Life is Good...

[Coconut]

Had a pretty rough holiday.. I have done really well staying lovingly detached from my stepson, accepting his choices and actions as they are and not taking them personally.. until this holiday. He was originally planning on going to Georgia with his mother for Christmas, but ended up getting scheduled to work so wasn't able to make the trip. He goes to school in Orlando and I was in West Palm Beach (about 2 1/2 hrs away), so I was quite surprised when I asked him what he was doing for the holidays and he told me he was going to go to his Gmas house (about 30 mins from where I was) for Christmas morning and go to his Gpas house Christmas night.. Actually, I was quite hurt, not surprised.

We had been going back and forth over text for a few days (I tried to call him a couple of times with no answer) and I was pretty upset with him, this is the third year that I had not spent a holiday with him and I really took it to heart. I had a couple of heart to hearts with my mom about it.. Somehow, both my son and my mom thought it would be a good idea to surprise me with him coming over on Christmas eve, which really sent me over the edge and I couldn't even talk to him while he was there, I was polite but very distant.

He came back over the day after Christmas and I had a long talk with him, for the first time he opened up about how the divorce has affected him. I told him that immediately after I moved out of the house I lived really close to him for 5 months and he only came over to visit twice and that hurt, he told me that he was locked up in his room all the time and was talking to anyone including his mom, that his mother was worried that he was suicidal (he didn't say if he actually was, just that she thought he was), and that it was a really hard time for him. He stated that he wants to see everyone, but there is no way to do that because he can't get everyone in the same room together, so instead he feels pressure from everyone from everyone to spend time with them (he has 5 grandparents at different houses, me, his biological father and his mother). I told him that I don't doubt that he loves me, but it hurts when he chooses to spend holidays with his grandparents instead of me (turned out his mother had come down, but I didn't know that at the time), especially since he has spent every holiday with them and hasn't spent a single holiday with me (other than showing up for an hour or two and then leaving). anyway, he asked me to just give him time, that he doesn't have a home to go back to and that he is trying his best to find his way.