Leave Your Pity at the Door

     I know it's been awhile, but let me tell you boy, it's been a long, hard road that my family and I are traveling on right now. If most of you don't already know, then let me let you in. My son was placed in to a residential treatment center (RTC) on the 31st of March. Now I ain't gonna tell y'all where, because of certain issues that I'll get to as you read on. My seven year boy will more than likely be there for six to eight months due to his issues. Pretty much the boys and girls with their nifty little pieces of paper on their walls are going to reprogram and re-tool my son's head. Does he need it? Hell yeah he does. With what all he's been through you would too. So I ain't asking for your pity, but I want you all to understand about where I'm coming from right now and probably for awhile.
     Like my mother has told me time and time again, there ain't no better place to start than at the beginning. So let's all load up (don't mind the beer bottles and hand grenade pins, been busy recently) and take a ride back almost five years ago. If you knew me back then you would have said this boy is wild and he ain't ever gonna settle down. I was the life of any party I went to. The fighter, the lover, the comedian, the drunk, and the asshole all rolled up into one skinny little fuck. I didn't care about anything except where I was going to get my next drink from. I like to say I was living my life in the bottom of a bottle. Looking for answers that weren't there. I was split from my first wife, wrote my entire family off, trying to forget two tours of combat, and just being a general shit head. I had just got busted down from SSG to SPC (that's staff sergeant, SSG/E-6, and specialist, SPC/E-4) for lies that finally got the better of me. So my give-a-fuck meter was pretty much pegged out. When myself and a couple of drinking buddies decided to go out and raise hell. We had started our night off at a seedy little strip joint on the only main road in this two horse town affectionately known as Leesville. The booze was flowing and the boobs was a jiggling and I wasn't caring as usual. When from across the smoke lit atmosphere these two chicks caught my attention. Which is kinda hard to do with the amount of ADD I have. Come to find out these two were friends and they were out celebrating one of their birthday's. So being the little slick shit that I had come to be, I ended up taking one back to a hotel room and regretting it for the rest of my life (my wife never lets me live it down either). Well we all ended up going out the very next night, after I had been held hostage by the afore mentioned mistake. That's another story for another time. I ended up going back to the one who's birthday was being celebrated and had ALOT of fun. So I hung around. Two days turned into three, and three days turned into two weeks. Now I had no desire what so ever to get into a relationship. I had gotten burned and had done the burning  back pretty bad. So I had no inclination to get wrapped up in another relationship. However, my heart started to thaw out and my heart and head beat out my pecker and I fell in love with the one person in my life who can and will put up with my shit. Sometimes at gun point, but she puts up with it. A very loving and caring woman who was just as scared up as I was (both physically and mentally messed up).
     So we hit it off. I asked her old man and her eldest daughter for her hand in marriage, and proposed to her on the 4th of July in a quaint little mountain town, during the fireworks, on the side of a mirror like lake. I knew then like I know now what I was getting myself into, and you know I have zero regrets. However our time was short lived. We moved around alot as I was going to deploy for the third time and finally settled on her living with her parents while I was gone.
     I left her with tears in my eyes and a promise that I would come back. Let me tell you, it was a very rough 14 months. I came home on leave mid-way through my deployment, and found out I now owned horses. Looking back it makes me chuckle, but that's not the most important part. One night while she was calling her kids (due to her dick head of an ex at the time, her kids where taken to go live with his sister and her husband. Pieces of shit to the letter.), they pleaded for her to come get her baby boy. She looked at me with tears in her eyes, her pride had almost gotten the better of her at this point, and asked if we could go get the little man. What the fuck do you think I said? FUCK YEAH, LETS GO NOW! I mean after all these were soon to be MY kids too. So we loaded up and headed for sunny Florida. We had a blast for four days. First time I ever went to Disney World, and I did it without hesitation. I got to know the three best things that ever happen to me and I knew that it was destined for them to come live with me and my wife.
     We loaded up the boy and left. I only had three more days to get to know the little pimp and then I flew back to hell. Well we went through alot in those last eight months. I lost my mind and damn near my soul, because I got too wrapped up in The Game (that's what I like to call close with and killing the enemy). I came back fucked up in the head. I had no direction and no purpose. I wasn't doing what I love (playing the game) and I couldn't deal with it. However, while I was gone my wife's, ex's, sister and husband dumped the other two (my daughters) on my then fiance. Well I did a lot of soul searching and came to the conclusion, you don't need to act or be like your biological mother. BE THERE FOR YOU WIFE AND THE KIDS. So I did and all was well.......for a little bit.
      All hell broke lose at the end of March. Her ex was coming home for good from Korea with his bought and paid for, drinky girl, whore of a wife. My wife's replacement. If you can't tell I hate the bitch. So due to the legality of the situation we loaded up the kids and took them back to their sperm donor. Looking back, I should have merc'ed the shit head when I saw him, but hind sights twenty-twenty. So with tears and booze we left them in what would come to be hell for them.
    Two months went by and in that time we moved on post, got two cats and adopted my other brother from another mother, MIKE. I also got to live the greatest day of my life on the 9th of May. I married the one person who could wade through the bullshit and see me for what I was. Who loved me, regardless of my eccentric peronsalitity, regardless of my issues, regardless period. On that day I made a solemn promise that I would be here NO MATTER WHAT! I meant it with all that I am, who I was, and all I could. This is one promise I will NEVER break.
    At the beginning of June we got the greatest gift for a wedding present.....we got all of the kids back for what was suppose to be a month. This is the best thing dick head could have done. For this one thing I thank him. However, this gift was broken and there isn't a return policy. My girls came back INFESTED with lice and dirty. My boy came back......well lets just say we are just now figuring out the damage that was done. This is the turning point. This is were I could have caved in and could have just said fuck it. Send them back to the sperm donor. Then again you are talking to the guy who, mid fire fight, with rounds snapping at my heels, pulled a stray Iraqi puppy out of the way. Stupid fucking dog. I stood my ground and said NO. These kids will not go back and damn the consequences. Well dick head didn't have a leg to stand on and he also wanted to erase his past. Erase everything he had done before he had met his fuck trophy. Mind you this is the same fuck trophy who he is cheating on even as we speak.
      Well all was well for a couple of months then it all hit. Before then I made the decision that all three of the kiddos where MINE! I like to say "I may not have been there for the conception but by fucking god these are my god damn kids". Typical Irish way of thinking. In case you don't know, back in the day, in order to keep the gene pool diverse on the island, the Irish would in a way adopt and make the individuals damn near full blood relations. There was no legal system or piece of paper that could or would say that those people who were adopted where not apart of that Irishman's family. It was excepted. So these are my KIDS! Fuck off if you think I need some guy in a black robe and a piece of paper that says as much. Ok, back to it, well when it hit, it hit like a freight train. We admitted my boy into his first acute treatment. This lasted for two weeks, and he came out with confirmed ADHD. Everything else was speculation. The fuck faces with the neat little pieces of paper on the wall couldn't determind if he had PTSD or what was up with him. So we went back and forth with his "doctors" (fuck I'm a doctor too. I swear it! I have a PHD in merc'ing people. I mean if it only takes 8-10 years to get a PHD then fuck, just call me doctor.)  Finally they came off with another diagnosis....... PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder at the age of six? What the fuck? Well with all of the hell he has been through I don't doubt it. I mean I have seen enemies who had shot and blown us up treated better then how my son was treated by his biological father and his sister and her husband. Some of this shit they did to him could be construed as torture.
      Well the 1st treatment lasted for a little while and then he had to go back to acute care again. This one was a little longer. However, when he came out he was better. He could cope with most of his issues and work through them. Then my eldest daughter came to us about what her dick head of a sperm donor did to her. Ohhh did hell break lose. Lets just say that I got told and ordered by a general not to be with in 50 miles of dick head. So as not to end up in prison I obeyed him. Well three weeks ago it all came to a head.
     My son came home from school all marked up. He had taken a marker to his face and...... yeah well with other things he got committed for a third time. This is the straw that broke the camels back. His new doctor (whom I like very much and actually respect.) recommended RTC. Well what chose do we have? None, I tell you. With my boys issues there is nothing we as parents can do. Between his sperm donor and his aunt and uncle in law they fucked him up. So here we sit praying and hoping they can help my boy. Now I'm not asking for your pity or sympathy. What I am asking, is that when you can and if you want, say a little prayer and just help us hope that my boy gets better. Don't worry about those people who did this to him. Their day will come and I just hope I'm there to witness and hopefully participate. Thanks to all who pray and help us hope. Now that I'm done I'm gonna drink a few beers and try to work through this.