The long weekend begins...with a hiccup

Today is the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend and I'm done with work until Tuesday. I'm taking a vacation day tomorrow and I'm looking forward to four days away from work. That has to be a good thing.

I wish the long weekend would've started totally stress-free, but it didn't. My son was supposed to go to his Intensive Outpatient Program at Brighton Hospital today, but instead chose to blow it off, telling my wife that he didn't feel well and couldn't get up to go. My wife waited 'til late in the day to call me at work and tell me this, and I'm glad she did. If she'd have called earlier, I probably would've stressed out about it all day. When I did find out, though, I of course started contemplating the reasons why my son would've skipped the IOP today (as well as a meeting last night).

As the parent of an addict, it's only natural to think the worst when something like this happens. Since a drug test is part of the IOP, it's not really a stretch to think that maybe my son wanted to avoid going because he's using again. Maybe that's the catastrophizer in me rearing its ugly head, but it's a logical conclusion. I'd like to think that my son really didn't feel well. I'd love to be able to trust him when he says something like that. But to be honest, my son has pretty much destroyed any trust I had in him. And it will be a long time before that trust is rebuilt, because I've been played and lied to and manipulated way too many times over the last couple of years.

I don't know what the weekend will bring. Or even what the next few hours will bring. My son doesn't have any money and he's out of cigarettes. That probably means that he's going to be asking for money sometime tonight. But after what he pulled today, he's got another thing coming if he thinks we're going to just hand him some cash. So that could be interesting. There also could be a drug test in my son's very near future. That could be interesting, too. Never a dull moment in this house, that's for sure.

I'm going to try really hard to play through the pain caused by my son's actions today. I've been looking forward to this long holiday weekend and I will do everything in my power to keep it going in a positive direction. I will not let this "valley" ruin my weekend. At least, that's my goal. Wish me luck.