At what point does a child’s attitude toward a parent become emotional abuse of that parent, at what point is their too much toxicity? Too much bile poured out upon the only person who ever tried to care for them? To love them, feed them, educate them and continue to live with them all through the venom, the destruction, the thefts, the deceit and the unmitigated fury.

I do not have the answer to this question. I just know that in the real world I would never subject myself to the unwarranted hatred, I’d so take a hike. I would never be in a relationship with anyone who mistreated me, who disrespected my good nature, and who continuously wreaked havoc in my life. I just wouldn’t do it. I’d get a restraining order against such a person.

I am not the one who physically scarred the children, I did not ever neglect nor abuse them, if anything I have gone way overboard in my attempts to reach the children, to prove that I cared in spite of all odds.

Screaming at me, “I hate you! You hate me!” when I’m ignoring a rampage, when I’m checking my pulse to make sure my veins don’t explode, I try and make eye contact while also ducking and dodging…they cool off later and cry, “I don’t see why you still love me,” left unsaid is the, “when my own mother didn’t.” But I do still love them.

Before they move out, they always create a huge scene, to make me glad they’ve left but, more so for them, otherwise it’d be too hard to leave the only one who ever loved them. They provoke me to suggest they get an apartment by attempting to flaunt my rules in my face in my house. I don’t think that’s an option.

Then later, in an attempt to make me pay for caring about them, they revise history, make their early life all my fault when I was blissfully thousands of miles away, as yet untouched by the fury that was to come.

And this post is not to discourage the adoption of older children, but rather to commiserate with parents who didn’t see this coming, who thought they were the only ones who were so targeted.

How do I handle this? How do I not become bitter? It’s a battle to not give in to the negativity, to remember to look at the kids who did not act this way; they have made it all worthwhile for me in the long run to hang in there.