Like Son

I am going to have to redo this picture once Riley is done with her itchiness. She is on a steady dose of Benadryl and wearing a cone until she is healed up. I'm not sure if it's just the Benadryl or old dog stuff, but we don't get far when we walk these days, and all she wants to do is lie in my lap.

Ant has apparently decided to move in with his girlfriend, according to Elaine. He hasn't been at home or in school for two weeks. Elaine said Chris filed a missing person report, but suspects that Ant is nearby.

The first thing I felt was guilt.

While trying to calm Elaine down, I realized that Ant has probably 100 people he could go to for help. He knows where they live and he knows how to reach them. He knows how the rest of the family feels about Chris's actions in the last couple years, so he knows that if he did not want to return home, they would provide other options.

My feeling is that this is a choice. He has never liked being told what to do- he wants the freedom to decide for himself, and he ALWAYS takes the hard road. Chris has not helped, I know. I am painfully aware of that part. It has seemed to me for a long time that both of them were hell bent on Ant following his dad's path. I have also felt that Ant would go through may hard years between adolescence and early adulthood, but that he would come through it ok.

It took telling Elaine that Ant is not a 7 year old, and that he is not lost at sea for me to stop freaking out myself. It is NOT GOOD that he is gone, and I hope he is located soon, but he is choosing to do this.

Elaine was hoping Ant had contacted me, but of course he has not. He knows what I would say, what I would do. He told me once that he could hear my voice in his head, like his conscience.

I feel like maybe I could have been there more for him. Some of you say I have done more than necessary, but it's true that I have loosened my grip. He'll always be my kid, but my distance now is a combination of the breakup, self-preservation, and allowing him to be a teenager. And I think we all know that if Chris hadn't ended things, I'd still be in the trenches.

All I ever made Ant promise was that he'd graduate from high school and wait until his 20s to be a dad. He had bigger plans than that, of course. He wanted to go to UCSB. I hope he still gets to do that and all the other things that are hard and worth it. I hope he does make it through this time safely and emerges wiser. I will always be there to support him as much as I can, but on my terms, not anyone else's- including his.