People Who Went No-Contact With Their Children Are Sharing What The Final Straw Was

6.

“I had my son early, around 17. The girl I had him with moved away before I met him. Five years later, I got sued for child support — so I paid and decided to try to take some care of this child. Fast forward to him being in high school. I never got to spend more than the summers with him because he lived so far away. Anyway, I found out that he hadn’t been to school in years; he was almost 20 and hadn’t graduated ninth grade. My son showed up at my doorstep, saying that his mom kicked him out. I told him that he had to go to school if he was going to live with me. He finally agreed, and I discovered how terribly his mother had messed up his schooling.”

“He had been labeled as severely learning disabled and schizophrenic, and he’d been prescribed anti-psychotics, which I’d never seen him take. It turns out he told his mom that he was ‘seeing things,’ and after she took him to every doctor in the city (the first few couldn’t find anything wrong with him), she finally got a few diagnoses. I took him to my doctor and discovered he was playing along so the school would give him an easier time. I got the school to give him a chance, and he finally started honors English, math, etc., and to everyone’s (except my) surprise, he passed with high grades, so much so that he was accepted into college with minimal effort.

Figuring he had turned over a new leaf, I decided to buy him a car, put a couple of months’ rent down on his own apartment, and give him a couple thousand dollars to help with tuition (not to mention that I bought him a laptop, a bunch of dishes, pots, and pans, etc.) He looked so proud when he moved in, and i remember beaming all the way home after helping him move in the week before school starts.

I saw him for the next couple of weekends to ensure that he was transitioning to his new place well enough. Although he seemed a bit lonely at times, he seemed to be adjusting quite well.

Two weeks after school started, I got a call from the school telling me my refund was processed. I immediately called my son; much to my surprise, his cellphone was cut off (even though I was the one who paid for it). I went to his apartment to see if everything was okay, and the superintendent told me he moved out last week.

I haven’t heard from him since, but through the grapevine, I found out that a friend of his won a legal battle and got a few hundred thousand dollars, so they pooled ‘their’ money to become ‘big-time drug dealers.’

I have no idea where he is now. I haven’t heard from him; neither has anyone else.”

—u/ej36GfPz