I remember when I met him. A short, chubby boy that had just turned ten years old - he had just celebrated yet another birthday without his mother present. He was very angry and moody- he was struggling in school and getting into trouble. DH had already been to several parent-teacher conferences, but SS refused to talk to anyone about how he really felt. All he really cared about was video games and resentment towards the BM. When DH and I first started dating, he asked SS how he felt about it. SS looked up at him with tears in his eyes and asked "She doesn't do pills, does she?" DH reassured him no, I was very anti-drugs (I didn't even like taking aspirin). SS was guarded. He didn't trust me. He had been hurt so many times by his BM. He always seemed to be in a bad mood. I tried to show him that I was different and I would be there for him - I went to every single one of his basketball games, helped him with his homework, took him to school every morning. I told him that he would never have to go to sleep wondering where I was or wake up in the morning, wondering where I had gone. I gave him consistency. The next few years were rough. He held on to his resentment of his BM like a life-jacket. But, he admited, he still loved her and hoped that she would get better and come back to him and his little sister.

SS slowly opened up to me over the years. He told me about watching BM nod off and pass out on the couch while his baby sister would be screaming her head off. He told me about the frequent car rides to her drug-dealer's house, leaving him and baby sitter in the back-seat of the car for hours. He told me about BM leaving him, a small child, home alone with his baby sitter for hours. He remembers one time he was very hungry, so he (at only six years old) took his baby sister up the street to his grandmother's house. She never told BM or DH about this. When the same incident happened a few weeks later, his grandmother wasn't home, so he took baby sister up the street to where DH was working. He was absolutely furious. BM didn't return home until three days later, coming down off her bender. SS told me about the late-night fights between DH and BM over her stealing, lying and drug use - the way he would crank his TV up to drown out the screaming. He told me that BM missed birthdays, Christmas, Easter, first days of school, Thanksgiving, and numerous other events more times than he could count. He told me that the worst part is he remembered when she was sober and actually a mother - the first five years of his life were great. And I listened. That's all he wanted me to do, so that is what I did.

Then - SS slowly started to thaw. He started joking around with me and accepting me into his life. His grades greatly improved. He joined the football team and later the Band. He stopped getting in trouble at school. His teachers bragged to me about how he was a completely different child. Things seemed peaceful - but in the back of his mind, SS still wanted a relationship with BM. He wanted her to "get better" and give her another chance. He said that no matter, that was still his mother. I tried to tell him to give it time. BM moved back in with her mother and SS would go see her. He seemed far too excited - she was clean, he said. She was ready to be a mother again. We got into a brief argument because I told him to slow down and accept that she could possibly go away again. The angry 10-year-old boy came back out of him. And then - just as I predicted - BM was back in jail. She sent SS letters, but he threw them away, so angry at her for letting him down again. They went back to no contact. BM came back into town a few years later and lured SS over with promises - she would give him weed, vape pens, alcohol, whatever he wanted. Just please come hang out with me. And for a short while, he did just that. The rebellious teenager in him couldn't resist. But then BM messaged DH in an attempt to make him jealous and SS again cut her off. BM sent him message after message and he ignored them - then, one day, he snapped. He walked up to her apartment and went off on her. He let out ten years of pent-up frustration. He messaged her later and said he would file a restraining order if she didn't stop messaging him. Their relationship was broken beyond compare. He came over a random night after he graduated high school, told me that he regretted that massive argument we had and he knew that I was only saying things to him out of love. He said he was sorry and "that woman" would never be his true mother. They speak only a few times every few months, and every time he says that he sets her straight and she ends up in tears. But that angry, moody ten-year-old boy still lives inside him. The little boy that remembers standing in the kitchen, crying his eyes out, begging his mother to "Please just stop doing drugs. For me, Mom? Please!" That little boy who remembers opening up birthday and Christmas presents, looking around the room for his mother who wasn't there. The little boy who remembers having to take care of his little sister when he should have been a child. No matter how old he gets or how mature he thinks he is, I know that little boy will always live inside him. And I hope he realizes that I will always be here to just listen.