I Know What You Did Last Night

I had a long and productive (maybe) discussion with my son yesterday; we talked about many of the things that had been sitting between us, unresolved, and mostly unspoken.

One of the things that we had to work through was my meltdown last week when he learned that his mother is a self-injurer. In retrospect, I'm not entirely certain I should have told him. He's the only one of my children who knows. When I did it, I was nearly out of control with grief and frustration, and was doing it to try to show him where my frustration was leading me. Unfortunately, he took it to mean I was trying to lay the blame on his shoulders. I actually realized this on my own several days after I showed him the scars and fresh cuts, but since I wasn't home when the realization hit, I forgot about it. Well, him being him, he brought it up himself. This is why I believe there is hope for the child.

So, yesterday he approached me as I was putting laundry away and very softly and politely pointed out to me that he didn't think it was fair of me to blame him for my cutting. I immediately stopped what I was doing, motioned him over to the bed and sat down. We talked for an hour or so, bringing out all of what had been going on in the past couple weeks, and those things in particular that were driving me to distraction. And how he was absolutely correct, he was not to blame for me taking a blade to myself. I'm grateful he's wise enough to see that on his own.

He seemed to be paying close enough attention that I might see some difference in their behaviour, but I'm not holding my breath. I explained what they need to change in order to lessen my stress level, what the LRG needs to do in order to start pulling her weight around here. And while he recognizes that she, too, has some sort of mental illness, he was a bit dismayed when I told him that my shrink figures she's also got Borderline Personalty Disorder; I explained what that's going to mean for him in the long run.

Then I busted him on the sex.

He looked like he was going to deny it at first, or at the very least, not admit it. But you know, I've raised three sons, and I'm no idiot. So I pointed out that for the past 18 years I've had to fight tooth and nail to get him to lock the front door when he's here by himself. Sometimes we even had to harass him to lock it when he went out. It drove us positively NUTS. But now, suddenly, every time my husband and I leave the house, we come home to a locked door.

Every
Single
Time.

Now WHY, pray tell, would that be?

There's only one reason why a teenage boy and a teenage girl need to lock the door every time the parents leave. That's because they're going to engage in the carnal desires so common to their species ...

This irritates the living shit out of me, by the way. I was raised as a strict Catholice. He was raised as a Catholic, and while I wasn't so naive as to think he was going to be celibate until he married, I really didn't think he was going to be doing it every time I left the damned house (read: under my nose).

So, I just asked: "You ARE having sex, right?"

Silence.

Then, "Ya."

In all honesty, I'm surprised I'm not more upset. And I guess it's a testament to my relationship with him that he told me. To the naysayers in my life who said he would never admit it to me, neener neener neener, although that doesn't feel all that good either. I worked very hard with all three of my boys to make sure that they would feel comfortable talking about anything, so that if they NEEDED to ask something, they could. And if *I* needed to know, like now, I would.

"Are you being safe?"

"Yes."

"You know condoms are not 100% reliable?"

"Yes."

"You know if you get her pregnant, you'll be tied to her for life?"

"Yes."

What he doesn't know is that I'm going to march her down to the free clinic as soon as I figure out where it is and get her on the pill.

I've done what I can. In less than two months my child will be gone. Two months ago, if I had discovered they were having sex, I'd have kicked his ass out. But I'm making the decision to keep him here because he's mine, and he's wonderful and I don't want to waste what little time I have left with him on any more useless fighting. I suspect there will be enough other crap to deal with anyway.