Game Face

The last 7 days have been pretty typical......not so much.  In the last 7 days I started staining our new deck, helping my mom a little with her yard project,  attended 25 meetings at work, took my team of 22 to the zoo for our 3rd annual off-site, had dinner with my fellow angels, scheduled Barley's vet appointment and learned she's having surgery again,  hired a new employee, checked in with Lexi who was doing her first long road trip to CA, celebrated Ryann's first spelling test in first grade (100%!) received about 35 calls from an inmate in the Kern County jail, told my mom her grandson was in jail, had a call with a bail bondsman who said he could tell I was just a mom and would give me a discount since he was certain I wasn't paying with dirty money, called an attorney, called the public defender and chatted with the mom of my next grand baby about names and learned he's got 18 charges, $120k in bail and facing 6 years in prison.  6 years????   How can this be? How does that even make sense? 

I am proud of my son for turning himself in and for not running away.  For once, he did the right thing, faced the consequences of his actions.  I told myself that this needed to happen, to be his wake up call so that he could do his time and then put it all behind him....move on and start living a happy productive life, be a father, be my son, be Lexi's brother and overcome his addiction.  I had come to terms with a number and that number was not 6 years!   In my mind, 6 years is a game changer.  Ryann will be in middle school, our new little peanut not even born yet will be almost 6.  

Brent and I have had some difficult conversations this past week about why I felt bailing him out wasn't the right kind of help.    I love my son, but he's been running away from the consequences of his actions for so long that I felt it was time to pay the piper.   Plus, he could be involuntarily sober without the ability to check himself out of the program and  I would maybe sleep a little better knowing he wasn't living on the street and/or high. But 6 years is still a game changer in my mind. How will that change him?  I don't know what to do. I am so incredibly sad and tired.  I've been up since 3:30am again. It's almost time to put my game face on again...at least it's Friday...whew I made it another week.