Letters to the Editor
wire0monkey
Published Letters: 159 Editor's Choice: 5
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DTMFA
[Read the article: Will my boyfriend ever want kids and marriage?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don't stay with a guy because you hope he will change. Stay with a guy because you like him for who he is right now and you have some agreement on major issues.
If kids are important to you, and they're not important to your boyfriend, you need to dump him or find someone else. Do it now while you're young enough to do so. Your fertility won't last forever.
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WOW
[Read the article: I went to L.A. to work in film and just got yelled at]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I love CT's answer today. It is perfect.
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Long answer
[Read the article: My whole family is alcoholic. How to protect the kids?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can't tell you what you should do. I only know what I did.
My mother is an alcoholic and a junkie. She used to drink too much and currently uses much too much prescription pain medication. (It's easy to get, if you know the right doctors.)She also uses some street drugs. When I was a teenager and living at home, she encouraged me to use drugs with her.
When my first son was born six years ago, she offered to be a babysitter. My husband and I discussed her substance use and agreed that she could only babysit if my father were also present. (My dad doesn't have a problem.)
When my father died, my son was 19 months old. At that point, my mother had a long track record of good behavior so we agreed to let her babysit alone. She was pushing for this, HARD, btw. On the third or fourth try, she got high while she was watching him. I don't know what happened but he was afraid of her, after that. I'm afraid that she hit him or dropped him. The rule at that point became "No unsupervised visits with Grandma now or ever." She hasn't babysat with my kids alone again, and won't.
The kids aren't allowed to go to her house, whether supervised or unsupervised. About 18 months ago, I gave her a ride home from a hospital stay. When we went into her house, it took less than five minutes for my youngest son to find a ziploc full of pot on her coffee table. He poured it out and started playing with it.
She over-dosed on Oxycontin last year and we had a huge blow-out fight. I explained to her that 1) I think she is an addict, 2) why I think she is an addict, 3) that I will not lie or cover up her problem to other family members, including the children, 4) if she over-doses again, the neighbors should call 911 because I'm not hauling her to the hospital again, and 5) if she continues to act in ways that are illegal, I will not protect her from the police or intervene if she is arrested.
I was driven to this position because I finally gave up on trying to change her or influence her at all. She's a junkie. It's what she wants to be. I don't approve. On the other hand, if I'm not cleaning up her junkie messes, it's not my problem. She's an adult and can live her live however she pleases.
Since the overdose and the fight, our relationship has improved a little. She has cut down on her usage and doesn't use around me. She sees my kids about once a week, either at my brother's house when he is present or at my house when I or my husband are present, or at our club. I haven't cut her completely out of my kids' life because they love her. She's charming in an irresponsible, free spirit kind of way.
I don't and won't lie to the kids about her use. I also don't and won't lie to my kids about my own use. I'm 15 years sober. I used a lot of drugs and alcohol as a young person. Some of that use, especially the drug use, was with my mother. It had a bad effect on my life. Explaining this is currently not much of an issue because my husband and I don't allow much alcohol in our house. (Friends sometimes bring over some beer or wine to drink with dinner, but that's about it.) When we get to that point, I'll explain it the same way I explained it to my friends' teenagers: "I drank a lot and took drugs in high school. It was fun at first, but then it had bad effects on my life. I was physically sick a lot of the time. I didn't do as well as I could have in college because I partied too much. I was arrested for DUI. It wasn't fun, and I quit. Do yourself a favor and don't start."
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Harsh
[Read the article: I went to L.A. to work in film and just got yelled at]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Some of these responses are too harsh. Why abuse the poor woman for having a supportive family with good resources? She's lucky, yes, but that doesn't make her "spoiled" or deserving of abuse.
She's also right about the same spot as a lot of 24 year olds. Plenty of people get their college degree and then start their dream career, only to find out that it's not what they want, after all. It's not abnormal to get stuck on what to do next, when your first idea doesn't work out. A lot of my friends ditched their first career choice for law school or grad school. (LW, please don't do that unless you really, really want to go to law school or grad school. It doesn't solve the problem and racks up huge debt.)
It's also normal to have doubts about living so far from home and family. It's not childish to want to move back home to be closer to family. I moved back home when I was 26. It was important to me to be around for the end of my grandmother's life and to be near my father when I had my kids. I wanted to see my family more than once or twice a year.