I'll try to make a long story short here. Basically this year a lot of extremely stressful things happened in my life. I brought my 14 year old son to a city far away from where he grew up and away from his dad and proceeded to have a total mental breakdown which he witnessed way too much of (me crying, saying dark and depressing stuff to him mainly), and generally being a really shitty parent and emotional vampire. There were a few nice moments here and there but it's like all my carefully honed parenting skills I'd been working on for years went out the window. I really dropped the ball when he probably needed me the most. No excuses, but the reason why this happened I think is because every single comorbid mental condition I have (anxiety, depression, stress, insomnia, executive dysfunction) went from manageable to out of control all at once and it completely overwhelmed me.

Welp, we're moving again, and this time our destination city is somewhere where my son's father moved to. My son moved out there 2 months ago, my partner and I are moving there in 3 weeks time. Since my son has left we have such a tension in our communication, which follows the trend of the last year. We used to communicate effortlessly, so it is a stark difference. Tonight I asked him what the exact issue causing this tension was, and he said it was a lack of trust in me. Which is completely fair, and I want to work on.

I am on my meds again, I am generally feeling better and like I can see things a lot more clearly now. I feel awful about how I behaved, and the things I put him through. I have made many apologies to my son. And I plan to start therapy in January, which I suspect will be helpful. But in the meantime, I would love to know that winning his trust back is possible. I want him to feel he has a solid foundation before he goes out into the world on his own. And I definitely want to heal our relationship before he leaves, I know this may literally be my last chance to do it.

So with all that in mind, this an advice post- any and all advice is appreciated. Thank you in advance.