and excerpt from an email thread between a friend of mine and myself on the subject of man children and the issues at hand....

The thing is, he KNOWS he's loved by many in Colorado, he KNOWS he's got a solid support system here.  I don't think he cares, he just wants what he wants and he wants it right now.  Damn the consequences or who it hurts.  Weren't we just talking about this on text Sunday?  About how we knew everything and no one could tell us otherwise?  The only way to learn is through experience and as painful as it might be for those who love us to bare witness to this, it's how most of us are built.  Most of us with the curse and blessing of true independant and free spirits anyway.  It took me a LONG, LONG time to figure out how my actions and choices impact others, but mostly, how they impact me.  Because really, when you hurt others by being selfish and irresponsible with their love, your only hurting yourself.  But I had to hurt a lot of people to figure that out, thankfully for me they stuck by me anyway.  Max deserves that same opportunity, to fall down, to break sh*t and to still be loved. 

That doesn't mean I don't have my own boundaries.  They might change, but for now, I know what I have to do and it's funny, it seems like my boundaries are really only hurting me.  Isn't that a rub?  Max seems to have no conception of what I'm really saying here and how badly it hurts me to do so.  Meanwhile, most everyone around me (with a few exceptions) are like "Well DUH Sarah, he can't be your baby forever" and I'm like well why the hell not?  Motherhood seriously is the most enlightening and painful experience I believe I've ever known.  No one in this world can fill my heart up like that kid and then break it in an instant.

Some of this, I know, is me having to do this work on myself. I need to learn to let my hopes and expectations for him be maliable and stop trying to push him into what "I" want for him. Even if everyone knows what "I" want for him is the right thing :)  I'm also having to manage the change of it all, which I'm not known for doing very well to begin with.  Even when he makes me CRAZY, I'm still 100% happier when he's with me and to have that ripped away again, well it hurts.  An awful lot.

Today is a day of celebrtaion for me anyway, I'm working from home and taking the opportunity to plant some more things that make me smile in honor of a years worth of clarity and internal growth.  There was a time when this kind of thing with Max would've put me into a tail spin.  And it is has, but I have learned how to look inwardly and find the root of what's pushing those buttons and deal with them instead of hating on everyone else in the process.  I did not handle all of this as well as I'd hoped and really started a lot of negative self talk about how this all must be me.  There's something wrong with me, my mother hates me and my son doesn't want anything to do with me either.  That kind of really horribel self defacing stuff.  I shut that b*tch up right quick.