Adoption Under One Roof

My son was robbed at gunpoint over the holiday season. He and a friend were watching TV around 11:00pm when three men broke into their apartment by shattering the glass doors. Thank God the boys were not hurt. They were held at gunpoint while the intruders took whatever valuables they could find. The boys are in their late teens and early twenties so they did not have a lot of valuables. Their laptops were stolen, the TV was broken, and all electronics were taken. What was also taken was my son’s sense of safety and security.

He doesn’t sleep at night any more. The men who robbed them have not been caught. When the police came to their apartment they accused my son and his roommate of being drug dealers. The managers of their apartment complex threatened to evict them.

Now, let me tell you a little about my son’s apartment. It is a pigpen. It smells of cigarette smoke. His friend smokes but I am told that he never smokes in their apartment. I have a hard time believing that. The place reeks. Their dirty clothes are mixed on the floor with clean clothes. I want to clean the place but he tells me that he wants to do it himself. In what century this will occur I am not sure.

When the police came in they probably thought the place was ransacked. They did not know that it always looks like this. The thieves probably were looking for drugs as well as anything else they could pawn or sell.

Truth be told, my son was not a saint when he graduated from high school. He did do drugs, he rebelled, he and his friends were known for having parties, people went their apartment to get high. We dealt with a lot of things that parents don’t want to deal with. We got the phone calls in the middle of the night.

Over the past few years I have seen him go through a metamorphosis. He took the piercings out of his face, the nose ring is gone, the big earing in his earlobe is out. He has cut his hair. The constant anger is gone. He has apologized to us numerous times. He has written us letters about why he acted the way he did. He said as a teen he became very angry at his birth father for wanting nothing to do with him. My ex was also not there when he needed him. He took his anger out on my husband and me.

The crime that occurred last month was terrifying. He lives with what happened every day. He knows that his past behaviors could have been a reason that these criminals picked his place. Who knows?  He has to move on and he will.