Saturday evening, we went to church. After church, we went to Walmart. She and Cody (her bio brother) were both bored with Walmart and irritated at having to be there. He gets like that sometimes when he would rather be other places, and normally deals with it by just going to a bench somewhere or to the electronics dept until it's time to go. Usually, it's no big deal, and really wasn't a big deal Saturday, but when he and Emily are together, they tend to feed off of each other and it feels kinda' like they're teaming up or something.
After Walmart, we were driving home and her Mom texted me asking if Emily was ok because she was sending a lot of angry emails to her. I asked Emily and she brushed me off with an "I'm fine". I called her out on it because she wasn't being consistent. She was telling her mother one thing and me another. She got immediately angry. I pressed her because she's been taught that she can't run from the difficult conversations. She shut down and said that she wasn't going to talk to me. She made comments about us taking everything away from her and voluntarily gave me her phone back. She said she was fine meaning she wasn't going to do anything, but she was angry.
During the conversation with her mother, we discovered that Emily had been trying to manipulate a situation and get permission to be talking to a friend in San Antonio. She was telling me that her Mom said she would be able to talk to her, when her Mom said she would definitely not be able to talk to her. Emily got a bit more angry with that being uncovered.
Once we were home, she went straight to her bed. After a little bit, she got up to use the restroom and I followed her. There are no sharp objects in her room, so I wasn't concerned about her being in there in the dark in her bed. She wouldn't speak to me or even acknowledge me, so I followed her back to her room. I was not comfortable with her being alone at this point at all. I am a little fuzzy on the order of things, but she was very weepy and dramatically crying. She kept telling me to take her to the place where she feels safe. She told me over and over to take her back there. She wouldn't tell me the name of the Seay Center for some reason. I felt like she was trying to control the conversation in any way she could by trying to force me to say it first. Every so often, she would try to curl up in a ball to go to sleep and I wouldn't let her. I told her she couldn't do that until we got done with our situation. She can't just check out. It made her angrier and angrier. At one point, I physically had to sit her back up. I talked to her Dad about this because I don't want anything physical with her, but she simply cannot ignore things and check out. He said to dump ice water on her when she layed back down. So I did. She stayed sitting up, but kept telling me to take her to where she felt safe. I explained to her that I don't have the authority to put her in there and her Dad was at work. She got angrier and angrier and ended up throwing things at me and kicking me. She threw her lamp against the wall and broke the light bulb. She ended up picking up glass and cutting herself. I know she simply did this because she couldn't get me to do what she wanted. I couldn't take the glass away from her without hurting her or me, so I called the police. She calmed herself down once she knew they were coming and even got up and changed her clothes. She has never gotten physical with violence like that before, and I really felt like she was just trying to take it to whatever extreme she could so she was in control of the situation. At that point, I felt like she had backed me into a power struggle.
Once the police came and her Dad came home from work, the police transported her to Green Oaks for the night. We decided that we did not want her to go back to the Seay Center, if for no other reason than that she doesn't need to have the power to call the shots like that. She had to go in a squad car because we needed to be sure she couldn't flip out on the drive down there. The policeman wouldn't take her unless she wore handcuffs, so it wasn't really a pleasant ride for her.
Green Oaks discharged her Sunday afternoon to us. She came home and apologized to me. We have had a talk and a few tears and hugs. She has been a little clingy to me since then, seeming to look for assurances that she can still get affection from me and a little bit of security. She has even asked to sleep with me tonight. I've reassured her that she is loved and nothing will change that. I also have told her that those things aren't her, they are the result of the decisions she makes to dwell on the wrong thoughts. She says she understands that.
We really believe that even with this happening this weekend, we're still definitely headed in the right direction. You helped me realize that as she adjusts to the security here, she will have more and more things uncovered to deal with and that's ok. They all need to be aired out and taken care of. I believe that these instances will be fewer and farther between as we keep plowing along.
Also, we decided to take anything out of her room that could be used to chunk at somebody or that she could use to hurt herself. We had kinda' stayed with the sharp object rule, but this went beyond that. She basically has clothes, her bed and a few stuffed animals. She has her journal and can write in it whenever she wants, but will have to come ask me for a pen and then give it back. She escalated things with getting physical, and for us to know she's safe in her room, we felt like that was our option.
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