To My Son

I hope you received your package undamaged. I will get the other to you next week. I will also send you my diary. You have made a lot of assumptions about your Father, but that is part of being a son. You always thought I knew where I was going and dragged you along. You thought I had a faith in God that was unreasonable and complete and yet you were very wrong. You thought I did not have my own demons about living life and how horrible it felt to be in this world and around people and having to make choices. Well I did.

Regardless of what you think, you did not talk to me very much about the war when I was there or when I came home. You would have noticed that I did not return to church for quite a while. I went those two or three times in the beginning but I hated God so much for putting me through the things I had to go through, and see, and realize how very hurtful and cruel the world can really be. Yes eventually I went to church on a regular basis and started to listen. It was not the same.

There are no real books on how to live your life, raise your children or go to war. You do what you can. You may not like it, I may not like it, but it has to start and stop somewhere. This brings me to the most important point of all and perhaps the last advice I will ever give you. When you read my diary, you will see I agonized over life, religion, and what to do about you. There is one thing that crosses all of them regardless of whether the decisions were right or wrong or you did not like them and I did not like them. I did not give up. There were plenty times I wanted to turn you over to your Mother and did not. You only remember the last year. But there were two things that stopped that. First, your Mother would not take you. Why do you think you were left with Donna when I went to war? The order specifies she gets the kid if I am unable but your Mom signed you over. Literally, we both were not there for you, but that was my only major time. I was with you at every doctor, dentist, school or other event. Maybe you did not like it or do not remember it but my conscious is clear in that I was there for you, and neither you nor your Mother will ever take that away.

When I was a teenager (18) I weighed 100 lbs. or less. I was beaten, I was in a ghetto school, and hope and future to me was to make everything stop. Whether you choose to admit it or not, your life has not been one of oppression. We can however turn our lives into the most horrific events of all humankind. I have told you what I did in the past. I have told you about digging my own hole with the walls made out of shit and letting it get deeper and deeper that there was no way out. You have let the world convince you; you are sick and need medication. Some people can break out of this, and some cannot. If you ever come to the realization that you are the most powerful person in your life, and you let people influence and take away that power, you can get it back. You can be at the bottom of that dark hole and say enough. I do not choose to live my life like this anymore. I want these things in my life and I am not going to get them by being a patient or dependent on anyone else. It is you that have the power to love and hate, to laugh and cry, and that gives you the power to make yourself happy and walk away from things that do not. I do not care if it is me, but I want you to grab yourself by the shorts and pull yourself up out of that hole. You can be angry about it, you can be tough but you can do what you need to do to have a happy life without becoming a Rob Zombie on meds for life. You are stronger than you know, and you can take that strength and break any diagnosis thrown at you. You will still have some problems, but you will deal with them in the sunshine instead of making your hole deeper. There is a big difference. If you do this yourself, you will realize there is nothing, absolutely nothing you cannot do. It all starts with a simple question – “What am I doing”.

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When I wrote this to my son several years ago, I thought he would read it with some insight. Even if he did not like it, I hoped it would raise questions in his head as to why things occurred between us.  Like all parents, you hope you instill a sense of morality in your children.  Unfortunately being a child of divorce and two parents with repeated custody battles, my son had little option but to be a survivor. I won all the custody battles and suffered a great deal of indignity at the hands of his mother.  A woman who started leaving the kid alone in the dark in a high chair while she slept upstairs.  A woman who took the child out of state up into some park cabin on a mountain and left him with a friend known to be medically unstable with no phone.  A woman who repeatedly challenged me when I attempted to get him assistance for ADHD, but all of a sudden forced my son back on medication with disastrous consequences.  If there is one truth in the world, it is the strength of the bond between a mother and child. It seems a mother could set fire to her child and still be greeted with love.

After living with me since he was about 4, my son at the age of 16 was advised by his mother that I had him studying too hard.  She told him he no longer needed to get good grades and could get into places like Harvard by writing an essay.  At the time, he had slightly less than an A average but with his ADHD had to work hard and get assistance from school.  I had weaned him off ADHD meds like Adderall and as long as he worked and got assistance from school he was doing well both academically and popularity wise at school.  He was taking karate and was working his way up to his black belt.

His mother who had opposed his treatments in the past now entered telling him he was studying too hard and that there were new medications that could make him better.  Also that I was requiring too much of him by asking him to get As.  My position was for his last two years of high school to finish with the A average and he could write any ticket once he graduated.  He only had this one shot and his life could sail or sink based on that performance.  As the primary parent, I had always been the stricter disciplinarian.  His mother was Disneyworld.  She would tell him to ask me things like would I give up fatherhood to her new husband.

Unbeknownst to me at the time whenever he visited his mother out of state she would have him see a therapist who counter advised on everything I and his therapists I had seeing said. When I discovered one of these therapists, I contacted them and asked them to talk to me and they would not.  My son believing the correctness of his mother decided to go back on medication.  His grades started to decline and his mother explained to him that it was my fault.  He became confrontational with me telling me what I thought – i.e., he was not good because he was getting lower grades or his performance at the B and C level was inadequate.  I repeatedly told him in the end it did not matter what I thought but those who would judge him in the future on his grades.  He fell back on the words of his mother and claimed I was making him do hard work for nothing, and that his grade drops were my fault anyway. 

As the weeks went by and the medications affected his grades I attempted to intervene stating he should be on less invasive drugs for depression and anxiety.  He dismissed me and then started making claims that I never loved him.  I had fought for over a decade with his mother and schools to get him help. I watch his mother pay $100 a month support and claim she would make it up when she came into her own.  An even greater irony was that it was just 2 years before I had to go to war and she was supposed to take custody for that year and refused.  I had to find someone else to take care of him.  When I came back from the war and was in the hospital from injuries, my son was with her for summer visitation and she refused to release him to visit me a weekend.

When my son said I did not love him it was a crushing blow and a realization that his mother had manipulated the situation to a no win situation for me.  As his grades declined and he became moody at school he decided to go live with his mother for his last year.  Before he left, he claimed I had forced everything upon him from karate to grades. He still had strong high B average.

After he left my son begin to withdraw from contacting me altogether.  A few months later his mother contacted me advising he was suicidal and had to be hospitalized and oh by the way it's all my fault.  I rushed up to where he was and was greeted at some adolescent psychiatric hospital in Washington who took his mother's word as gospel, did not talk to any of his therapists from where I lived, told me he needed a different ADHD medication, and oh by the way its all my fault and I should apologize to my son to make him better.  There were many things I would do for my child, but lie to him is not one of them.

He was 17 then and I could do little to affect his care.  My son barely finished high school went on to drop out of his first semester of college.  He refuses to talk to me after 5 years blaming me for his failures and the lack of communication.  He praises his wonderful mother and her husband his new father.  His mother did call me and ask that I join her in setting up a trust fund since our son was now becoming an emotional cripple.  

I have no doubt had my son stayed with me he would have finished high school and had a great academic record.  I only hope that what happened to him was not part of some twisted revenge his mother wanted against me.  She knew how much I love my son and seeing all this happen to him did.