Son upset I took his financial aid refund
Sorry I do not have a better title. This is a son that while I love very much, I am tired of being stressed and used and abused by him.
Here is the back story. He has been substance abusing. He had a scholarship that covered 100% of his housing and food service while on campus. Last year, he decided he had to move off campus, in to his frat house. Realize, I still pay a fair amount of his bills. Because there is a housing shortage on campus, there was a deal where he could get the housing he moved to paid for, if there was a contract with the university. We did the paperwork to get the frat house approved, but he still needed to pay his own utility bills.
At Christmas, he broke his laptop, which I had bought for him and was still under warranty. He threw it in the trash and his girlfriend dug it out and gave to me so I could get it repaired. He "borrowed" money repeatedly through the fall, but it was always for school related stuff or groceries, deodorant, life stuff. But he would not have needed the money if he were not spending all his money on drugs and alcohol. Coming in to spring, he was drinking so heavily that even his frat brothers became concerned and called the police and he was involuntarily committed and the doctor said he needed to detox. However, they let him go a week later and at that point, first day, he went to the liquor store and bought up over $200. He also took a bunch of cash out and bought drugs. Also, another thing, he has been selling drugs. He also previously told me he was going to smash his phone because it was under Applecare and he wanted a new phone. After being out of the hospital for two weeks, he smashed the phone. He took the case off and threw it as hard as he could. That did not break it at first so he threw it severak other times. Finally, it was so broken that it could not connect to the wifi or bluetooth or cell service. He took it to Best Buy and found out that they needed to mail it in and it would take up to two weeks to get the replacement. He became angry and threw it in the trash. His girlfriend called me panicked and my son was melting down (he also has ASD). He said he could not even sign in to work without the phone. I brought him an old phone for him to use and took the new broken phone. Okay, realize, every time he does this, he lives about 45 minutes away and I have to drive to him. Then, I took the iphone to the Apple store which is another 30 minutes from our house and spent time there to get the phone repaired. However, he did not know his Apple ID password and other things were wonky and they could not replace it until he could turn off location on the broken phone. This took a few weeks and a few more trips to the store until we found a great worker there who was able to reset the password without the wait time we were originally given. The replacement fee was about $100 plus tax. Son said he would pay me back. Of course, he had no money. I ended up paying for it.
Okay, I did not return the phone to him right away. So while he pretends to be incapable of so much, he was capable of finding out that the phone had been replaced and started getting angry at me. I returned it to him. A few weeks later, I find out he took the money from his roommates (frat brothers) to pay the utilities but spent it on drugs and alcohol. I also provided him with groceries during this time. He was getting notices that the utilities were going to be cut off. I said he needed to speak to utility company and gave him other trouble shooting ideas to get an extension.
Finally, he begged me to pay, he has done all he can, and point out that he is in summer classes and trying to get his life together and was currently earning an A in the class. There will be a financial aid refund of about $1000 so if I just pay the utilities (about $800) to get them current, I can have the money refunded directly to my account and keep it. I told him he had to promise to stop buying substances and focus on school, at least until I am paid back. He said he would. I paid the bill.
Then, I tried to sign in to his university account to switch the refund method to my account and it was not working. He said he would help later, but was too busy. Meanwhile, I can see that within hours of paying the utility bills, he was buying liquor and coming up with cash. When he got paid, he immediately took the money out of his account. As in, immediately. And, because he flunked all his classes, he was put on financial aid probation and could not get his money until the financial aid office verified his attendance this summer and other things. Finally, during this time, I figured out how to sign in and make the money go straight to my account.
Now he contacts me over the weekend, angry, because he saw a refund is coming, but not to his account. He blew up at me and said he is going to break his brother's jaw and "teach a lesson" to his little brother and his little brother will be eating from a straw and pooping in a diaper with what he plans to do to him. Then he went on that he is going to be homeless and will do fentanyl and commit suicide. He went on and on with this threats.
Realize, the financial aid refund has not even hit my account yet, it just says pending on his end. Turns out, he never told his roommates that he spent all the money they gave him to pay utilities. But he did tell them, and his girlfriend, that I stole his financial aid refund. Then apparently, he told them that I took out student loans in his name and took all that money too. Not true also. Since I am still able to sign in to his account and see, I took screen shots to show that all money went to his account. He shrugged it off and said he never got it. I told him that if he was missing money, he needs to contact the financial aid office and let them know. But, he just shrugged and it was clear he was not missing the money, he was just saying this because his girlfriend was there. He had been telling her that I had been stealing from him for a while.
So I woke up this morning and saw that the refund had hit my account.
Well, that is the story. I hate hate hate feeling this way. I feel like a failure and I just want everyone to be happy. I look at other families and they do not seem to deal with this sort of thing. I don't want to go no contact, but I cannot keep enabling him too. My husband was floored that I paid his bills considering that we are always careful/frugal with our money. Son also says, again, that he is going "no contact." I wish he would! I love him and do not want anything bad for him. But it is so stressful dealing with his threats and his anger.