schizophrenia

Solving communication issues

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Last week Paul and I had our couples therapy appointment. I think we had a breakthrough regarding some of the communication issues we have been having.

What I need from Paul is to be relational. I want to know he feels the same way or has some of the same worries so I don’t feel alone in my suffering. Paul wants me to give him hope by telling him everything is going to be okay and offer encouragement. For the longest time, we have been giving each other what we would want for ourselves. That has proved to be a frustrating experience all around.

The second time Arabella went to jail I felt very fearful for her future. There is a myriad of feelings involved when your child is incarcerated. I have been feeling despair, hopelessness, anger, guilt, anxiety, uncertainty, shame, and fear. Nothing really associated with ‘positive’ feelings about any of this. Now I usually keep these feelings to myself and go into a nice dark corner to lick my wounds. But my husband has been rather distraught by my isolation so through therapy I resolved to tell him how I feel instead. He found he didn’t really like what I was feeling.

When I am feeling despair, his response is to trust in God and everything will be okay which usually makes me quite angry. What is wrong with me? Why does he seem to have this faith that I don’t? How am I supposed to get out of survival mode if all I am doing is trying to survive? Who is the person I was supposed to be if I didn’t have childhood trauma? Trusting? Trusting in God? How do I have faith when I feel if God exists he doesn’t really care about me? Maybe he doesn’t exist at all. Why does he allow so much suffering? Why do my prayers go unanswered? If I have already given control over to God, why is he choosing this for my life?

In therapy, I told Paul I really wanted him to try to be relational, like talking to a best friend. I don’t want him to fix, solve, or tell me everything is going to be okay. I want him to commiserate with me that sometimes life really fucking sucks. He has been making the effort. He said he also has doubts about God, feels despair about our daughter’s future, and questions why there is so much unnecessary suffering in this world. It made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

Paul wants me to give him hope and tell him everything will be okay. This has been a struggle for me because it doesn’t feel authentic. I don’t know if everything is going to be okay. Arabella might end up killing herself, hurting someone else, and being in and out of jail or mental health treatment centers the rest of her life. It’s very likely the life she will end up living. I think I will outlive my daughter. Where is the hope in that? I have been trying to offer up hope and encouragement even if I don’t believe it because that is what my husband needs.

So I guess in some ways it has been beneficial to have our lives fall apart so we are able to rebuild it into something better. There really hasn’t been much Paul and I haven’t been through in life and if we survive it, maybe we can help others.

I didn’t sign up for this..

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My daughter is still in jail. I think I am finally getting used to living in a constant state of uncertainty. I’m not sure when she is getting out. It could be next week. It could be a couple months.

This week Paul and I went to a support group for families who are dealing with family members with mental illness. Every single family there who has a mentally ill child Arabella’s age or older have or have had an incarcerated child. I found this to be shocking. We weren’t the only ones. Which makes me wonder how many mentally ill people are in the criminal justice system. And, how messed up is that? Because our child (and many others) is an adult, we could not get treatment for her unless she was a threat to herself or others. What a joke! And then, even if they hurt themselves or someone else, it is still hard to find treatment. Poor ratings from me for the broken mental health system.

My teenage adult daughter has been sitting in jail facing 3 felonies for the last couple weeks. Nothing new is happening with her case. She is just sitting there so she can’t come home and screw up her life some more. We got her a lawyer. We don’t want our daughter to be a convicted felon, we don’t want prison, we want mental health treatment. But her meds aren’t right. Although some are better than none, I guess. Both times she ended up in jail she was off her meds because she felt like she didn’t need them.

Talking to the other parents in the support group, I wonder if jail is just going to be a part of her life now. If it is, this will be the last time we get her a lawyer. We have spent so much money on her treatment already. Her two month stint in a residential treatment facility almost cost as much as a 4 year college. We’ve already paid the lawyer over $1,000. It isn’t fair to our other children and it isn’t fair to us because it is eating away from our retirement. Plus life goes on. We are paying her half of rent. We just found out she owes a lot of money for taxes because her online ‘modeling’ job didn’t take any money out.

I think my daughter is going to fail on probation. She is going to have to take her meds, be on time, have no contact with Will, and observe absolute sobriety. I would be a fool to think her prognosis is anything but poor. Plus, in the state she is in, she could harm herself or someone else all of which she has done before.

After she gets out of jail, Arabella is moving back home. It’s that or be homeless as she has nowhere else to go. We need to develop a safety plan because I’m not sure if I’m safe. My daughter is twice my size. She tried to strangle her boyfriend. What if she does that to me? I have to come to terms that my life could be in danger. Am I willing to risk that? I think I am prepared to die. I will probably have to keep my phone on me at all times and lock my bedroom door while I sleep at night. I will have to be aware at all times. Some of the parents in the support group got large dogs to alert and protect them.

My husband is gone a lot for work in the summer. At times he mentioned quitting his job so I’m not home alone. But I don’t want him to do that. Maybe we are worried for nothing. Maybe everything will be just fine. But we have to think about these things now. I don’t know if I will be able to call the police unless it is really bad. Growing up my mom tried to protect my autistic/schizophrenic brother at all costs. We had to protect Matt from the police when he attacked us or others. I grew up thinking calling the police was wrong. I just don’t know if I can do it. But I also think my mom didn’t handle things correctly. This has been triggering in so many ways.

I wish I could say I have been able to get it off my mind, but I can’t. If it is not front and center, it’s still percolating on the back burner. Some days are better than others. I’m starting to get used to it.

Back to jail

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I was half expecting Arabella to be at our house when I woke up Saturday morning. It was a blustery morning, the expected two inches of snow turned into over a foot of snowfall. Paul got up a few minutes before me and I asked him a question as I started making my coffee. He told me he needed to talk to me and I had better sit down. Not the best thing to hear right away in the morning. Paul said Will texted him to tell us our daughter got arrested again.

Friday night, Will and Arabella went to a show. I was worried about Arabella because she was extremely delusional for the past few days. I knew she was looking forward to going to the show she got tickets to for months. On Saturday, my plan was to talk to her about admitting herself into the hospital. I also thought it would fall on deaf ears just like us telling her she needed to take the diversion offered to her to dismiss her criminal charges. I had to try even if she got upset with me. But it was too late.

This is what I was able to piece together. Something that was said at the show set off Arabella and she got very upset. At the show, she was overwhelmed because she was collectively able to go into the minds of everyone there and feel all their pain. She began to talk very loudly during the show and Will told her to shut up. They left the show early. Arabella drove home and Will walked a couple miles home.

When Will got home he was very upset because they left the show early and he did not want to listen to Arabella preach to him about how she decoded the Bible. He tried to get Arabella to take her medicine but she refused. She grabbed him by the neck and started choking him. Then she held him face down on the floor and told him she was doing God’s will. He managed to get away and called 911.

Now my daughter is sitting in jail facing 3 felonies and 2 misdemeanor counts. At the time of her arrest, she was completely out of touch with reality for over 3 days. We tried to get her help but no one would do anything unless she hurt herself or someone else because she is an adult. Paul, Will, and I tried to file a petition for involuntary commitment but it was denied. Apparently when she was suicidal two week ago and the police were called that didn’t count because they had a safety plan in place for 24 hours. We detailed her week of delusions, didn’t count. We recounted her violence against Will which didn’t count because the police report didn’t say it was mental health related. Apparently being totally out of touch with reality, being suicidal, and choking someone isn’t enough to get someone committed. I have at least 5 people who would testify she needed help the week she was arrested.

I don’t know what it would take to prove my daughter has mental health issues. She is only 19 and was hospitalized 4 or 5 times in the psychiatric hospital, was in an outpatient program several months, went to a residential program for two months, went to the ER several times for delusions, burned through a dozen counselors, tried a dozen different medications, has self-harm scars on most of her body. We are not trying to say she is mentally ill to get her out of going to prison. She is mentally ill and needs help. At this point I don’t care if she goes to prison as long as she gets the treatment she needs.

I went back on my phone to find proof via text of her delusions. Her first suicide attempt was February 15, 2020. Two weeks before that her texts indicated her mental condition was starting to decline. I didn’t know that yet at the time but going back it was clear. Before then everything was good, everything was normal. I sat and cried for about 10 minutes going through all the old normal texts of friends and dances and pictures before the cutting. I wondered to myself what the kids are like in other families before they became schizophrenic. Like the day before tragedy happens, we never remembered the last normal meal when we were all together and everything was normal and fine.

We wonder how things went so terribly wrong. The mental health system is failing miserably. My daughter has had one steady psychiatrist for 4 months in the last 3 years. He was the doctor that said my daughter most likely has borderline with schizoaffective disorder with bipolar 2. Then he said he was retiring and there wasn’t anyone to take his place. Borderline! Bipolar! Schizophrenia! Alone those are hefty diagnoses. But combined and facing 3 felonies no one has to tell me her prognosis is poor. I live with the fear that someday I might outlive my daughter.

Right now we are hoping for a psych eval in jail and inpatient treatment. We could bail her out but I’m afraid she will kill herself. I am afraid she is going to go to her apartment and hurt Will. I’m afraid she might hurt me. I’m afraid she might run away. I’m afraid she might do something stupid and get herself into more trouble. There has been a lot to think about. It’s been one hell of a roller coaster ride. It’s been a very difficult process full of uncertainty. At least we were able to hire a lawyer and we’ll see how everything goes.

Gone

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The first indication there was something really wrong was when she came over in the middle of the night on Tuesday and knocked on our bedroom door waking us up. Arabella yelled outside the door that she needed to go to the ER. She was terrified she was starving to death. Her body was eating itself. Arabella is obese. No one in their right mind would think she was starving to death. She went to the ER. We tried to go back to sleep but didn’t have much luck.

Arabella came over very early Thursday morning because she had to tell me something. She told me that an old friend of ours who we haven’t seen in over 10 years raped her psychically while she was unconscious as a child. She could tell he was also raping his daughter (someone she never met) from looking at his Facebook pictures. She was ready to call CPS. She told her sister this and her sister said it wasn’t true and that she couldn’t ruin this nice man’s life by making false accusations.

Arabella then said that Angel was controlling everyone. Angel turned everyone against her except for the other family she moved in with for awhile. We were all deceived. But she also loves Angel because she has Stockholm Syndrome towards her. Angel could force her to laugh and smile. She could cause other people to hurt her.

Arabella told us she has Multiple Personality Disorder. She also has PTSD and when she does she has the ability to go into other people’s bodies and think their thoughts and feel their emotions. Through this she can understand other people’s lives.

Friday morning Arabella came over very early once again and excitedly stated she decoded the Bible. She understands it now. She talked animatedly about complex theological concepts sometimes hitting the mark, sometimes not so much. She said that Mary was raped. She would not allow us to speak. She said she was born again and is a new person. She didn’t feel like she was herself anymore.

Besides being out of touch with reality, I was very concerned at this point she was not sleeping or taking care of herself. She said sleep was something that mortals like me needed. My daughter was gone and there didn’t seem to be a single thing we could do about it because she is an adult. She is finally trusting me again and I was afraid any efforts on my part would break that trust and I would once again be a threat. Everything felt surreal. I can’t believe this is happening and I keep second guessing myself.

Later that afternoon, I just happened to look at my find friends to see when my husband was coming back for lunch. I noticed Arabella was at CPS. I tried to talk her out of reporting our old friend. I panicked and called their office. Angel also called their office several days before warning them that her mentally ill sister believes someone has been sexually assaulted but was not. She was also accusing other people of sexual assault whom she has never met because of her ability to go into the minds of others.

I think my daughter is schizophrenic. My brother is schizophrenic. My cousin is schizophrenic. Little did I know the worst was yet to come…

Dream triggers

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Last night I had a dream that I took 2-year-old Arabella to my parent’s house knowing everything I know now. For most families it probably wouldn’t be a nightmare, but for me it was. I didn’t feel she was safe around my dad without me and I had to go to the bathroom. I remember waking up with the knowledge that I had opened the door and once open it would be hard to shut all the way again.

It wasn’t the first time I felt this way in real life. My brother Matt heard voices that told him to hurt people, mainly little girls like me. He listened to those voices throughout my childhood and into my adult years up until he was medicated and those voices stopped.

In May of 1997 I graduated from college with a Bachelor’s degree in both human development and psychology with an emphasis in counseling. I was fresh out of college ready to change the world, or at the very least fix my family. In August I got married and by October I was pregnant. I applied for a couple jobs that I didn’t get. So I decided to continue to be a caregiver for my brother. I didn’t want to put my baby in daycare and I had zero family support. I was the family support for my family of origin and I was since I could remember.

Everything worked out well for awhile. I was able to care for my baby and Matt. Matt didn’t hurt babies. But then my baby grew up and I got pregnant with my second baby. Matt started obsessing about my daughter Angel. He asked what would happen if he twisted her arm or held her head under water in the bathtub. By the time my second baby was born I no longer felt it was safe so I stopped watching Matt.

I still had Matt be a part of my children’s life for big things like Christmas or birthday parties. It was on Angel’s 4th birthday when Matt attacked her in a room full of vigilant adults. With as many watchful and experienced eyes, we couldn’t stop it from happening. Afterwards, I told my mom Matt was not allowed around my children until they were big enough to defend themselves against a grown man.

A month later I was pregnant with my third child, a girl. I kept the sex of my child a secret because Matt was always more fixated on hurting girls than boys. My mom knew I was having a girl because if I wasn’t I would’ve told everyone. That was probably true. I was worried if I had a girl she would get hurt and if I had a boy he would turn out like Matt. I felt screwed either way.

Then the time came for me to have my third child. It was a scheduled C-section. I decided to have the baby later in the week so my husband wouldn’t have to work and could watch the other kids over the weekend while I was in the hospital. He had just started his own business which was the only means of supporting us financially so he couldn’t take time off. In those days, working out of the house was not yet an option.

My mom stayed overnight the night before then dropped the kids off at the hospital the following morning so she could take Matt to the dentist. She wasn’t going to help me further unless Matt could come along. I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for that. Less than a week after having a major surgery I was home alone taking care of a colicky newborn, a 2 year old, and a 4 year old.

For the next several years after the attack my mom fought back hard against my boundaries of no contact. I was constantly stressed out during my pregnancy and for years afterwards by her actions. My mom at times would randomly stop by just to have my kids wave to Matt from the window. She was constantly trying to get Matt back in our lives again. She was always offering up help if I would just accept Matt in again.

Last week Paul and I were meeting with our couples therapist. She talked about trauma and how it could start even in the womb. This therapist also saw my mom and both of my daughters. She told me she thought I experienced trauma in utero. Maybe there is something I don’t know. But all I could think about is that I am to blame for Arabella’s mental illness. I am to blame for her being a difficult baby because all of the stress hormones surging through me while I was pregnant. I know I shouldn’t think that way but I can’t help it. Never mind the smorgasbord of mental illness coursing through my husband’s and my genetics we already knew about and the random smattering from an unknown bio dad.

After several years, I opened the door. I allowed Matt over for a brief period of time during Christmas at a party I was hosting because yes I was hosting all the family parties in my 20’s. That was okay, but other things were not? My brother Luke had some of the same issues I had with my mom and brother Matt.

The dream awakened all of this within me. But now it also has to do with my dad. All I could think about is one of the images Angel told me about that she found on my dad’s computer. It was a photo of a naked little girl crying. That was one of the tamer pictures but maybe the one that hit me the hardest for some reason. I keep imaging that little girl as myself, the picture of what my inner child must look like alone, vulnerable, and crying. By the time these images were found and my daughter went to the police, my kids were almost fully grown. Luke, however, had two little girls the same age as the images of the children. It felt like it was starting all over again but this time instead of being Matt it is my dad. All of our children with the exception of Arabella have not seen or spoken to my dad in over three years.

I’m not sure if I will ever get over the trauma. I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my life stuck in other people’s problems, people who should of been my rock, comfort, and support which were not.

8 days

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Another dream, this time where the past meets the present. My best friend, not even invited. Not by my side as the matron of honor. Never to see or talk to again. I had a dream she was not invited to my daughter’s wedding. How could she be when she was not invited to mine?

I felt the pain of those left behind. Before it was Shelly. She was supposed to be my matron of honor. I was the maid of honor in her wedding. But along the way life happened and screwed it all up. You see, Shelly needed a job and my brother Matt needed a teacher’s aide in his special ed classroom. Maybe that’s where things went wrong. Matt was physically violent and at the time he was a full sized adult.

Matt didn’t like school much and had the tendency to hurt someone when he didn’t want to do school work which was quite often. One day after attacking Shelly at school, the police were called. The police came to school, handcuffed my brother, put him in the back of the squad car, and took him to jail. It was something my mom always warned us about. Watch Matt carefully he is an adult now and if he hurts someone he could get locked away forever. I haven’t been able to get over my fear of the police. Every time I hear a siren my heart races.

My mom was sick with fear for Matt. He was facing assault charges which were eventually dropped because he was incompetent to stand trial. I never spoke to my childhood best friend again. My mom flippantly said, “Oh well, you were going separate ways anyways.” I was going to college and she was working with my brother. But I wanted the choice.

My plan was to go to school to become a counselor. Then I was going to fix my family. That was when I was young and dumb enough to think I could. I already felt the weight and responsibility. If I only knew Matt was going to hurt someone before he did. I could have stopped it. It’s my fault he attacked someone because I was not vigilant enough. If I believed it was my fault, I also believed I could fix it.

I felt guilty on my wedding day because I didn’t want Matt there. I didn’t want Matt to hurt someone. When I got married, Matt was going through some serious health issues and my parents thought Matt could die which intensified my guilt. They got a room for him in the hotel we had our reception at. After the ceremony, which he didn’t attend, we had the photographer come to the room to take wedding photos with Matt. We were gone so long some of the guests chided us about what took us so long as we were coming down from the hotel room.

Now it’s my dad who is not invited to the wedding. I can’t say I blame my daughter for not wanting him there, but it’s still painful. What if people ask where he is? He was pretty sick a month ago and in my mind I thought maybe he would die and free me from the shame he brought upon us. It’s a horrible thing to wish for. As if I will ever be free from the pain he caused me. My counselor said if asked I could tell people he is not well enough to go. If further asked, I could tell them I will talk to them about it later. I am good with the plan. It’s the last thing I want to talk about. It’s my mom I worry about. She has a tendency to overshare and play the victim making it all about her when the focus should be on someone else.

Call me a slow learner, but I just figured out this year I can’t fix people. In fact, I don’t have any control at all. I thought I could fix my family of origin but they are way too beyond broken to be put back together. I can’t even fix myself. I tried to fix my husband when he was drinking too much. I felt like it was my fault. I was responsible for him. It was my job to fix him. How easily it was to jump back into my old role. At times I even thought he was drinking just to hurt me. He has been seeing a counselor too which has been helpful, but I think it will be something he will always struggle with. At times I can’t blame him. If drinking took away my pain, there wouldn’t be enough I couldn’t drink.

He thought he could fix me too. He thought he could be my knight in shining armor. He thought he could bring me out of the dark spaces I hide within myself. He tried to make me happy so he could fix my depression. Why didn’t my fear and anxiety go away? Didn’t I love him? Didn’t I trust him? Wasn’t he something to live for? Couldn’t I just stop feeling that way? Couldn’t he just stop drinking??

We couldn’t fix our parents, both of us having parents with addiction/mental health issues. We couldn’t fix each other. We can’t fix our kids who all show signs of addictiveness and/or familial mental health struggles to some degree. That was a hard lesson to learn. There is nothing like having to watch someone you love hurting. I wanted to do anything I could to take the pain away from them. It’s harder as a parent, especially being the mom, because there is a huge sense of responsibility to fix your children. How often is the finger pointed at the parents when the kids struggle? (I can tell you with a daughter who has Borderline, it’s a lot even from professionals that should know better). It’s even easier to blame myself.

I guess if there is any silver lining in this, we have been waging war against these demons for a long enough time to know how to fight them in the best way possible. It wasn’t the first time someone I was close to wasn’t invited or wasn’t well enough to go to a wedding. My best friend wasn’t invited to my wedding and I never saw her again. My own grandpa didn’t go to my wedding because he wasn’t well enough. I can only control what I can control. It’s not easy, but there is some peace in knowing when to let go.

Dreary days

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Today is the fourth dreary and rainy (or some form of precipitation) day in a row. I’m feeling it to the deepest part of my core; the cold, the dark, being locked inside not able to get out and find the light. There is so much trouble in the world, so much trouble in the people that surround me. It never seems to end. It is heavy, denser than the fog.

Yesterday Paul and I stopped at my parent’s house before going out to eat with Matt for his birthday. It is something I have to prepare myself for like wearing a winter coat on a cold day even if it looks like it could be sunny and warm. I will be triggered. It will be hard. Sometimes I ask Arabella what it is like living with my parents. From the sounds of it, not much has changed. My dad roams the house in his underwear. My mom cleans up his messes.

Then there is Matt. Matt can not do complex tasks like washing the dishes, but he can do simple tasks. When Matt is home, my dad has Matt wait on him hand and foot. Matt go get me a cookie. Matt get me some water. Matt hand me my remote. My mom tells my dad that Matt is not his servant. Then mom gives Matt permission to wait on my dad to feel like she is in control. I don’t miss the games, the power struggle between my parents.

The visit home was uncomfortable. Paul said he really doesn’t want to go back again. I don’t either. My parents complain Arabella is messy. She is, yet they fail to notice the own mess they live in. My mom wants Arabella to leave, even if it means moving to an apartment with a boyfriend she has been dating a few months. Before my dad’s crime, my mom would’ve been aghast to the idea. But now there aren’t any morals anymore.

They are all hard to live with. But what’s even harder is to see some of their very own struggles manifested within my children.

That’s one thing we never thought of before having kids. I just looked at the autism in my brother; the violence, the voices in his head telling him to hurt someone. Maybe we didn’t examine our parents enough; their relationships, their modeling, their own mental health. Then add a random bio dad to the smorgasbord of genetic maelstrom. All I can say, as if it’s any consolation, at least what we are seeing passed down is not entirely foreign to us.

It is sad. Sometimes I feel like crying with the rain as it pours down.

One of the most important things I’ve learned over the last couple of years is acceptance. That doesn’t mean I will accept poor behavior. It means it is what it is. I am not going to be able to change things. An apple is an apple even if I want it to be an orange. It also means being mindful of triggers. A visit to my parents house may cause me to feel depressed, anxious, or even angry. If I can prepare myself in advance for the possibility of those feelings, it doesn’t hit me so hard.

Today, though, I just feel tired and blah. Under the weather I guess. It seems hard to focus and form thoughts into words that make any sense right now. This post did not go where I was expecting it to go, but that is okay. I can accept that as well, I guess.

There is no warm up in sight. The weather forecasters are saying it should be warm and sunny, spring like on April 1st. What a joke!

Navigating life

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I can’t remember a time when I didn’t struggle with depression, anxiety, insomnia, and nightmares.

Why should I expect that to change? The likelihood of no longer struggling with these things is about as likely as me waking up one morning with schizophrenia. It’s probably not going to happen. I was thinking about these things while I laid awake the other night.

Some things have changed. I started taking medicine prescribed by my doctor to help me sleep at night. It works better than nothing. I still struggle with insomnia and nightmares. The insomnia part has improved, but the nightmares have not.

Do you ever have dreams where you are falling and you wake up before you hit the bottom? I don’t wake up anymore until I’m dead. Sounds strange, right? In the last week, I’ve had two dreams where I was shot point blank, heard the sound of gunfire, and woke up after I died in my dreams. The nightmares just seem to go on forever. In one of the nightmares I was shot while I was cleaning my house. I mean, seriously??

Then I got to thinking, people really don’t change either. Most of my childhood I believed my autistic/schizophrenic brother would become normal again. If only we could find the right doctor, the right diet, the right medication. I was waiting and hoping for this. God was going to heal my brother. I didn’t know what this was going to look like. Would he be able to suddenly read and write like me or was he going to start life over in his toddler years. I thought it was going to happen, but it never did.

When my own daughter started having mental health struggles a couple years back, I thought the same thing. If only I found the right doctor, the right medication, the right inpatient program, outpatient program, etc.. Surely an expensive residential treatment facility would do the trick. But it didn’t cure her. It didn’t take her mental illness away. She is not the same person she was before. She will never be that way again. She may decide to end her life someday and I have to accept that and love her where she is at. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

After my dad committed his crime, there was a period of time where I was under the impression that he accepted the Lord and was a changed person. I wanted so badly to believe that was true. I thought maybe he would finally be the kind of dad I always wanted. But guess what? Nothing changed.

If I pray more and have enough faith, then my anxiety will go away. I used to believe that too. Maybe something was wrong with me because when I prayed for my struggles to go away, they didn’t. I don’t believe people anymore when they tell me those kind of things. It sounds like a gimmick to me. God is bigger than that. I don’t see God in that way anymore. I think faith is a wonderful coping mechanism. But I think people do more harm than good by telling others if they do certain things then their sibling, their child, their parent, or they will not struggle anymore.

Miracles do happen, but they are truly one in a million. I’m better off accepting that the way things are will probably be the way things will always be. If I look at it that way, my life makes a lot more sense. Look at the patterns of behavior. It’s very simplistic, but for me it was a real aha moment in the middle of the night. People don’t change. They may grow and mature over time like a baby turns into an old lady. But it’s still the same person with the same strengths and weaknesses with a little more wisdom and mindfulness on how to navigate life.

Honoring the dishonorable

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Next week my dad will be celebrating his 75th birthday. It should be a grand celebration surrounded by his children and grandchildren. There should be a cake with candles a blazing, birthday cards, thoughtful gifts, and laughter. But there won’t be any of that.

On his birthday, Paul and I will be going to a Wisconsin Dells waterpark with our children and their significant others for an extended weekend. I planned it that way so I wouldn’t have to think about my dad’s birthday and how a relationship between a father and daughter should be. It’s painful I won’t be celebrating with him. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Maybe I’ll call him. I tried to find a card to avoid an awkward conversation, but all the cards talk about love, admiration, honor, and respect. My dad doesn’t bring to mind any of those things.

On a side note, I totally think there is a market out there for shitty dad’s greeting cards. Who wants the sappy love stuff when their dad is a deadbeat? Or it could be for anyone for that matter, an annoying mother-in-law. It could cover all the major holidays so an awkward phone call isn’t necessary so I can feel like a good person although the recipient is a total ass. But I digress…

I talked to my brother Luke yesterday. His daughter Eva has a swim meet near our house and he was wondering if they could stay with us the weekend of our dad’s birthday. I told them they could stay at our house even though we will be out of town. We talked about our dad’s birthday. Luke said he would be driving by our parents house on our dad’s birthday. He wondered if he should stop by, then decided not to.

Luke said our dad never taught him anything. The only time my dad and him ever spent alone together was when my dad was whipping his ass. But beyond all of that, when my daughter Angel found porn on my dad’s computer and turned it over to the police it changed things for all of us. My brother’s daughters are the same age as some of the children in the images. My brother told my dad if he ever wants to see his grandchildren again, he needed to do several things. I can’t remember what all the conditions were. One for sure is that my dad needed to seek counseling. He didn’t do anything my brother asked him to do. Should he go back on that because it’s our dad’s 75th birthday?

His daughters have not seen my dad for over two years now. He said that once he opens that door it will be hard to close it again. I totally agree. We had the same issue with our brother Matt. Matt heard voices to hurt and/or kill our children. I did not allow contact between my brother and children when they were little after he attacked my daughter. Christmas was so hard. My mom would drop off the gifts then leave. The kids would cry. We had to be very careful. That was before Matt went to a group home and was on anti-psychotic meds.

So, yeah, how lucky I’ve been to have a brother and dad we didn’t/don’t want our kids around. I told my brother to just keep driving. I told him not to tell his children it’s grandpa’s birthday. They don’t understand the situation. Because they don’t, they might think their dad is in the wrong for ignoring his dad on his birthday when their dad has been everything our dad never was. For that I am thankful.

We both feel a tremendous amount of guilt for not spending time with our dad on his birthday because we still want to honor our parents. We want a relationship that will never be. Sadly, our dad made a lot of bad choices and we have to accept that and the pain that comes with it. We have to do things in the best interests to protect our children. It’s not the way we want things to be, but that’s the way it is.

So, in recognition of our dad, my brother and I became the parent he never was. I’m going to spend his birthday celebrating that with my own family and my brother will keep on driving.

Gratitude week 106

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment
  1. Having a mild case of COVID.
  2. My husband’s homemade soup.
  3. Having an electric blanket when I was feeling sick and during a wind chill advisory.
  4. Having a girl’s night with Angel and Alex’s girlfriend Lexi. We went thrifting and out to eat for Indian food. This is the first time we hung out with Alex’s girlfriend without him. (I also named her on this blog). I try to treat all of my kid’s significant others as if they might be a part of the family some day.
  5. I found a pretty light blue sweater at the thrift store that had the original price tag of $89 on it. I also found an album for my record player by Anne Murray.
  6. My brother Matt had a scan done on his liver and everything is stable. (Several years ago his liver numbers were not good and he was taken off his anti-psychotic med because it is hard on his liver. He started hearing voices again to kill my niece Eva. He was put back on his medication and will need to be on it for the rest of his life at the price of his liver. So we are grateful that as of right now his liver is good).
  7. I had a good appointment with my doctor yesterday. I told her again how much my joints were bothering me and she gave me a referral to see a rheumatoid doctor. Unfortunately, they are booked up until the middle of May. But I am hoping they can give me some answers about the joint pain I have been having.
  8. I don’t know how it happened, but I lost 12 lbs. being sick. Maybe I will be able to fit into some of my old clothes?
  9. We decided not to scrap our whole vacation altogether when we decided to cancel our trip to Puerto Rico.
  10. We got a great deal to go to Las Vegas and will be staying at the Venetian. Our friends and I have already checked Nevada off our bucket lists, but my husband has never been there.