A Ball of Mess

Since I wrote last much has happened.  Let me see...

A few days into packing and freaking and packing, we had a major storm which caused some flash-flooding. Got some water in the basement and garage where most of the boxes to pack were being stored. FUN. 

Kyd came home to pack up his stuff and promptly came down with a nasty cold. Still playing the you-don't-want-me-but-I'm-entitled game he acted as though asking me to go get him some medicine was going to result in a smack-down but then two days later was a total schmuck about helping with anything that wasn't his. "Maybe if I still lived here...", he shot.  

Makes my head hurt. 

But on that first night he was sick, he slept on the couch and watched kids' movies. I lay there in my bed listening to the upbeat musical score and silently wept. My heart was aching to go back, to just rewind time so I could have my sweet Kyd back. The one who chased butterflies, who looked after his little sister, who made us laugh, and who was so so so so sweet you just wanted to put him on a pink cloud wrapped in bubble wrap so nothing could ever ever hurt him.

Only there's no bubble wrap in the world that can protect someone from themselves. He's crashing, and fast. I heard through the grapevine that he's been calling around looking for E in its purest and most powerful form (I'm not "savvy" enough to remember the name), and he forgot his court appearance on Friday and instead was heading to a party in New York. He didn't "remember" until he was halfway to New York. In other words, he didn't remember until his lawyer called. 

And I...I am alternately terrified of what's next, worried sick about him, but terribly angry too. His recent attitude gets right under my skin in less than 5 seconds. He calls only when he wants/needs something, acts put out when anyone else wants/needs anything in return, is playing the trod-upon victim whose mother "doesn't want him" and who's backed into a corner without options because life has been so cruel. He's doing next to nothing to improve his situation or relationships, unable to own his own stuff, and instead is focusing all of his energy on finding the next Rave, his latest kick.

When I talk to him it is hard to feel sympathy. It is nigh impossible to detach. And it only makes me more frantic because I know that attitude. It is the attitude of an acting addict. 

It is crazy, nonsensical, and unreachable. 

I'm trying in the best feeble way I know how to detach from all of this with love, but no matter what I do or say in regards to Kyd it never feels right. If I get angry I feel awful that I'm not more understanding. If I'm more understanding I feel awful that it goes unnoticed, changes nothing, and is met with attitude and then I just feel walked-on and weak.

How do you do this? HOW? How do you watch your beloved child, your only son, methodically destroy their lives while nothing you do or say saves them? HOW do you sort the difference between enabling and supporting? How do you not get angry at the awful ugly selfishness? 

This is killing me. This is killing him. This disease is killing us both.