Bran, you have to live your life, not your daughter's life. You have spent 17 years (and more) raising this child, she has left under her own steam and it is time for you to now spend a lot of this emotional energy elsewhere in your life.
Of course she is your daughter, you love her, it is hurting - but you have a choice here (maybe less choice, since she removed herself and is thereby removing the choice you have to keep her home with you).
I'm not telling you to "pull yourself together" because that is totally inappropriate and not fair. However, when and where you can, do try to balance your emotional energies more evenly through the demands in your life. It is where you can start, anyway.
Think of your life and the demands on you as a pie graph. Where things are now, if you look at where your energy is going, a vast amount of it is peing poured out on your daughter. And it isn't achieving anything for her right now. Maybe in the past it did, all you can do now is rely on what you DID manage to do in the past and sit back and pray.
Now think bout another pie graph - the people in your life (including you) who need your energy expended on them. Your husband. Your son. Your mother. Your sister. You. And yes, your daughter. She still counts, wherever she has removed herself to. Mentally spread your energy evenly around tis pie graph.
Now compare the second pie graph to the first. The second one shows how it SHOULD be. The first shows how it IS.
Please believe me, if you can bring yourself to approach the second and move away from the first, you will not lose your daughter any faster. But you may hold closer to the others and salvage what has been recently damaged by all this turmoil. You may even still have some success with your daughter, but right now while she KNOWS you're pouring out all this energy towards her, she feels free to squander it.
It is when you begin to back away with your energy output towards her and spend it more effectively with those who currently value it, that maybe your daughter has a chance to take responsibility for herself, knowing that she can't rely on you always opening that door when she pounds for long enough, always forgiving her eventually and wanting to make it all go away - she has to learn that when she is an adult out in the cold, life is just not like that.
What I'm proposing here is a form of tough love, but a form where you can mentally balance yourself and the love you have for your family as a whole.
You need a simple image to keep in mind when you are dealing with all this - so if you need to, draw up the pie graphs I suggested on paper and colour them in. Stick them up somewhere where you will be frequently reminded (behind the toilet door is always a good place! It's the main learning centre in our house, where I was taught in school to stick up the French irregular verbs). And whenever the emotions surrounding your daughter begin to overwhelm you, visualise those pie graphs and the statement, "This will not drive her away any faster. It may even help bring her back, if I begin to expend my energy in a more balanced way."
You need to begin to see your life planning out ahead of you as a positive thing, and no longer have to lurch from crisis to crisis. Life can be good, even when dealing with this sort of nastiness. I know this sounds weird, but I have faced my own extreme crises at times and learned that there still can be joy. It's there - it just sometimes gets over-shadowed and you have to go looking for it. It IS there.
You can't change her. You have tried in every way imaginable, and even a few that many of us hadn't thought of. And it just hasn't been working. The more you try, the worse it is getting. You need to stop trying. For her sake, for your sake, for the sake of your family.
Hugs. Be good to yourself and go enjoy the break with your mother. Don't gamble too much at the casino - those places really scare me, the way they're set up to lure you in and make you forget the passage of time.
Above all, stop feeling guilty. It only drains the energy you so desperately need right now.
Marg
