I am sorry my post hit a nerve, no doubt left another scarf in the soul. Sometimes we are into situations above our emotional pay grade and it hurts.
We had our own fair share of a emotional rollercoaster when we decided for a foster child and do something good giving one of those lost children (taken away from parents by a judge) and locked up in child care institutions waiting for a couple who wanted them. And so we got him (I don't want to use his name), a boy, 4 years and 2 days old. And we were told to keep our expectations low because of his background. We did not listen, we believed that love would heal everything. How wrong, we did not know then.
What I saying now is all in retrospect, we had to learn a hard lesson. The boy when we got him was already damaged to the core because what his parents did to him and did not the things parents ought to do. Neglect, hardly food, but the most damage was done by the mother with an IQ of 55, who sexual abused him and mentally abused him by seeking help by the boy, claimed him to help her in her despair. You get the picture. When we got him the boy was full of fear, in survival mode because you can't trust those adult people telling you what to do and what don't.
And in the beginning we had those explosions of violence 3-4 times a day, we comforted him as best as we could, the months passed by and the daily explosions became less, but never left completely. And our 3 other kids suffered from it, most of our attention was for the boy who always without exception was able to ruin a perfect day.
Now the boy was a really good boy with a soft and gently character, he just could not help and his low IQ of 72 was another obstacle to understand the world around him.
During the years things really got better, but never as it should have been. When he was about 8-9 years he told us -- when I am 18 I don't have to listen to you any longer and I can do what I want -- and kept repeating that maybe a hundred times. And when he became 18 so he did and what we feared became reality, wrong friends, drugs, ending him totally addicted in the gutter. And then he called us, we put him in a Christian institution for drug addicts, it helped somewhat but soon after, same old old story, he with his IQ and background could not cope with daily life.
And things got worse, his first failed suicide attempt. And he was put in a psychiatric clinic for a special therapy for these kind of kids. And it was amazing when we visited him there, he radiated, we never seen him that happy, he even got some extra weight. Unfortunately for him these kind of therapies last only for 6 months. And so he was on his own again. While everything was arranged for him, an own flat, money, help available, a complete new start, he could not, followed by a second failed suicide attempt.
Another psychiatric clinic, another new round, he insisted to lead a normal life as everybody else, new flat etc. It did not work. Then on an evening he called me, and soon it became clear to me he wanted to say goodbye, that he has seen his life, going from one clinic to another clinic and he did not wanted that life any longer. And he asked me, -- will God be angry with me? -- And I was actually happy with this hard question, because he had said his faith farewell during the years, it showed his Christian upbringing in the hour of death wasn't unfruitful after all. And I said, no son, not at all. And looking at his life born for unhappiness, suffering I believe he is with the Lord and his tears are dried up, living the life meant for everybody. We talked for 2.5 hours. Later I heard that after our talk he went to his room and 30 minutes later they found him dead.
At times we were emotionally totally exhausted, situations above our pay grade. Did I make mistakes, I remember a few bad ones, but while giving it all, these mistakes did matter for the inevitable final outcome. That kind of logic may have worked for me but not for my wife, she felt guilty, a failed mother. She needed years to overcome.
