On Being The One Who Stayed

By Marie Folie

There is an exceptional cruelty to be experienced when the world has turned its back on someone, and you have made the remarkable choice to stay. For many people in my life, I am this person. I am the one who despite the odds, has deemed that my presence, while often taking on the experience of a punching bag, does far more good than my absence ever could. Taking this stance has led me to learn and grow quite a bit, and today I will share with you three lessons that I’ve learned in my experience.

So, who am I? I am a mother. A mother to a son with severe ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) whose father abandoned him when he was only a child at 16 months old, came into his life to stir the pot at 4, before abandoning him again at 5 years old.

I am the punching bag he uses when he remembers that his father left. I am the ear he complains to when things don’t go his way. I am the face he screams in when life feels like it is turning on him. I am the eyes he rolls his eyes at when he feels contradicted, despite his absolute certainty that he’s right.

I am the arms he wraps himself in when it gets too hard. I am the person he calls when he needs someone to listen. I am the sharer of all his secrets. I am his guide, his mage, his friend, his enemy, his greatest supporter, the person who keeps him on track; I am his mother.

I am the person who stayed, when the rest of the world deemed it fit to walk away and disregard him, I stayed, and he punishes me for it every. Single. day.

1. When we create safe spaces for our children to try risky behavior, they learn to push limits within those spaces. By being the parent who chose to raise your child by yourself, you are creating a safe space for them to try and test their boundaries. They know, from experience, that we will not leave, and they use this to learn how far they can come before they have successfully pushed us away. It seems like a cruel twist of fate that we are treated so poorly despite doing so much, but it’s important to remember that their goal is not to penalize us for staying, but rather to ensure that there isn’t a limit they can reach which will cause us to leave. This is why boundaries are important.

There is a saying that goes, “We accept the love that we think we deserve”-Stephen Chbosky. While I have always agreed with Stephen, he didn’t account for the trials we face to help others find the love that they actually deserve, no matter how determined they are to penalize us for it.

I always knew that being a mother would be hard, but there was nothing I wanted more in life than to bring brilliant, hardworking, driven, literate, imaginative, brave, and wonderful human beings into it. Life blessed me with 4. The greatest blessing of all, my strongest lesson, my consistent reminder to stay on task and be better, came with my son, A.

A is 14 years old. He was raised with all the love and patience a child could hope for, and yet despite having the world at his fingertips, and being blessed with extreme emotional and academic intelligence, he chooses to instead focus his life on the moments he feels he missed out on something.

He has never struggled academically; he only chooses to not complete assignments when he dislikes his teachers. He does not know a financial struggle as he has his own space, his own belongings, and needs for nothing in this world. He does not know a present emotional struggle, as he has a therapist he works with weekly, and aside from his past with his father which occurred over 9 years ago, he has no new traumas to speak of. Despite having all he could hope for, and everything he needs, he consistently chooses to create issues for himself where they do not exist, and he chooses to use his past to justify them.

2. Creating safe spaces for our children is crucial, but they can be useless without boundaries. The boundary I hold my children to is the standard of society. I’ve always told my son that while I’ll stand by him and will be there for him no matter what, I have a duty that I must meet. That duty is to ensure that he is a contributing member of society. When he pushes so far that I can no longer guarantee that outcome, we need to have a conversation about how to safely redirect him to his comfort zone. It’s ok to test limits, but it’s not ok to break them. I tell my kids that I will forever love them, and there’s nothing that can change that, but I refuse to budge on my expectations of them as a whole. Their behavior as human beings must be reflective of their maximum potential, not their base abilities. When we create boundaries, we help our children to explore and cope, while also ensuring that the space we’ve created is safe for them and others.

Despite having a pool of others who are rooting for his success, two parents (one step-parent) who love him to death, even though one is not related to him, and every possible thing he could ask for, A chooses to live in the past. He chooses to live in the moments his father affected his life, and because he has deemed himself so incapable of living there alone, he has opted to move me in with him.

Every single day, I show him a path to leave this hideous room filled with pain and constant reminders of how he fell a little too short of someone else’s expectations, and every single day he claims to be incapable of reading the map. The problem is, no matter how simple I make it, he wants to stay. Misery loves company, and my son has volunteered me for the position. I have created a safe space for him to learn, thrive, and grow, and in turn, he has decided to abuse me for standing by him. He takes his pain out on me. He blames me for his failures, he says hurtful things like that he’d rather not live.

When he does this, when he says these things, it kills me inside. Every mother’s greatest fear is having to bury her child. Despite this, I ask him what I can do. I ask how to make it better. I do my best to be supportive and kind, to guide him in all the ways he needs guidance. I do my best to stand by him, and love him, and help him grow from this place where he seems to be stuck; and he punishes me for it.

When his father walked out the door on his son, he unknowingly became an icon. He became a beacon of hope, a person who he longed to be like, and stand for, and stand by, and I became the villain. I became the one who stayed. The one who was too stupid to leave. It’s strange how, in our conversations, my son will refer to me as the one who was too dumb to leave. He will ask if I wish I jumped ship when I had a chance. Sometimes sarcasm gets the better of me and I say yes.

3. Changing the narrative. It took me writing this to realize how often I use the word “punish” when describing the relationship I have with my son. I tell people frequently how we are close because he trusts me to be there for him, but then I change the narrative and refer to it as his punishment for staying. The greatest change always comes from within. We have to be willing to change the narrative if we want to change the relationship. Moving forward, I will refer to my son’s actions as him trusting me to allow him to vent, trusting me to love him when he messes up, trusting me to stand by his side when he needs me, trusting me with his joys, and failures, and moments, and memories.

The truth is, I am where I want to be. Of all the things I could be, and all the places I could be, I am his mother. I will always be his mother, and I hope one day he recognizes that I’m not the idiot who stayed, I’m the one who loved him so much I chose to raise him; regardless of what challenges that brings. It is my greatest hope that one day he will see I am exactly where I want to be, and maybe then, and only then, I will stop feeling like he is punishing me for staying. Perhaps by changing the narrative, we can finally find a safe place for both of us to grow together, rather than feeling trapped by our own decision. Perhaps in trust in and love, we will finally find to leave that room and follow the map to success.