Too exhausted to care

The last four months have been nothing but more of the same.

She has lost the wigs finally, but is still dying her hair non-stop so the damage she had last year is back with the new growth.

She flunked 8th grade and actually THREW the CRTs on purpose because she was "bored" and didn't want to take the tests. Despite that, she is going to be transferred to the high school program. WTF is with that? The schools are closed in July so I can't even call for details.

Still abusive, still obscene, still destroying everything in sight when she doesn't get her way... The latest target when she get angry is the refrigerator--she has ripped some of the rails out of the doors. She also randomly destroys art work she's created for me in the past.

She keeps inviting strangers to our house (also trashed by her to an almost unlivable condition) after as little as five minutes' contact at the mall. These people consume a week's worth of food in a few hours, trash my yard with empty soda cans, cigarette butts and other trash. They also bring drugs to my house.

You see, she has been introduced to Ecstacy. Despite the very real problem with a possible interaction with her medications, she insists that it is OK because some raver blog said it was fine. To make it worse, if I give her spending money for other things and she uses it for drugs, she tells people I paid for it!!!

That is what she tells people about the ugly-ass "angel bite" piercings she decided to get illegally (a friend who does piercings for a living did them without my written consent or presence). The convoluted reasoning is that, since I gave her some money for the mall, I specifically paid for her to get holes in her lip. Now one is infected and I cannot get a doctor's appointment to get a broken post out of one hole that closed up on her. It will end up needed a surgeon to remove it, so more money I don't have. But, you see, it is MY fault because I "paid for" it.

Yes, she still physically attacks me and then again says it is my fault because I "made [her] mad". Seriously! Even her anger is someone else's fault. There is NO personal responsibility in that twisted mind of hers.

I talked to an intake person at the local inpatient care facility and she said I need to lock this child up immediately. I fired her original psychiatrist and the first appointment with the new one is today. I am waiting to see what she says, but telling me to keep positive had better NOT be all. Meds need to be changed--the inpatient center lady was really pissed to hear that the ONE medication she takes is it. According to her, there should be a cocktail of that medication PLUS at least one other for it to be truly effective.

So the child has been UNDER-MEDICATED for an entire year. I told her previous shrink what she was on was not enough. He was such an asshat! Instead of concentrating on the conditions, he was jumping on the girl for her clothes (sometimes VERY bizarre) and telling me I should lock her up or send her to some sort of boot camp. In any case, he didn't want to treat her any more--just write her prescriptions for the current meds. He apparently has a bad reputation because, when I mentioned his name to the intake person, she rolled her eyes and suggested finding someone else fast.

Meanwhile, I exist on less than five hours of sleep a night. I am tired all the time, stressed because I am scared of what she does when I am asleep (like inviting people into the house at 3 AM), having work issues because of the outside problems. I am on the brink of bankruptcy because she gets into the money (you don't want to know how many times I have changed PINs and passwords. I lost a transfer offered to me specifically on the side because they know how much I need to get her out of this toxic city, again due to the problems she causes.

Will I end up committing her for a while? Probably. That will definitely put me into bankruptcy, but she needs the help I can no longer give her.

It has come to this

She spent the night in jail last night. The charge was domestic battery after she attacked me for not taking her to Walgreen's to buy something that she didn't need and could have waited for.

It was another weekend of her wandering off at random. First she took off with BFF's family to go watch a cheerleading competition. After that, she went to the teen center on base to hang out with friends. Those two things caused her to miss a therapy appointment. Not good.

You would think a military base would be safe for her, right? Nope! She and her friends promptly left the teen center and were wandering around in the dark after curfew. When I finally tracked her down, she TOLD me she was spending the night with said friends and refused to get in the car. I finally just left her there and told them all they needed to go straight home or the military police would be picking them up.

Next morning, when I went to get her, she asked to go to the mall with those friends because her favorite store was closing and they were selling everything for 25¢ apiece. I only said OK because she swore her friends had their own money. Yeah, right... Both girls' fathers are MSGTs in the AF making close to $5000 or more a month and neither seemed to have their own money. Again, guess who got stuck paying to feed them? As the day wore on, she was transitioning from the Krissy part to the Danya part of herself. And Danya was being a real bitch. At one point she demanded, in the middle of the Food Court, that I hand over my debit card so she could go shopping. REALLY?!?! It was obvious her friends were visibly embarrassed to be near her at that point.

When we finally left the mall to drop her friends off, one girl asked the other about going to church. Danya demanded to go, too. I gently tried to deter her from pushing the issue by hinting to the girl that she needed to tell Danya it was a special thing for military kids only or something. Finally, the girl got the hint and said that she didn't think they were going because her dad had said her mom wasn't feeling good and didn't want to go. Bullet dodged!

But wait! Danya, not to be deterred, texted one of her hoodlum friends to come over in the pouring rain with a promise that I would take her home. I ended up feeding this one, too. What angered me was that they went into the kitchen, opened two packs of Ramen noodles, then left them open on the counter and opened up two cans of ravioli. Never even bothered to put the noodles in a baggie or anything! It took forever to get the hoodlum out of my house to take home and that one had the nerve to tell her mother she was late because I "made [them] wait while I watched something on the Oscars". I almost turned and slapped her, but chewed her out where her mother could hear me because I had been telling them for over half an hour to get moving. Danya's fault, because she tells people to just ignore me because I don't really mean it and I'm just trying to get rid of them.

Anyway, got Hoodlum Girl home and then Danya started demanding I take her to Walgreen's to buy her a bunch of stuff. Considering that I had already informed her and her internal buddies that the ATM was closed for the duration, I was pissed. I had already chewed her out about the money that she thinks I should spend on her friends because they are "poor"--like we aren't? We just get by with the utility increases, premium increases, gas and food increases and I cannot afford to subsidize the entire neighborhood. Yet not a day goes by that she is handing out our stuff like I'm Bill Gates' secret mistress and have access to his bank account (and we know that ain't true--Melissa Gates would have killed me long before now).

Now, every time Danya hears me tell her there isn't any more money for crap spending, she starts calling me a liar and tries to get at my purse. She tried this time, too, so I slapped her on her arm. She punched me back. I told her to get out of the car, but then changed my mind because I didn't feel like going to jail for dumping her in the rain. She got meaner and meaner, slapping at me and calling me names. It was at that point, I think the Beast took over.

By the time we got home, the Beast was in "control", biting, kicking and hitting at me as I tried to get her into the house. She was doing her damnedest to push me off the porch, kicking me in the knees, which are already in bad shape due to a work injury. I managed to get her into the laundry room, but then she started kicking and punching more. I tried to fight back, but she knocked me backwards into a bookcase and then jumped me. At that point, I did what the doctor told me to do in cases like this and called 911 so they would take her in to the psych ward for evaluation. Bad advice!

When the cops got there, she had locked the deadbolts and wouldn't open the door. By then, I had a huge knot on my head and was pretty woozy. The cops got her to open the door and walked through our pigsty of a house (The Beast has trashed it like you would not believe). After interviewing both of us, one of the officers marched her out the door, patted her down and cuffed her. Now, all this time, I had been asking them to do what my doctor told me to ask them but the one cop said they had to take her to Juvie because she assaulted me. That is NOT what I was told would happen. I just wanted her taken in for evaluation, not to be arrested. Meanwhile, despite my repeated warnings, the damned cops left the door open and the cat that got out before got out again. Only this time, we can't find him.

Anyway, she was booked, spent the night in jail (luckily, I was able to make sure they put her in a single cell instead of in the dorm because of her illness) and the case was adjudicated as "time served". When I picked her up, she was sullen and again promised to never love me again. Like she has ever loved anyone other than herself... So instead of the evaluation demanded and that should have been provided by law, she now has a record and a bigger internal problem than before.

The "system" told me to put her in the hospital myself. That would be nice, except that even with two insurances that are supposed to cover 100%, the secondary one from Mississippi (BCBS) refuses to even cover the co-pays billed after the primary pays its share. I can't get the secondary to talk to me because the policy is not in my name.

And here I am... I have a nutjob to deal with, insurance that may as well not exist (but that WILL be fixed, even if it means a return to court), a concussion and a jaw that feels as if it has been slammed by a tire iron (I had to waste a perfectly good sick day on actually being sick). Danya and the Beast have retreated to their dark corners of her mind and Krissy seems to be in the house for now. Hopefully, tonight will be peaceful (relatively speaking). I doubt it, though. She invited more strays over to hang out. One went home already, but the other is still here.

The way stuff disappears around here when her "friends" are around, I'll have to count the silverware again.


Picture from Rick Albertson's blog: http://compellingvisualstories.blogspot.com/2006/04/angel-behind-bars-antiqua-guatemala.html

Too exhausted, but still...

Nothing has changed but the date on the calendar. I am sitting here waiting for her to get home from going to church with (to me) complete strangers. I have issues with that because:

1) I don't know the people she went with. She took off with them before I got home from work. I gather there is a girl she was friends with from her previous school. So what? I've not met the girl or her family.

2) She was supposed to be home almost an hour ago. Of course, they are late and I am sure she is telling them that I am being stupid over her "being one second late". Yeah--when we have someplace to be in the morning, I do get "stupid" over things like that.

3) It was one of those "speaking in tongues, crying and screaming" type of churches that some of the people around here favor.

She's home now.

It is that last bit that makes me so mad. SHE is one of those people with an addictive personality. Take her to something novel like an evangelical church service and the next thing you know, she's seeing Jeebus in the rafters. As it is, she is talking about how cool it was and how everyone was like family to each other and she wanted to go again. Give her a little while to think about it and she will be demanding attendance at church every night and Bible readings constantly. That will go on until she finds something else to fixate on.

Except school... She has developed an almost pathological fear of going anymore and that is spelling trouble with a capital T for me. I am tired of getting phone calls and letters from her school threatening to "take further action" if HER attendance does not pick up. At this point, does it matter? They already indicated that they are going to flunk her anyway.

In other new: since my last entry, SHE decided on her own that she had ruined her hair with the dyes and the extension glue on top of the meds thinning out her hair. Her solution? Cut it all off two days before Christmas! She went nearly bald--maybe a quarter-inch left all around which revealed two really bald spots. So, instead of ruining her own hair with crap, she has a couple of wigs that she has "styled" to match what she did to her own before.

It has grown out a lot in the two months since she cut it and she looks like that girl who plays "Alice" in the new movie (Mia Wasikowska).


























The short hair looks adorable on her, but she will not let anyone see it in public. Sooner or later, she is going to have to take off the wigs. One is getting pretty UGGH!!!l

I don't know anymore. My friends tell me I need to make a decision before I fall over from sheer exhaustion and stress. They see how hard it is to deal with all the stuff I have to and still manage to get through a day without a heart attack.

"A hard row" indeed... Know any good "special" boarding schools? Willing to chip in?

Nothing but love...

Or, to ask my child, nothing but NO love. The conditions of her illness means that I have to keep a tighter rein on her and to deny her certain freedoms she CLAIMS her friends enjoy. So, to her, that means I don't love her because I don't let her do what she wants when she wants and of course, that is followed by the usual chorus of "I hate you!".

The latest round of "hate" cries came out of this weekend. After managing to miss 13 of the last 18 days at her new school, including Friday, SHE decided she was going to spend the night at a friend's house. Plans had been made, calls and texts exchanged--only no one had asked me beforehand. Much drama ensued and I finally caved--just because I was sick of hearing her tantrums. But, I reminded her, there were things on the schedule for us that required she be home and not roaming the streets. "Oh, I'll be home in time!"

Uh-huh... We know how THAT turned out. I had to cancel a morning appointment because she didn't make it home until after 2 in the afternoon.

Then, knowing I had an invitation to a party being thrown by my local manager, she invited her friend to spend the night! That girl's mother is also bi-polar, so she is no help. She thinks it is perfectly normal to drop her kid off randomly at the homes of others and then wander off for the night. But, she didn't know about my plans (more on that in a minute). Meanwhile, just before it was time for me to leave, the girls decided to wander off. I couldn't leave until they came home because it was dark. That, of course, took away from my evening. Did SHE care? Nope!

Then came the phone calls... "Mom, XXX's mom needs to know when you are coming home because she can't stay if you aren't here." The cut-off point was around 9 PM, but the party was scheduled to go on till 10 or 11. More calls, more texts... I ended up having to leave around 8:30 because it was too nerve-wracking. And then she tells me I have no friends because no one likes me--more like I have friends, but they don't invite me to too many things because of HER antics.


During this time, I told HER to take her meds. Did she? Of course not. In addition, she managed to NOT remember to take her medication with her to her friend's house on Friday. So we are talking a day with no meds! SHE never sees the correlation between missing her medications and her increase in risky behavior. That behavior got really stupid last night.

On the way home, I got a call for mac-and-cheese. I stopped at the store, got the stuff, went home with it and made it for the girls. I also had to hold the evening meds under you-know-who's face till she took them. But it was late and there was trouble brewing because of the other missed medications.

Around 11:30, they decided they wanted to take pictures in the dark, so they went outside. One of them (I don't know who) left BOTH doors to the outside open. That was all the invitation our old cat needed to sneak out and tussle with the yard cats. SHE came into my room, all hysterical because she couldn't find the cat. I got up and went out with them to try and find him. Luckily, he was still in the carport and I nudged him to the porch and he went back into the house. Meanwhile, SHE was crying and the hysteria hit. Screaming, crying, the "I hate you!" over and over because I was not as sympathetic to her tears as she wanted. Why should I tell her everything was OK? She did something irresponsible because she refused to take responsibility for her illness and to take her medications; the cat was also in danger because the yard cats are very young and could have hurt him badly.

Why should she take any responsibility? I am not going to be around forever and her taking personal responsibility for the means to control her condition is going to be a requirement to live independent of an institutional setting. But who am I kidding? SHE won't even take personal responsibility for getting up and going to school and I am expecting her to be able to be independent? HA!

But I don't love her, according to her. I love her, but damn! I am losing myself because I have so much invested in keeping her on this side of the padded rooms. It may not be love the way she sees things, but you know what? No one else I know would have put up with her this long without locking her away by now.

The end has come

SHE stole a dog from her friend's apartment complex because she didn't like the way the kids who owned it treated it. She had a million excuses why she took it: the dog had no collar, the kids picked it up wrong, it was outside with no one watching it...

At this point, there is no hope left. I asked the school psychologist to check into hospital school because she needs intensive around the clock therapy along with the school environment. I cannot do this any more.

Just more and more piling up

Well, the school has decided SHE cannot be in general education any more. Nor can she be in their school. So, as soon as it all can be arranged, she is being moved to a contained classroom where she will be watched and trained to be another burger flipper.

If she had gotten up and gone to school no matter what, maybe they would have just provided the extra support at her regular school. However, she won't move without an act of God. So, buh-bye to friends and school activities and hello to the short bus. No dances, no boyfriends--just lots and lots of training in a UNIFORM school.

I am sitting here tonight waiting for her to get home. SHE has found another friend to graft onto and the mother is allowing her to stay there all hours in direct opposition to my desires. I know SHE is doing her best "Cinderella" with yet another stranger, telling the mom that I am beating her and starving her and dressing her in rags. Yep. The thousands of dollars worth of clothes all over my living room floor are just window dressing for DFAS, right?

It's all the same

As usual, the drama continues. This child of mine needs to go somewhere else for a long, LONG time. I cannot deal with it much longer.

For the last several weeks, SHE has been bouncing all over the emotional map, usually on the "wrong" side of that map. Oh, that is except when she is at other people's houses--then she is a perfect little angel and does no wrong for others. Yeah, right... Perfect until she decides they took something of hers or ate her snack or touched her clothes or whatever. Then I get calls demanding I come get her or that someone else does because they don't want her around any more.

SHE is also flunking school again--partially because she is not doing the work and partially because of attendance again. 45 days in the quarter and SHE has missed 23+. Even with straight A's across the board (as if!), the school will flunk her just for not being there. The worst part? SHE doesn't care. Doesn't matter to her that I have received a truancy notice because she "forgot" to turn in the notes or that I could get fined/jail time for her "forgetfulness". It also doesn't matter that, should that happen, I lose my job and we lose the house and everything in it. As long as SHE is happy about it, the problem does not exist.

We are also going through the hair issue big time. The Abilify has caused severe hair loss and so now SHE insists on gluing extensions to bare scalp. Well, that is NOT going to make it grow back and will, in fact, make sure no hair grows in those places ever again. SHE will not wear a wig because of an incident at the school last year when some assish kids pulled the wig off a girl undergoing chemo and played keep-away with it in the middle of the lunch room (no teacher stopped it and the beetches were not disciplined because it was "all in fun"). But SHE is almost BALD!!! I see more scalp than hair, but she sees nothing but her extensions and thinks she looks good.

Also, she has put on ten pounds, which is bad for her frame. I took her for a physical and the doctor did blood work. He now wants her to get MORE work done--in the followup, he muttered something about how the thyroid results could not possibly be correct. I already think that is why she is putting on weight and her hair is falling out--the Abilify is destroying her health.

I was supposed to meet with her shrink this week, but he canceled the appointment at the last minute and now it will be almost two weeks before I can get him to do something concerning the meds. Meanwhile, if she has any problems making her head look presentable, she will not go to school. It is too late for home schooling this semester and I don't trust her to do it next semester. So...?

Right now, I am looking at a living room full of her crap, dragged out of her room in an effort to clean. Yes, you can see HER floor, but now I cannot maneuver anywhere else. She got insane with hair dye last night trying to make fake dreadlocks and there is now pink hair dye all over the bath stall, the sink, the floor, the toilet seat cover and every towel that was in there. It is also all over my sheets. When I took pictures of the mess, SHE attacked me and then had the nerve to get angry because I hit back.

And, the poop cherry on the crap cake? She, without asking me, invited one of her stray-dog friends to spend the rest of the weekend with us because her mom's boyfriend/roommate/whatever doesn't like her around. The girl's MOM told her to find somewhere to stay for the weekend and, of course, SHE volunteered our house--the one covered in her crap from one end to the other. We are also low on food, yet I am expected to feed this other kid. Even better? SHE has told the girl we are going to bring her along to the therapist appointment tonight. That means feeding both of them afterward. So, knowing the money situation, it means I do without. I gather I have already been "volunteered" to take them to the mall to hang out tomorrow. I don't even want this girl in my house to begin with. But SHE will not take "no" for an answer and I am not in the mood to be killed in my sleep over it.

This week, I had to put in some night shifts. Every night, SHE called with a crisis that meant I had to leave the crew I asked for to begin with doing the work while I went home to deal with whatever bull she cooked up. My boss pointed out that it was becoming an issue and that they were going to start documenting every incident where I had to leave because of an issue with HER. Then it would become disciplinary actions, followed by suspensions and finally dismissal. I just need to get through 2011 to keep my insurance for HER because she will never get coverage on her own. It is the only benefit worth sticking around for and she is doing her best to make sure I lose it. That's because it is something of mine SHE cannot steal, as she does so many other things (money, my laptop, electronics, health).

My metabolism is shot as it is, so not eating properly is putting me at risk for diabetes and other issues. My weight is at an all-time high because my body is hoarding calories. But, again, that matters not to HER because she knows she will get food (even as she tells anyone who listens that I "starve her to death"). Of course, when I drop dead from a stress heart attack, SHE thinks she is getting it all. Nope. Goes to a trust and she won't get a dime in principle--ever.