democracy-in-America situation, and infiltration of fascism on the internet to the extent the above mentioned blog post led to an assault of over 80 spam comments (I thought it was just social media–no place on the internet is safe). My best local friend of six years ghosted me. I got scammed by a local vendor I thought was a friend. My injury upended a lot of my good habits in the two months I was recovering, and I’m just beginning to bring them back and get healthy again.

Then my 17-year-old son moved out.

I realized I have to make this post because I can’t write or think of anything else. My oldest son has been a constant throughout my entire adult life. I have mothered him since I was nineteen years old. Every decision I’ve made has revolved around him. Every twist, every turn, every liftoff, every drag. Though this isn’t what I wanted, this decision is one that I was immediately certain was the right choice for the child I have. He is happier, those remaining in the home are beginning to heal.

Times have been chaotic. Again, my identity is rocked. I have faith that the pain I’m experiencing now is but the wake left behind. As I settle into new routines, my surroundings are memories of the life I built around him.

Time makes you bolder. Even children get older. I’m getting older too.

I had to write this out and publish it and make it real, otherwise it will go necrotic & it may turn into sepsis and rot me from the inside out.

He is gone. I am here. He is not the same child I nurtured, molded, taught, played with. He hasn’t been that little boy in a long time, he is tinkering on the edge manhood. What he needs now, I could only give to him outside of this home. He needs perspective, culture, the opportunity to see different ways of life without carrying the burden of adulthood at the same time. He needs to firmly grasp his last year of childhood, and that is no longer available through the peer groups and environments he’s consistently found himself in.

There’s nothing more I can offer him that he, at this stubborn age, is willing to accept.

I’ve lived. I know pain, struggle, loss, abuse. Abandonment is a more familiar friend than any other I’ve known. I’ve read hundreds of books, spent years in therapy, “done the work.” I have empathy, perspective and motivation to help others, lessons to offer a willing recipient.

It doesn’t matter what you have to offer if the other person isn’t buying it.

If a lesson is being repeated and falling on deaf ears, you’ll come to the point of realization that you’re teaching a person to have deaf ears. Not only is your message not getting across, but you’re in turn teaching them to build walls, avoid curiosity, and mimic deafness through avoidance.

When this is where you find yourself, you have to offer another lesson. You have to step aside and allow for a different teacher to approach the blackboard. Choose wisely. Some teachers perpetuate their own flurry of problems.

Life is the best teacher.

I know this for certain because I wasn’t guided. I didn’t feel nurtured or taught. Hard knocks. I may consistently question the state of the world and individual choices and addictions that are causing a cultural–nay, societal–degradation, but I like who I am. I owe it to my son to get out of his path and let him go his own way.

I didn’t intend on making multiple Fleetwood Mac references throughout this post, but who am I to keep them down?