Letter #6

Dear Tyler;

Yesterday your Dad and I were in Salt Lake and decided to go to Tucano’s for a late lunch.

The view from our table was of the area that we sat at when we took you there for your One Year Sober Celebration. 

It was one of your new favorite places to eat and we thought it would be a good place to celebrate this milestone with you. 

We had a pretty good time.   Your entire family was there for you.  Everyone congratulated you and told you how proud of you they were.  I gave you a scrapbook that meant a lot to me to create for you.  I hoped it would mean a lot to you, too. 

But, your reaction was very hard to read and I still have no idea what you thought about it at the time. 

As I remembered that day and the hope that we felt in showing you our love and support, I felt sad about where you are now.  On that special day, we all wanted you to be able to hold onto our belief in you as you continued onward and upward in maintaining your sobriety.

Now, I don’t know where you are at as far as being sober.  I know that you are court ordered to be clean at every random drug test and that you are also ordered to stay away from alcohol.  But, I don’t know if you have found a way to get around that order and still be able to smoke pot or do anything else.

I hope you are staying sober and that you will be able to see how good life can be that way.  I wish for something that will turn you around and make you want to be the great person that I know you can be.

But, I feel a lot of fear that you won’t, and that a reconciliation of our relationship will never happen. 

After lunch, we drove by an area that held a lot of the homeless population of Salt Lake.  It was very disheartening to see such a large group of people with nowhere to live or people who were just resigned to the fate of living on the streets. 

When I saw a young man with long black hair and black clothes kind of lying on the side of the street in a drug induced kind of stupor, I had to do a double take because at first I thought it was you.  I knew in my mind that it probably wasn’t because you haven’t been staying in Salt Lake lately, but my heart leaped into my stomach at the sight of that poor guy.  I didn’t want it to be you just as much as that young man’s mother most likely wouldn’t have wanted it to be her son.

I never thought you would be in the situation where you could easily be homeless at any moment like you were when you got out of jail in January.  It was heartbreaking to know that in the middle of the winter you had nowhere to go.  I still worry so much about your living situation and want so badly for you to be in a good, positive place.

Nobody wants their child to be homeless.  I didn’t want it to happen to you. 

I hate this situation so much.

I wish someone could help you see a better way and could help you realize that your parents never wanted life to be like this when you became an adult and that we still would do anything that we could to help you if we thought we could.    

I do love you for who you are--because I know who you are deep inside.  I have seen the real you and I wish I could see that person again.  I just can’t live with what you have been doing in the last few years and how you act toward me and your Dad.    

I really miss you and hope you are doing okay. 

Love,

Mom

Letter #5

Dear Tyler;

I went to the grocery store and bought two cans of olives, among other things.  When I got home, I immediately thought, “I will let Tyler have one of these.”  You see, I think about you a lot, even if it is because of the most random things, like olives. 

Some of the time, I realize that I haven’t thought about you for a few days since you are so distanced from us and have been “gone” for such a long time.   Sometimes thoughts of you make me very sad because I miss you so much.  I don’t think I miss the “you” that you are right now.   I know you will think it is because I can’t accept you for who you are, but it really is because I miss the happy, fun, joking, smart Tyler.   I don’t miss the angry, blaming, in-your-face person.  I definitely don’t miss the part where you make everything that happens to you my fault or my responsibility.  I don’t miss the phone calls where you say, “If you don’t do ‘this’ for me, then ‘this’ terrible thing is going to happen to me.”  I do not want to deal with the "if/then" scenarios again, that is for sure.

Even though I don’t like the fact that you have to appear in court and I don’t like going to the courthouse, when you do have a court appearance every few months, I am glad that I will be able to have a chance to see you.  We do go to the hearings so that we know what is going on with you and what is expected of you, but also, it is our only opportunity to be able to see you.

Every time I even get a glimpse of you, it seems like you have gotten older and harder looking than you were the last time I saw you.  You have changed so much. 

At your last appearance a few weeks ago,  I noticed that your hair was as long as mine.  It looks like you were finally able to dye it all black again.  I bet you are glad about that. 

It looked like you were able to get some different clothes and have gained some of the weight back that you lost while you were in jail.  I am glad about that.  It was hard to see how thin you were.  I didn’t like knowing that you were going hungry.

Now that your latest court appearance is over, I know that I will probably have to wait a few more months before I can see you again.  You may not think that is a big deal, but for me it is.   I don’t like this estrangement at all.

I just don’t see any way for it to end because I am not willing to be a victim of your verbal and mental abuse anymore.

Whenever I hear from your sister after she has talked to you, I get the feeling that you haven't done much in the way of growing or changing that would make reconciliation possible.   She’ll tell me about you being upset because your tax return hasn’t come yet and you are angry because it isn’t the amount that you thought it would be.  She will relate how you ranted and raved about wanting to beat up our tax accountant because he screwed up on your return.  In your mind, you should have gotten thousands of dollars back even though you had less than $500 total withheld.  And after I hear about your anger, I think, “Why isn’t he grateful that we even got his taxes done for him?  Does he realize that we had to pay $100.00 to get them done?  Does he not understand that HE could have done them himself if he had taken responsibility to track down his own W-2’s?  And since he didn't do that himself, it was pretty nice of us to have them done?  No, he just gets mad because he needs money and has to blame someone else for not having any.” 

Or, I will hear how your telephone bill hasn’t been paid yet and now you have lost job opportunities or your life has had some other kind of negative impact because of it.  Again, I think to myself, “If it was so important for him to make sure that his telephone bill got paid, then he should have gone into Walmart and paid it himself.”  You know, I don’t HAVE to pay your phone bill.  I only do it because I think it is important for a person to have a telephone to be able to maintain contact with important entities in their lives--like employers, and in your case, probation officers.  I am not required to pay your phone bill and it is not my responsibility.  So, it would be nice if you were thankful and appreciative instead of rude and demanding about it.

I just wish that you had learned by now that if you want people to do nice things for you, then you should be grateful for what they do.  And if you want people to help you out every now and then, you should be grateful to them and treat them with respect.  The part where you yell, rant, rave, swear, and call people names makes absolutely no sense! 

Recently, I was appalled at what your sister told me about one of your latest dilemma rages.  Everything that you ranted about was totally uncalled for.   And the fact that you called me and almost everyone else that you are related to, some pretty disgusting things didn’t make me want to do any more favors for you.  So, you shouldn’t have been all that surprised when your phone was disconnected. 

We all feel bad that you don’t have any sense of family when it comes to your relationship with all of us.  We seem to be just a “means to an end” for you.  Even after all this time, whatever you can get us to do, or whatever you can get from us--is about all that we mean to you.  And yet, we all want to have you in our lives.  We all miss you and love you.

Someday maybe you will come to the realization that you want to have us in your lives, too.  Not to meet your never-ending needs--but to love, hang out with, have fun with, talk with, go places with, and celebrate with. 

I hope for that day and until then, I hope for the best for you.

Love,

Mom