Uncomfortable

An Heritage #4 had a birthday.   I was impressed because at 9am I got a text from H-er asking what we were doing for his birthday.  Is this a sober H-er who is aware of others?  He was completely oblivious to An Heritage #3’s birthday in October and didn’t call him.   I tried to call H-er later that day to coordinate with him and got his voicemail.   He didn’t call me back for 4 hours.  When he did it was to tell me he didn’t have his phone with him because he’d been playing Frisbee with a kid that lives with him.  He didn’t mention the birthday and kept implying that he would only be able to communicate via text the rest of the evening. 

 
He never called. 

He didn’t speak to his son on his birthday. 

Here is why this kills me.
 
Just the night before An Heritage #4 came up from watching Studio C.  He loves it.  But he said “I stopped watching because that last sketch didn’t make me feel good”.    Boom.  I am at code red here.  So I asked him to tell me about it.  Long story short, the sketch was about a kid who looked man sized but had a girl’s voice and some other odd characteristics.  The sketch ended with a joke along the lines of “what do you get when you cross my mom and my dad” with the punchline being this undesirable kid that everyone makes fun of.  And I knew why he felt uncomfortable.  

“It made you uncomfortable because you got the idea that the boy was unwanted or an accident didn’t you?”   He nodded.

And so I made sure to tell him how much he was wanted and that he hadn’t been an accident and I was so glad he was part of my life. 

Betrayal Trauma is for kids too.  That sucks.