My Son Announced on Facebook that His Family Hates Him

Like all good parents, I have done nothing but love my son. His grandparents, aunts, and uncles love him too and have gone above and beyond to always show him. First class tickets to Manchester, England to watch Manchester United play? No problem. Hours and hours on the phone listening to his frustrations, anger, and anxiety? Anytime. Buying the exact gift specified no matter how high its price tag? But of course. Money for therapists, special classes, psychiatrists? Where do I send the check?

Never once have any of us demonstrated anything but love for my son. Respect for him too. For all he has accomplished and continues to accomplish despite being dealt a shitty hand. Autism and mental health issues. All we have done is love and support him.

This despite his treating us, mostly me, like garbage.

I can take his abusive texts, profanity-laced voice mails, and vitriolic handwritten notes telling me what a terrible mother I am. How I love his brother more. How his life is miserable and it’s my fault. How I ignore him, ditch him. I’m not going to defend myself on any of these fronts except to say bullshit.

I have grown used to being tormented and beat up verbally by my kid and sadly, I’ve even learned how to deal with it. But I have not, equally sadly, learned how to make him stop. And maybe it’s for this reason that his ceaseless, bottomless rage has begun overflowing onto the rest of our family.

Yesterday I came across a post he put on Facebook and nearly died. Not because he doesn’t usually post hateful, hurtful, things, he does. But this time he told everyone, including me, his grandmother, aunts and uncles and cousins, innumerable friends, former teachers, and classmates, that his family hates him.

Hates. Him.

He got two very well thought out replies from friends asking him to see sense, to realize that in no uncertain terms his family does not hate him, that we love him, and calling him out on hurting us with the post. My reply was much less lengthy. I simply said, I can’t believe you would say this. Please delete this immediately. Which he did.

But not before my mother, his grandmother, saw it, and it hurt her, like a sucker punch to the stomach.

She was stunned, angry, unable to believe he would think, let alone say, such a thing, ever. She didn’t call me though. She stewed on his words from the moment she read them until the moment she sent me an email this morning asking me to call her when I had a moment. Oh I had a moment. I called her immediately, petrified someone had died.

No one died, but she needed someone, me, the kid’s mother, to listen to her vent. She needed to tell me how she wanted to ream him out but didn’t, because we never know what he’ll do when forced to face the consequences of his actions. She even said she felt she needed to “confess” to me how wounded she is at his words.

My kid hurts my mother, and she feels guilty about her rightful response. No. That’s not right.

Hurting me is one thing. Hurting my mother is something entirely different. I want to kill him, but I won’t. Why? Because I love him. And I look awful in orange.

My heart broke for my mom today. There aren’t enough words in the Universe to tell you the millions of things she has done with and for my son, the money she has spent on him and given me to spend on him. She’s been the human Giving Tree and what does she get for it? My kid, kicking her in the stump.

I want to give him a kick in the head. I just need to figure out how. As I’ve already confessed, I’ve learned how to deal with his verbal abuse and cries for negative attention. I just haven’t figured out how to stop them and I need to. Or, while his family will never hate him, they could love him a little less. And while I couldn’t blame them, it would definitely break my heart.