Again, it’s been awhile since the last post. Significant changes have happened - I’m not crazy about some of them, but I know they needed to happen. After the last blog post, I had agonized over what to do if my son and his friend didn’t pay rent (a stipulation commonly placed on adult children living at home). I had to be fair - I evicted the other tenant for non-payment of rent, so if the rent wasn’t paid, I would have to evict. But, it’s my son. I love my child, however I had promised myself that I could no longer “catch him” when he stumbled, and I could no longer do things for him, despite him hitting every single trigger he knew to get me to capitulate to him: the silent treatment; the disrespect; the “pissed mist” that he knows I can’t stand; he pulled them all. I was angry at first, but truthfully, I am the one to blame. He was only doing what he knew how to get what he wanted. The problem was, I had already made up my mind that I was going to stop letting my triggers control me. I was going to do for my child what I should have done a long time ago. I had to let him go; I had to let him become his own person.

Unfortunately that process doesn’t really go very well in my family and usually it winds up where the child has nothing to do with the parent for YEARS. I’ve seen the look of regret in my father’s eyes whenever a name of a “wayward” child is brought up in passing. I could feel his sadness even though he thought he recovered it well. I’ve been victim to the anger my father had to what happened between him and said “wayward child.” I’ve heard tales about the same from my mother’s side with my older sisters. The parting process is usually painful, regretful, and has lasting “trauma.” I had seen it with my husband and his father that wound up ending in my husband regretting his “limited contact” stance because his father passed away before Kristopher and he could make true amends. I saw the regret from my brother when the same thing happened with our own father’s passing. I did not want the pain. I did not want the regret. I wanted our separation to be love-centered. And while I was agonizing over that, something else happened.

Now, I know this is going to sound crazy, and maybe it is - maybe my kid and his friend were fucking with my head - but I’m telling you, the energy in my house got so… thick is the only word I can use to describe it. Thick, heavy, and just…it was bad mojo. And I’m not a stranger to bad vibes. I can feel when something is off - I can’t explain the how or why, but I know when something is energetically off. It’s kinda like that creepy basement feeling - except it was MY WHOLE HOUSE! I figured it was the vibe from my son and his friend and my whole energy with the overthinking and stressing. Then things started happening that…none of it made fucking sense. For starters, I had more flies in my house than the damned Amityville Horror house - and they were all downstairs, none upstairs if you can believe that shit (there were piles of trash bags and foods in the section my son and his friend lived in, so there should have been flies upstairs). Any time I walked by a mirror, I felt like someone was watching me. Like, I could feel eyes boring into the back of my head - and the vibe of whomever was “watching” me was pissed. I wasn’t sleeping well - again; I was waking up with bruises that were impossible to have been self inflicted - the hand prints were entirely too large for them to have been mine. Nibbles, my cat, she had taken to staring off into space, and then bolting for the nearest hiding spot while Buddy, my dog, would growl at the same spot the cat was staring at.

To be honest, I thought I was going out of my mind. I spoke to my best friend about it and she asked if I had locked my mirrors. Well, no because mirrors don’t have locks. That was when she explained it to me.

Apparently, mirrors are portals to the spirit realm. There’s a specific way you are supposed to clean them to lock them. And now I know why my mother got so angry with me when I tried to clean the mirrors clockwise - her bullshit of “they get clean better when you go counter clockwise” was her way of saying lock the damned mirror. I guess my mom was a witch and didn’t even know it. Thankfully, God knew a hedge witch and brought her to Kansas and made her my bestie before I even knew about this stuff. Anyway, my bestie came over, confirmed I had some seriously bad mojo going on - probably from the negativity - and gave me some stuff and instruction on how to use it. We discussed the option of holding down my son and his friend and maybe exorcising the demons from them, but she was right. They weren’t possessed. They were just really pissed off at me. Locking the mirrors I deal with daily and sleeping with the crystals she had left me should help, but smoking with sage first, then palo santo would be best. I did as I was told.

Believe it or not, that was the first time I slept the whole night with good dreams in over two weeks. It didn’t solve my dilemma with to evict or not evict my kid, but at least I was able to think more clearly. It didn’t do much for the flies either. But I no longer had the frigging song Somebody’s Watching Me playing in my head every time I went by a mirror, so I counted it as a win. I even locked the mirrors at work, too. We already have a ghost, we don’t need frigging demons or whatever the hell it was that came through at my house.

Anyway, the due date for the rent came and went and there was no rent. I sent notices to both of them via email - which, by the way, IS an acceptable form of notification in accordance to Kansas law (I spent a frigging month becoming an expert in it). I wasn’t hopeful the rent would be paid, so I started printing out the paperwork. I spent two frigging weeks getting everything together, making multiple trips to the county courthouse on my days off and before I had to go to work in the afternoon - each time crying and feeling more and more defeated. I didn’t want it to be this way. I have tried to talk to my son, but it’s hard to do that through a door - especially when he won’t answer. I didn’t want my child to leave the nest via a business transaction - it’s cold and heartless - but at the same time, I knew he and I could not become who we were meant to be as individuals if we lived together, and to be quite frank, I was pretty sick and tired of his friend. The person grew to rub me the wrong way, but I wasn’t going to force my son to choose between me or his friend - his best friend. My dad did that to me with Kristopher and I wasn’t about to do it to my son. I also knew my son would make the same choice I had done all those years ago. No, there had to be a better way.

And the universe, God, whomever, provided me the time to find the better way. I communicate better in writing than I do verbally because I tend to get caught up in the emotions I am feeling and the emotion of the person I’m conversing with. My son is very good at shielding himself physically, but not energetically - meaning he can school his features to show nothing, but he wasn’t able to shield his energy. He’ll say he’s fine when I can feel that he isn’t and my words get lost in the emotions I’m feeling. So I wrote on my phone’s notepad from my heart. I was going to email it to him and go from there. That night, when I came home from work, I saw my son for the first time in over a month (again, we live in the same house) and read it aloud. Not going to lie, I did start crying as I got to the end of it - mainly because the mother in my head was screaming at me that I was being selfish; that a mother’s job is to protect her children, not send them out to the wolves (my mother side is overly dramatic, obviously). My son said, “You won’t have to worry about it. We’ll be out by the end of the month. Somewhere else or on the streets. Don’t worry about it.”

The damned mother in me fell for the fucking bait. “What about your friends parents? Can they…” My son interrupted me, “That’s why it’s taking so long. Like I said, don’t worry about it.” My son’s energy, was not something I’ve felt from him. It was determination. It was a sense of, “I got this.” There was no malice that I could sense, just a very quiet confidence from him - something I hadn’t felt from him since he made his decision to move to West Virginia (that seems like so long ago…). I’ll admit, I was nervous when I said ok. When I went outside to have a cigarette, something happened. I can’t tell you what it was, I can’t tell you exactly how it felt - the closest thing I can describe it to feel like is a massive boulder hanging over the world had just disappeared. The next morning, the energy in the house was lighter - mine wasn’t. I wasn’t happy with how things happened and I was feeling pretty low, but the house felt lighter. I could hear my son and his friend laughing as they went about their day - something I hadn’t heard in months. I had seen them leaving the house, both smiling and feeling lighter. I was happy to see that, although the mother in me was weeping as if her child was sacrificed to the spaghetti monster god or something. Over the following two weeks, as I began to accept that while things didn’t go the way I would have liked them to have gone, the circumstances had to happen a certain way. Everything happens for a reason.

Even not getting to say goodbye, good luck and I love you. On August 25th, I noticed my son’s friend’s RBG lights weren’t on in the room the individual had occupied. I went upstairs to inquire if everything was all right and found my son and his friend were gone. It appeared they took what they wanted (along with some of my stuff) and left the rest of their belongings. There was no note, no email, no nothing. To this day, I do not know where my son is. My son has gone “no contact” with me.

And I respect that. I don’t like it, but I respect it. I sent him one last email telling him as much and I understand why. He and I were stifling each other. Neither of us could be our true selves if we were in constant contact - he would see me as “Mom” and I would see him as “Son.” Our growth would never happen if we were always in contact. Not gonna lie, I left lights on the first few nights in case something went wrong and he needed to find home (it helped me sleep better at night, don’t judge) and even now, I still check my email first thing every morning after I feed the yowling, starving cat and dog (even before I get my first cup of coffee) to see if my son sent me a message. He hasn’t yet, although I did send him a birthday message just to let him know I think of him and I love him. I do believe in my heart of hearts, he will reach out when he’s ready, and I truly look forward to the day when we can see each other as individuals instead of just “Mom” and “Son.”