Summer Visit

We have decided to leave it up to Emily's therapist as to whether or not she goes to visit her mom next week. Is it selfish of me to kind of hope she can go? I think I need a chance to miss her a little bit.

What Are We Supposed To Do?

That is not written in upset or anguish. I won't go there. I just don't know what to do with her. She just told me that she cut again. Last night. I also caught her having used Codys Facebook to try to find her friends and boyfriend. I know she wants to go back to the first hospital, but I just don't want her to. Davids sleeping, so I can't talk to him.

My mother

I can't believe I haven't written all of this down.

I am not speaking to my mother.  Well, she's not speaking to me, I guess.  I don't know.  I don't understand her at all.  Well, I guess that's not true.  I understand her better than most people do honestly.  I think I see more than my dad if you wanna get real.

The very first weekend that Emily had been in the first hospital and she was out on outpatient stuff for the weekend, they kept Josh for me while we went to visit friends out of town.  We were planning to leave on Friday evening after the kids got out of school, but since David was off, and Emily was going to be home for the weekend, we decided to stay home that Friday night and just leave Saturday morning.  I didn't feel comfortable taking both Emily and Joshua with me.  I needed to be able to have a place for both of them.  I certainly couldn't leave Emily anywhere, so Mom and Dad said Josh could spend the night with them.  The next day was going to be Mother's Day.

On Saturday morning, I took him over and he was so very excited.  Emily and Jake stayed in the car.  I walked in with Josh and got him settled.  On my way out, Mom was coming back from the van, having talked with Jacob.  He had gotten out to talk to her and hadn't gotten back in yet.  I asked her if she had spoken to Emily and she started telling me that Emily was "doing stupid" and she didn't talk to "stupid".  I got upset and told her that she didn't need to be cruel about it and she said she wasn't going to talk to her at all.  I was very, very upset.  If Joshua hadn't been so very excited about staying and I would have crushed him, I would have gone back in and pulled him out with me.  I probably should have anyway, but didn't see a way to do it without breaking his heart.

The next morning, we headed back to Mom's pretty early to get Josh.  Jacob was reading a book and ready to go home.  Emily was sleeping.  I went in to get Joshua alone.  He of course, didn't want to leave, but I got his stuff and him headed out to the car.  Mom asked where the other two kids were and why I didn't bring them in.  What?  That just didn't make sense.  I told her I wouldn't bring Emily in her house with the way she was treating her.  It wasn't an option.  She started asking me to just "listen to her for a minute".  I told her no, I wouldn't.  I didn't want to hear anything out of her mouth except an apology.  I was not going to listen to her excuse her behavior with some explanation.  I've done that so many times and let things go.  My Dad was telling me that I was making a mistake, overreacting and being disrespectful to her.  I told him that no, I wasn't making a mistake or overreacting and I was not being disrespectful, but drawing a boundary line that I would not make the mistake of making a fuzzy line again.  I should have done it years ago and didn't.

We left.  I didn't talk to them again until a couple of days before my graduation.  I called Dad to see if they were still coming and he said he had planned to call me that day.  They came and she didn't even speak to me.  She acknowledged me and acknowledged Emily, but not with speaking to us.  After the graduation was over, Karleigh was asking to go out to lunch.  Mom said no, she didn't feel well and was going home.  She went outside without another word and Dad huffed and followed.  A while later, Dad came back in and asked me if he could take us to lunch.  I asked if he was sure and he said he was.  We went to lunch, but she didn't speak to me at all.

It was that night that Emily cut again and ended up back at the Center.

I have seen them on two more occasions.  The first was Allison's graduation.  She didn't speak to me.  The second was her house for my grandparents' 60th anniversary dinner.  I couldn't exactly miss that, and had to take Emily with me, but we had Connie and Rosie with us.  It wasn't too bad since the whole entire family, including Granny Franny was there.  She didn't speak to me again.

I sent her a Happy Birthday text on her birthday and she said thank you.

That's been about it.  It's sad, but I'm not upset or angry anymore at all.  Just sad.  I feel so isolated sometimes and I know that has some to do with it.  I can't talk about anything to them without being criticized.  I mentioned to Dad that we were going to wait to do our 3rd year of school and he was really negative and said we wouldn't go if we didn't go now.  How is he supposed to know what the Lord has planned for us?  It's all just sad.  So sad.

Ugh.

I am so tired of Cody's attitude.  I just cannot understand why he is like he is.  It is infuriating.  I can't even put it into words.

I saw on his Facebook where he was discussing with his mother about moving back down there.  She is dangling a new house and music oriented school in front of him.  He told her he would talk to us about it but hasn't yet.  I believe if he goes it will be pretty-much a huge mistake.  He has no idea what he would be getting in to.  And Emily.  It would totally mess things up for her.  Josh wouldn't be near as close to him.  He just has no idea.  I'm thinking, though, that since he hasn't brought it up to us, he may have not decided to go.  Jacob said he spoke to him about it and all he could really do was stay neutral.  Jacob is a good kid to do that.  

Sometimes I daydream about only having Josh and Jacob here.  I know that's selfish and not what I really want.  I usually squash them pretty quick when I start down that path.  I know the dangers of renewing my mind to a way of thinking.  I know it would be horrible for both of them, and especially David.  It would be basically sending them to their destruction.  And I do love them.  It is so very hard to walk this out.  So hard.  And I have nobody to talk with about it.  It just comes out as frustrated griping.  And I don't feel like anybody really even cares.

Their mother called me the other day to ask what had happened with Emily going to the hospital this weekend.  I told her about it and all that had occurred in a little more detail.  She asked me if they were going to do any psychological testing on her.  I very nearly came through the phone.  It makes me so angry that she wants a label for her.  I told her that there is nothing wrong with Emily.  She was having a temper tantrum because she didn't get her way and that was the truth of it.  She was testing boundaries and trying to manipulate and at her age can go to quite the extremes.  As we have been seeing.  But it boils down to no more than a temper tantrum.  Truly and honestly.  And I do believe she has some issues to work through.  So do I.  So does everybody.  Emily hasn't been given firm boundaries to operate within and now that she has them, she has to test them.  And she is.  That's the bottom line.  Her mother was silent after that.  I don't think that's the end of that conversation, though.  It is not the first time she's asked about that. Or the second, third, fourth or countless more.

A letter to Emily's therapist

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.

Another Hospital

We just took Emily to another hospital. Well, actually, she rode with our town's finest. Hard to swallow. She had a difficult night, followed by getting physical with me, followed by the cops coming, followed by the emts coming, followed by a new facility. What's next?

Thoughts

We are talking about putting 3rd year of school on hold. I had a very hard time with the idea of it last night, but its sounding more reasonable as we go along. Emily doesn't need to be alone in the mornings. David wants to work full time and see the kids more. Can't blame him there at all. And honestly, homeschooling two kids and going to school while running the house sounds exhausting. Completely. And I wanna be more present at home. I want to see the boys off in the mornings and be able to be with Emily and Josh all morning. Our finances would certainly be in better shape. I would have a lot more freedom and could take better care of our house. We would also be free to be available to our church. We are supposed to become care pastors and that's another responsability on Davids plate. Logically speaking, it makes more sense. I am going to be waiting on the Lord for confirmation. I know He will give it of course.