It has been awhile since I have posted,(again) been super busy with my grands, it is a whole new ballgame parenting traumatized children. I have a lot to learn, as we navigate this journey and map out triggers, overcome explosive episodes and tirades, all attributed to children’s brain development ravaged by violence and the dark inconsistencies of addicted parents.
It is a rough road, but my Hoku has helped every step of the way. The boys had an extensive evaluation recently, which should reveal strengths and weaknesses and help us help them. Sister is due to go for a simpler testing as she is younger.
On another note, their mother has popped up again, this time we weren’t home and she broke into the house to “shower because I had my period.” Huh. I made a police report. That turned my stomach, but, breaking and entering is unacceptable. She is still on the run from her probation violation, bench warrant over her head. Sigh.
Rain was in the hospital again for cellulitis on the same leg. She waited until she was so feverishly ill with the infection that she couldn’t move, to seek help. Spent three days in the hospital before calling any of us. I visited her and was aghast at her swollen, reddened blistered lower leg. I said all of the things that anyone of us would say, especially that she did not deserve mistreatment from her (once again) violent boyfriend, she could use this hospital stay as a way to get well and clean and get off the streets, how much we all love her, encouraged her to stay for the full treatment.
On my way to visit yesterday, got a call from the nurse.
She left AMA.
Sigh.
I drove down the street looking for her, mostly knowing that if I found her I could not force her to go back.
I am not giving up hope, but am again bracing for awful possibilities. I know, that is polar opposite, still having hope but preparing for the worst. But, I feel that I have to have some kind of shield of the stark reality of it all, for my own sanity.
I found myself rewinding the tapes wondering what I could have done differently, but I did not dwell there. I’ve visited that “if I did or didn’t do this” scenario too many times over these many years.
Didn’t cause it, can’t control or cure it.
I confess, I feel like an emotional zombie at times, or is it unemotional? Is it that I am learning to grieve each crazy situation differently? Am I fooling myself into thinking that I will be fine? Is this acceptance? It’s too soon to tell as I brush aside the thousands of worries having two meth addicted daughters brings. Who am I kidding? Am I brushing them aside or are they brewing underneath the surface waiting to explode into a worry storm, a bomb cyclone, a freaking emotional breakdown, a visit to looney toons with my eyeballs bulging out.
Okay breath Leafy, breath.
What can I do?
Nothing.
Write it out.
Get it out of my system, that nothing can be done frustration of seeing loved ones slowly kill themselves with drugs. Watching their personalities change into Gollum like characters from the Lord of the Rings, morphing into unrecognizable street people always searching for their “precious” next fix. Willing to literally lose life or limb for their unconventional “freedom”.
Willing to leave their three beautiful children.
Who by the way are trying desperately to overcome the trauma inflicted on them throughout their lives by their parents drug use and domestic violence. Then to be left with paternal grandparents who abused and humiliated them. The audacity of their experiences spewing over into my home with yelling and swearing, fights, tightened muscles, clenched jaws and furrowed brows bursting into uncontrollable rage against a past they had no control over. It’s called “re-enactment” a child's way of replaying history, which traumatized them, put them in perpetual flight or fright mode, but.........they feel strange in a calm home.
I am stuck in the middle as they each seem to take on their parents violent outbursts, one sounding just like his mother, the older, his father. That sends me backwards remembering how chaotic my home was, the many TRO’s, then violations, the craziness.
I have to become the therapeutic voice in all of this, remain calm, figure out different coping strategies, try to understand the mechanism behind the madness, avoid triggers, find out how to help them process it all and learn to be peaceable.
It’s like I’m caught on this giant terror go round, a ferris wheel of horrible things repeating themselves.
So, can I just stand on a mountaintop and scream to the universe a gigantic primordial WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
Then comes the voice of my Dad an echoing response to an age old child’s outburst of “LIFE IS NOT FAIR!!!!” To which he replies in ghosted memory “Who said life was fair, Leafy.”
I swallow it down and go to work, fix booboos and comfort children who have somewhat normal lives. Then go home to my three beloved hooligans and hope that we can have a peaceful night.
One day.
My granddaughter looks so much like her mother. Same mannerisms. Same smile. Same goofiness.
I can only try to to do my best to give her love and direction to seek her potential. Part of me sees a bright future, part of me also braces for challenges to come. My grandsons, so handsome and angry. Will we be able to reach them in time?
I’m exhausted!
There, I wrote it out. Thanks to anyone reading along. Yes, I am going a bit cuckoo, but who wouldn’t under the circumstances. Sometimes I feel like the lieutenant in the old Pink Panther movie with the steadily increasing facial twitches (on the inside of me) my face doesn’t twitch.
But my soul does.
I have a quote from Shakespeare on my desk
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er fraught heart and bids it break”.
So here I am, back, giving sorrow words. I can’t afford for my heart to break, I have three grands to raise and hopefully, break this cycle of madness. That is no easy feat, but they have no other family fit to raise them.
And I love them.
And, so it goes.
Love to all
Leafy
