If you read my state of the weekend post from yesterday, you’ll know that we (the X and I) had a bit of drama to deal with in that Son#1 went MIA on Friday night till late Saturday afternoon.

When I first found out about this from the X, who called me in an angry panic to ask if I knew where our child was, I was FURIOUS!! My thoughts immediately turned to stuff like: “Shit, Son#1’s starting to pull *this* crap again … dammit!” and “What the hell’s going on?” and “Oh fuck, he’s lying dead in a gutter somewhere.”

Yeah, I was stressed, to say the least. And even more so after I called his phone and got no answer. And even MORE so after I called the kids he was supposed to be with and they had no clue as to his whereabouts, not since Friday night.

Anyway, the X called to let me know that he’d eventually found Son#1 – at the Brass Bell in Kalk Bay of all places!

Mmk, I was relieved he was safe, but I was still pissed off that he’d gone AWOL and that he hadn’t thought to let either of us know where, what or why. As annoyed as I was though, I decided not to get hysterical about it and to rather wait till he came home to hear what the whole story was.

So, here’s what went down …

On Friday evening, Son#1 was supposed to sleep over at a friend’s place and then go through to the air show in Ysterplaat with them on Saturday morning. His dad would then fetch him and take him back to his place for the rest of the weekend. My condition for him sleeping out was that the X would communicate to his friend’s mother that he was NOT to be offered any alcohol and there should be NO deviation from the arrangements.

Then, on Friday evening, the kids all decide to go out to the River Club, in Obs and Son#1 is obliged to go with them. And get this – the mother OKAYS this! (What the hell???!!) I got an sms from Son#1 while he was in Obs (which I only received the next morning) to say: “Sorry mom, there was no way I could avoid this, but I’m ok.” Fine, mmk, I’m not happy, but what can I do?

And then everything goes for a ball of shit.

The “friends” that he was with start laying into him … he’s “such a pussy for not drinking!!” FFS. So, he got into a huge fight with them. Man, he was hurt; he really didn’t expect that kind of crap from his friends. So there were some pretty kuk vibes and he didn’t want to go back to the friend’s house to spend the night. And he didn’t want to call his dad, because he thought he’d just get too angry at him for not following the plan. And he didn’t want to call me, because it was my “weekend off.” He felt stuck. (And I felt like total crap when I heard that.)

So he called a friend of his who goes to NA with him and asked if she could help him out. She drove through to Obs to fetch him and dropped him off at another friend’s place, where he stayed the night. At this stage, despite being urged to call his parents by people he was with, he still didn’t … this is where he screwed up.

And the next day, he went off to Kalk Bay with them for lunch at the Brass Bell. Again, for the same reasons as before, he didn’t feel that he could call either the X or me to let us know what happened and where he was.

But he knows and completely acknowledges that he cocked up here. He knows he SHOULD have called us … and he’s sorry, he really is. I believe him.

Two good things came out of this though:

1. Son#1 has realized that certain people that he thought were his friends are NOT. They turned on him, they teased him, taunted him and made him feel like shit. He no longer wants to spend any time with them and is determined not to put himself in a position where he’s surrounded by people who are not sympathetic to what he’s trying to do to turn his life around.
2. He did not have a drop to drink. For that, I am terribly proud of him. I honestly thought the worst – that he’d got completely smashed and fallen down big time. I was wrong. Despite all the taunting, he stood his ground and kept clean. Fuck, what a boytjie.