Truth hurts

It takes a lot to accept that a fundamental decision in your life was a bad one. It's hard to admit it, that your judgment was so off.

You want to think that you chose well. Because if you're wrong, you were so, so wrong. You failed so utterly.

So you suffer through years of gas-lighting, being made to feel like you're crazy for being outraged that your children are suffering and so unhappy because he is incapable of taking their needs into account. You protect them as much as you can, to the point of calling DHS on one occasion when he gets a little too rough with the boy.

As he drags them from house to house and woman to woman, you are the rock. You maintain the stability they need - your house is the same, your temperament is the same, your rules are the same, your love is the same. You don't introduce them to any romantic interests.

In particular, the boy suffers. The first post-divorce wife is a fucking monster and awful to the children. When they break up, he's alone for a little while, but he is incapable of being alone, so he starts dating a new woman and marries her within about 8 or 9 months. She's a nice person, but she has 4 kids, meaning the children are moving into a household with 5 new people, only some of whom they like.

Imagine that for a minute. You're young and heading into puberty, with all of the craziness that entails. Over the past few years, your life with your father has been turbulent. It has been exhausting and occasionally traumatic. You're a bit of an introvert, like your mother. And now you have to move into a house with a new step-mother and four new step-brothers. The step-mother also has an after-school childcare business, so the house is constantly crowded and noisy. You alternate weeks between the chaos of the new situation and the quiet and calm of your mother's house.

The very thought of it makes your chest tighten with anxiety. Predictably, the boy doesn't deal with it well, and his behavior at his father's house shows it. He is miserable, and makes everyone else in the house miserable as well.

Rather than recognize the source of the boy's behavior and unhappiness, or to understand that the boy is 12 and prepubescent and thus essentially clinically insane, his father informs you that the boy is a cancer and an asshole and a cunt (sorry - his word, not mine), and that he is no longer welcome in his house.

So it is agreed that it's best for everyone if the boy comes to live with you, where he can have one place that's home with the one parent who feels like home. When things calm down, maybe he will spend occasional weekends with his father so that you can take a trip or get some downtime.

Also, the boy is unhappy at his middle school - it's just not a good fit. So you arrange for him to switch to a different school with a better system of instruction, a better curriculum, and better teachers. When he starts the new semester there, he is immediately ecstatic. He loves school, always wants to talk about what he's learning, wakes up every morning chirpy and with a spring in his step.

Things are sorted. You've got the carpool situation locked down.  You've got an upcoming business trip and some girls' weekends coming up, and it is agreed that the boy will stay with his father for a couple of nights.

Things have gone from anxious and tumultuous to organized and calm. The boy is happy, so you are happy.

On Friday night, you head off on your girls' ski weekend in the mountains feeling confident that the boy will be OK with his dad for a weekend. They're going skiing and all seems to be well. You're looking forward to connecting with friends and skiing a mountain that you don't know very well.

But then you are awakened at 6:15 yesterday morning by a phone call. It looks to be from the father's wife, but when you pick up, it is the boy. He is crying.

He was dawdling and difficult when told he needed to get up and get ready to leave. Traffic to the mountains on a Saturday morning is a nightmare, so if you want to minimize the agony, you need to leave by 6 at the latest, and preferably a little earlier. Missing that 15 minute window can literally add an hour to the trip, so time is of the essence.

With a carload of people up and ready to go, the boy petulantly said, "just leave without me." So they did. I kind of get that part of it. But they also take his phone. Just to be a dickish and punitive. Just to pile on.

Again, imagine that for a minute. A 12 year old boy is left alone in the house with both parents out of town. His means of communication is taken away. Word is not left with a neighbor or a friend that he's on his own, to keep an eye out just in case. If there's an emergency, no one can get in touch with him. If there is an emergency on his end, he's left to fend for himself.

He remembers that the Amazon Echo is hooked up to the step-mother's phone contacts, so that is how he manages to reach you.

You could try to get someone to go get him, but you can't call him to give him a head's up. Nonetheless, a friend generously agrees to go check on him and take him home, but when he knocks on the door nobody answers - the boy went back to sleep and didn't hear anything.

The boy needs you. There's nothing to do but go back to Denver.

On the way, you call and ask what happened.

"He was being a jerk and holding everybody up, so we left him."

"But why did you take his phone? Aren't you concerned about what could happen if there's an emergency and he can't call anyone and no one can call him?"

He laughs and says, "I guess not," which just about sends you into orbit.

You're quiet for a second and then ask, "don't you care about what happens to him? Don't you love him?"

"Not really," he responds.

"How can you say that about your son?" you ask.

"You don't know what he's like," he says.

So there it is. He's a father who isn't interested in being a father when things are difficult or inconvenient. His love, to the extent he is capable of it, is conditional. He seems unconcerned with his son's safety. He doesn't understand that being a good parent means gutting it out when adolescents act like normal adolescents - i.e., assholes.

You pick up the boy. You take all of his things and all of his clothes. The poster of the earth viewed from the surface of the moon - a gift that his grandfather bought him at the Air & Space Museum - is removed from the wall and brought home.

Everything has come very clearly into focus. Because you didn't want to accept that you failed, you have spent years trying and trying and trying again to repair the relationship, to keep lines of communication open, to get them into therapy to work out their differences. The parent-child relationship is so important. Boys need their fathers. Blah blah blah.

You have tried to talk yourself into believing that his horrible abusive childhood left him somewhat emotionally stunted and not good at resolving conflict, but that deep down, he's a good person. A good father. That your kids are OK with him.

But you realize that you are beating your head against the wall. You are the only one making the effort. You are Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.

The truth is, he's a terrible person and a terrible father. Your son is not OK with him. You did choose badly. You did fail.

That realization is heartbreaking, but also liberating. Your path forward is clear. You now know that there's no point in trying to force him to be someone he's not capable of being.

The boy has you, and that will be enough.