Hanging On For Dear Life

Three hours and seventeen minutes ago, I did something that even as recently as three hours and eighteen minutes ago, I would have never imagined I would or could do.

I let go of my son.

Almost exactly a year ago, after the horrendous car accident he was in, my son asked his father and I to let him go, so he could be independently minded and responsible to make his own decisions. I said “Okay,” but didn’t really do it. At that time, I had an image of myself standing at the edge of a cliff holding my one year old baby boy straight out in front of me in a death grip with both hands. His father was standing next to me. In the image my son kept saying, “It’s okay Mommy. Let me go. I can fly! Honest!” For obvious reasons, I just couldn’t do it.

I realize now that I have been in that spot ever since, but the image has changed a bit. My son’s father is still standing where he was a year ago. I, on the other hand, am lying prone with my almost full grown, almost 18 year old son holding on to the one good hand I have left as he dangles over the chasm below.

I have been hanging on to him for dear life since the car accident, the subsequent depression he fell into, the drugs, the alcohol, the impulsive decision-making, and the failing in school.

And, parentally speaking, I have been holding on all by myself.

I have been terrified to let him go, and despite trying repeatedly to enlist his father, I have had no ready or consistent male backup. I unsuccessfully tried to become two parents in one, but instead became an over-bearing, over-involved, over-decorated police woman mom all in the vain attempt to keep my grip, so my son wouldn’t break (or worse) in the fall.

My son and I had a long talk this afternoon. I told him I can’t do it anymore; I am physically and emotionally spent. We confronted the excrutiatingly painful reality that his father is “not a father figure” (my son’s words). He is a significant masculine presence in the tapestry of my son’s life, but in a way that is confusing, painful, and disappointing. We acknowledged that for better or for worse, I am all he’s got right now and in terror for him and in profoundly deep disappointment in myself…

I let go of my son.

What kind of mother am I?...I’m not kidding. Could someone answer that for me? I really need to know.