Saturday, August 16, 2003
Kyle's mom here. I am sorry that I have not been coming on as often. This move has been a little overwhelming. We lived in our old house for 21 years. I am terribly sentimental. I can't stand throwing anything away. Even letters that Kyle wrote from jail and that his sisters wrote him. The first day when he came home they painted him at least 30 pictures. Each one had a message to him. I think one of the best benefits of having a bipolar son is the compassion and love that you gain for other people. We have so many different types of people in our family anyway and with Kyle being bipolar it kind of completes the mix. We can understand pretty much every type of behavior because we have them all at our house. I love how easily Kyle forgives people. And I think our family has learned more about forgiveness through him. And we have had to forgive some horrible things that he has done to us and himself. And I think that is real love. I always told the children that I would love them no matter what they did. And I have. But I felt that if I wasn't perfect or made mistakes that I couldn't be loved. I have always been afraid of someone not liking me. But having Kyle has changed that. There have been people that simply didn't like Kyle. And I found out that that was o.k. And in a way that was very healing and helped me to grow.
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Today I was thinking of a bizarre memory from junior high. Kyle would skip a lot of classes. He was not only failing but he was excelling at failing. I went to his conferences and sat at ten different teachers telling me how horrible he was doing. I had him come with me to understand what he needed to do. In a lot of the classes he was getting 20% or less. His younger brother said that he heard how he was bragging how bad he was doing. About the time of the Columbine shootings, I got a call from the school. The vice principal, who I had come to know well, called me as well as Kyle's dad to school. When we got there, there were also two police officers. They were accusing Kyle of a bomb threat which they took seriously because of Columbine. Kyle was scared and so were we. He had been in the bathroom where someone had written a bomb threat as a joke. They wanted me to say that the writing was Kyle's. It did make sense, however, I knew it wasn't his writing. It sounds strange but there was an @ symbol used in the threat that wasn't accurate. I knew at that moment that he didn't do it. When I explained this I could tell that no one believed me but I knew I was right. He would never write a flawed @ symbol. They let him go because they really didn't have proof. I think they wanted me to turn him in. We were afraid that they would search our house. We had just sold our bait shop and had a lot of strange things, chemicals for cleaning arrows, and such sitting around our house. Nothing came of it but at the time it was very frightening.
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Today I was thinking of a bizarre memory from junior high. Kyle would skip a lot of classes. He was not only failing but he was excelling at failing. I went to his conferences and sat at ten different teachers telling me how horrible he was doing. I had him come with me to understand what he needed to do. In a lot of the classes he was getting 20% or less. His younger brother said that he heard how he was bragging how bad he was doing. About the time of the Columbine shootings, I got a call from the school. The vice principal, who I had come to know well, called me as well as Kyle's dad to school. When we got there, there were also two police officers. They were accusing Kyle of a bomb threat which they took seriously because of Columbine. Kyle was scared and so were we. He had been in the bathroom where someone had written a bomb threat as a joke. They wanted me to say that the writing was Kyle's. It did make sense, however, I knew it wasn't his writing. It sounds strange but there was an @ symbol used in the threat that wasn't accurate. I knew at that moment that he didn't do it. When I explained this I could tell that no one believed me but I knew I was right. He would never write a flawed @ symbol. They let him go because they really didn't have proof. I think they wanted me to turn him in. We were afraid that they would search our house. We had just sold our bait shop and had a lot of strange things, chemicals for cleaning arrows, and such sitting around our house. Nothing came of it but at the time it was very frightening.
