Ok, first let me warn you – this is not going to be a warm, fuzzy post. Any of you who have young children, and by young I mean kids who still openly love you and have yet to realize how uncool you really are, may want to skip this post altogether. I don’t want to scare you with what lies ahead, as I’m told we all go through this in some form or another with our children. No one, it seems, is spared, so if you don’t agree that ‘forewarned is forearmed’, click away now.

I would like to put Oldest Son back where he came from. All the way back…way before the womb, actually…like back to unfertilized egg status. I prefer this over the old favorite ‘I gave you life and I can take it away’ because murder is so socially unacceptable and I have two other children to raise and I’m not trying to be anyone’s bitch anytime soon.

I realize I am not the first mother to feel this way about a child. But, it’s personal, it’s happening to me, so you know…it’s much more dramatic. Nevermind that I know for sure my own mother felt this way about me for a good long while, this is me we’re talking about, I’m the mom now and in this moment, with this child….IT SUCKS.

This child, who no longer claims childhood, who will, in fact, tell you he had a horrific childhood thanks to his mother, is now 20 years old, unemployed, uneducated (dropped out in 10th grade), and is about to become a father, himself. On purpose! As in, “No, Mom, she’s not on BC because it makes her sick and I don’t like condoms,” about to become a father.

His girlfriend, the mommy-to-be? Already has two kids, aged 3 and 2, and has spent the better part of the last year (since he and she broke up last March) trying to get him to “come back.”

Come back to what?

They met when her son was 5 months old and two weeks later she announces she’s pregnant. To her credit, she did finish high school and get her diploma after her son was born, so she’s not completely devoid of functioning gray matter. Her daughter was born in November of ’05 and they had a DNA test done which knocked Oldest Son out of the running to be the daddy. But just the month before he had landed a good job at a diesel repair shop as a diesel mechanic (perfect job for him, as he’s been taking apart motors since forever), so what do they do? Oh yeah – they rent a house, move in together and play Leave it to Beaver for a year and three months.

I’d love to be able to tell you it was at least partially nice, but no – they fought all the time, and I got to see just how much of his father’s idiot temper he inherited and at one point, took the two kids away from them and threatened to call DHS on their stupid butts if they didn’t get their act together and go get some counseling.

Counseling didn’t last and neither did them living together. They called it quits in March, she moved in with her mom (a fruit loop beyond words) and he called himself moving back here. That lasted about two days when he announced he was moving in with a friend of his. Then he promptly lost his job (missing too much work due to the drama in his life) and has been unemployed, except for a short stint laying tile for a guy last summer, ever since.

So, you might be wondering what he’s done for money? You know. Yeah – he became an ‘entrepreneur’ and sold weed (and God only knows what else) for a living. Until he got himself shot over a deal gone bad and a few weeks later the house he was living in got raided and the cops hauled away 80lbs of weed, the friend’s girlfriend and baby daughter.

The getting shot part got to him more than the raid (for which he was not present, or none of the frustrations I have now would be present because he’d be in jail), and I presume the ONLY reason he’s stayed living here this long. But even as I type that, I realize he really doesn’t live here. He stays with friends on the weekends and with the girlfriend through the week and has been doing that since the ice storm hit Dec. 9th. He manages to spend one night a week here, and I think that’s only because he needs to maintain the facade of living at home so he can pretend HE is the one taking care of his two dogs that he deposited in my backyard. Second Son is the one doing that, in reality.

So, I’m counting to 1000 in lieu of beating him senseless. Oh wait…he’s already senseless. Ok, beating some sense into him. Except, at this point, I’m not sure he wouldn’t swing back, and then I’d really have to take him out. Except, I couldn’t do that, either, for all the aforementioned reasons, so……I count……and pray…….and count some more.

This afternoon, after a particularly nasty exchange, I just handed him over to God. I said, “Here, You deal with him, because I can’t. I love him, but I don’t like him at all and don’t want him in my house around my children. I know I screwed up with him countless times, but I’m not making those same mistakes with these other two and You and I have forgiven me, so maybe you could help him to forgive me and himself so he can turn his life around. Maybe you could give me the right words, because he can’t hear me right now. I’m not giving up, but I need Your help to get through this, because he’s going to need me and I want to be able to be there for him, but I can’t, no won’t, allow him to poison this house with his attitude and example. I’m going to be a grandma, and I’d really like to be happy about that one day, too, but right now, I’m just sad that another little life is going to be brought into this world in an attempt to solve problems it didn’t create. And God? I don’t know how you do it with all 6 billion of us running around screwing up to one degree or another, but that is just one of the reasons I’m in constant awe of You and why I try everyday to live a better life. This sucks with one. I can’t imagine how much it hurts with 6 billion.”