Girls night

Girl’s night(mare)

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

We got past the first hurdle. We were supposed to get a snowstorm, somewhere between 4 and 6 inches. But beyond a foreboding sky, nothing happened besides a few snowflakes. That’s why living here we never cancel for what might be. Our girls night went on as planned.

I picked up my daughters, Angel and Arabella, and my son’s girlfriend Lexi. We went to a couple thrift stores. I didn’t find much. A couple days before I did some pre-shopping and found more. I was so convinced I was going to have to cancel, I decided to hit up a thrift store a couple days before to stave off total disappointment if I had to cancel.

Everything went well, at first. After we went to a couple thrift stores, we decided to go out to eat then call it a night. We were at the end of our meal when the trouble started. Arabella started talking about how the residential treatment facility we sent her to was a cult. She started to talk about this a couple weeks ago to me. She talked about how we should sue them because they stole our money. I told her that the DBT therapy program in essence was to reprogram disordered thinking. She told us the psychiatrist was the cult leader. The food there sucked. They were out to get her and she said the other girls in the program felt the same way. They used psychological torture and now she has PTSD from it.

The conversation was getting uncomfortable and Arabella wouldn’t let it go. Angel tried to change the conversation by thanking me for the meal and saying how she really liked her food. It’s a tactic I often use myself. Hey, how about that snowstorm we didn’t get? Except this time it didn’t work out too well. Arabella got angry and called her sister a bitch. She was sitting next to her sister and was loud and in her face. My heart started beating faster as the anxiety rushed in. Angel tried to diffuse the situation by not fighting back. Where was that waitress with the boxes for our food??? Arabella was still ranting as Angel hunted down the waitress for the boxes. We got out of there as quickly as we could. Things were going downhill fast.

I dropped Angel off at her house first. I was afraid she was going to be upset, and she was afraid I was upset. I talked to her a few brief minutes as I helped her carry her things into her house. I told her she handled her sister very well. She didn’t engage when her sister called her a bitch multiple times. I told her I was sorry it had to be like that with her sister. When Arabella is delusional, nothing can convince her otherwise. I try to validate her, but I don’t agree with her and I think she knows this. On the ride home, Arabella kept repeating how much Angel is a bitch and how she has PTSD from residential and her bad childhood.

After dropping Arabella off, I spoke to Lexi the rest of the ride home about Arabella since she has never seen her like that. I told her Arabella does not have PTSD but she thinks she does. We had a good conversation. The strange thing is that both Lexi and I do have PTSD from our childhoods. We can relate to each other with similar stories of trauma and triggers that no one else seems to understand. I want to help her with my own experiences, but I think she really needs professional help.

I feel upset that Arabella does not appreciate the sacrifice we made financially to get her residential treatment. I still think it helped her and probably saved her life. I will not agree they were out to get her.

But, in all honesty, I do feel some sense of relief in her accusations. She accused me of abusing, torturing, and starving her before. She even made those accusations against me while she was in residential, which being a mandatory reporter, the therapist shared she had to contact child protective services. It was devastating and anxiety provoking.

I know some people believed her by the way they treated me. If I didn’t know her, I would probably believe her too. Good thing she is obese because it gave less credibility to her starvation accusations. Being accused of doing things I never did…I can’t even describe to you the pain that caused me as a parent who tried everything in my power to help her. She caused me a lot more trauma than I ever caused her.

When she started the accusations against the residential treatment facility, she sounded paranoid and delusional. I saw the parallel between that and her accusations against me. No one in their right mind would believe a word she says. But she believes it and is adamant about it.

I think it will be awhile before we have another girl’s night.

The dear hunter

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

For the last couple of years, my husband and son went deer hunting. If they didn’t bring home a buck at least on the last day they would bring home a Christmas tree. Today we are getting our tree. No buck or doe though.

When the men leave for the big buck hunt, it is widows weekend for the ladies. Local strip clubs bring in the male strippers. I never went to see the male strippers nor do I plan on doing so. But for a couple of years a group of friends and I would go out to eat and dancing in a small town.

I remember one year in particular rather well. It was the year that one of our friends was pregnant (designated driver). We went out to eat at a supper club that had happy hour basically all night. While we were eating, I ran into some old friends of my parents. Only a week before my mom told me that her friend’s husband kissed her many years ago. Guess who I ran into? Yup, those friends. Awkward! Even though this happened decades ago, it was still new news to me.

Afterwards, we went out dancing. Even as a group of married women not looking for men, we are used to hearing the same old pick up lines. “Hey beautiful, how about I buy you a drink?” Ho hum. But that one night was different. I had a man my age approach me with a pick up line that I never heard before. It was something I was not prepared for. He said, “I heard that you are a singer and I happen to need a female lead singer in my band.” Hmm, now that was interesting.

He bought me a drink and we talked about his band. Then he started to tell me that he was a divorced divorce attorney and he could help me with that too if I was unhappy in my marriage. I assured him that I was happily married to a great guy. I did promise that I would check out his band and call him if I was interested in singing.

I remember it was a really cold night as we walked around to see other bands up the block. Some of my friends slipped and fell on the ice. Too bad he wasn’t “that” kind of lawyer. I almost walked into a telephone pole. I was too busy talking and laughing with the girls to watch where I was going. His group followed our group around. I think that the guy was hunting for woman or business that weekend. After checking out multiple locations, it was time to go home. I lived 45 minutes away. But there was one small problem. Our driver lost her keys somewhere that we had stopped over the night and it was getting to be bar time. It didn’t take long for the guy to offer me a ride home. How kind, funny that he didn’t seem too interested in helping us find the keys.

My friend eventually found her keys and got us all safely home that night. The next day I looked up the guy’s band. It probably would have been something that I would have liked to do and I could have done it. Even though I really, really, really wanted to be a singer in his band, I didn’t want to end up being a divorced lead singer in a band. The cost of following that dream was a price I was not willing to pay.