I'm Singing the Blues

You know when you're a bad parent when your child does something so terribly awful and there's no explanation for it.

A few days ago, I lost a valuable manuscript. One that was so close to being published, it's not even funny. My writing group helped me try to retrieve it, but it was hopeless. It was gone.

So, I'm starting over with a rough draft I started and thank God never deleted. And, today, while working on it, trying to restore it to the final version, I find that this manuscript is tighter. Partly because I forgot half the stuff I wrote and I'm thinking much of it was filler.

Not that I intended it to be.

Well, back up a few days ago when I lost the manuscript. Not only was it due to come out in September, but my publisher wants my new soul mate book and wants it in two weeks. At the time I promised it to her, I had not deleted my other manuscript and being as I figured that was almost done, finishing up the soul mate manuscript would be a breeze and I could make deadline.

So when I lost my other manuscript, all I knew was that now I'm dead meat.

My computer had been acting up for some time and that is the reason I lost the manuscript in the first place. A stupid mistake. And it was all word's fault, not mine. I also counted on that manuscript to be published a month before I took off for this California trip and the monies would help pay for the expenses, being as I was self-publishing it and there is already a demand for it. Actually, it's a one-of-a-kind. I've not seen any other eBook (it's an eBook, btw) like it.

So, when it disappeared right in front of me, I called my son who had promised months ago to come over and take my computer apart, clean it and get all this adware off (I think that is the source of my problem).

I called him and I didn't expect his response.

"I don't give a %$#@ and I don't care."

What's up with that? Where is that little boy who I brought up with tender loving care?????

He is 22 now...or manybe 23...I'd have to think but I'm nursing a terrible headache. He doesn't work because he has Marfans and it's not like he'd been out working all day and I hit him with it just as he's gotten home. He goes nowhere. Sits at his father's house and does nothing.

So, I can't speak. Tears are forming and I'm getting choked up. This was really important to me and he's all I have as far as someone fixing this dadblasted thing.

So, I hang up on him.

It's been a few days since then and the end result is that I have a bad headache. It's like losing a lover...you know how bad that feels?

I want my son back, only I don't want him as he is now and that is a terrible thing for a mother to say.

He hurt me to no end and it's bothering me to the point where it's affecting my health.

I'm a trooper...I can get hit with all sorts of things and bounce back, but when it comes to my son, it just kills me.

I hear about sons all the time telling their mother they love them. I hear about sons helping their mother (especially at that age) but I get nothing but harsh words in return for the love I want to give him.

If you didn't know he had Marfans, you'd never know it. He's perfectly healthy otherwise. Or is he?

He swears he's fine. I take him to doctors who can do nothing. I take him to disability who turn him down. He's at the point where I think he feels that life is hopeless.

And he backlashes at the one person who has always been there for him.

Will he say he's sorry? Hasn't happened yet and won't happen.

Does he feel bad for what he did? Hard to tell.

But, I'm in a funk and the only way out of the funk is to make amends and I feel that it's his call on that.

I also have a daughter who I am supporting through nursing school. She's my best friend and is upset the way my son is acting, too, and tries to help, but I don't think there's anything in either one of our powers to be able to do anything.

It's hopeless.

And, I'm sitting here singing the blues.....