I am struggling so hard. And it’s interesting to be able to so fully understand the difference between pain, grieving, stress, and just pure hopeless depression and misery. My life now is the worst thing that I have ever experienced, and it is all based around one little girl’s struggles. I take an anti-depressant every day not to be happy, not to feel pleasure, not to laugh and smile, but not to actually die.
This is not an exaggeration. What I am living now is worse than my teenage years struggling to get through my own trauma. It is worse than the confusion and nihilism of my early 20s. It’s worse than the year I got divorced, got fired, and stopped speaking to my mother and two best friends because they were toxic forces in my life. It is worse than the month my boyfriend left me, and my step-mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and my father had a heart attack. Because all of those things were awful, heart-wrenching, PAINFUL, soul-bruising things. But none of them entirely removed any ability to feel joy in any individual moment. None of them entirely removed my hope that I could EVER be happy or feel fulfilled. None of them made me absolutely loathe myself.
Since Thanksgiving our house has just been struggling SO MUCH. And I hate myself SO MUCH for feeling so much frustration with her for making everyone else’s life so hard. This is the difference between parenting with attachment and parenting without. X2 is a REAL TYRANT right now, three year old tantrums, has decided she just isn’t potty trained anymore and now wears diapers again or goes on the floor, has started imitating X3’s dissociative tantrums for attention, and is otherwise a challenging, strong, intense, (but wonderful) three year old. But I only feel overwhelmed by her when I’m already tapped out by X3. In fact, the moments of joy I DO feel are all around X2.
Which is awful in a different way, honestly.
Parents are struggling right now, every single one, and especially the ones I am closest to – most of us had children later in life, after making plans and goals for how to parent, and creating a support system, and a lifestyle where we would be able to parent while retaining our sense of selves and feelings of accomplishment other than just raising another generation. And this pandemic hit and everyone sacrificed but there is a REALLY SERIOUS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “cannot do the things we want, and cannot be close to our loved ones and sadness and isolation and wanting to live life every differently” and “locked in the house with complete hopelessness and inability to take joy in anything at all and a sense of self-loathing”. I know lots of parents who are not in the second category, but everyone I know in the second category is a parent.
I wonder every day if we should have been prevented from adopting X3. Whether the state should have taken a cold hard look and said “nope. You are simply not capable. Your well is not deep enough, your heart is not big enough, your patience is certainly not enough, and you literally CANNOT do what needs to be done to help this child heal.”
When we adopted her, she had been living with us for 14 months. MORE THAN A YEAR. She was only 6, we had had her for 1/5 of her life. It feels like that is enough time to know if you can make that sort of commitment. And it had been a HARD YEAR. But it had a very slow slope towards progress, we could see and feel and chart growth, and change, and attachment. There was a feeling of hope – that our family was growing and would BE a family. We love her so much.
And then this year. And the last month. It’s just fucking regression after regression after regression WITH NO BREAKS. NO SPACE. NO HOPE. We still love her so much. But we hate every single day living with her right now.
My stomach hurts every day. My jaws hurt from grinding my teeth; I clench my jaw so hard in my sleep that I wake myself up with the pain; and I have headaches and pain running into my shoulders. I have nightmares all night every night that I am working on things that are late – I am doing bad work, I am endlessly trying to catch up, I am letting down my colleagues, people are DISAPPOINTED in both me and my work, I HAVE FAILED. I wake up more exhausted in the morning than I feel when I go to sleep – of course, going to sleep is ALSO hard, I just replay all the ways I fucked up parenting that day, and how there is no chance that the next day will be anything but miserable, so I am also not getting enough sleep. I have acid reflux so badly (standing, sitting, laying down, any position) that I was drinking baking soda multiple times per day – until I researched and learned you aren’t supposed to do that EITHER. My chest hurts so much that I keep researching if I’m having a heart attack, or being worried I have Covid. Nope, just overwhelming misery/stress/anxiety. I’m behind at work ALWAYS because I stare into space without moving. I cry anytime I slow down and try to think or be present and mindful, unless it is cuddling or playing with X2.
I always believed we are responsible to change own lives not stew in misery. I honestly believed I could make just about anything happen. I have entirely changed my life, started over, built it up, in different circumstances. And there is not a fucking thing I can do to fix this child who is dragging this family into hell. I used to look at the first of the year, and even the first of every month, and often the first day of a week as a new chance, the start of something new, and think, “ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN!” and I used that belief, that feeling, to MAKE it happen. I can’t remember the last time I felt even a spark of hope.
X3’s therapist is full of great ideas of the MORE we could give to X3. How much MORE we could love and hold and cherish this person who is making us insane. How we can sit with her and hug her and calm her when she rages more at us. Who literally SCREAMS every second of the day, with either joy or rage. Who argues with every. single. word. that comes out of our mouths. Who cannot follow any rules or guidelines. Who is kind in her heart, but 100% thoughtless in every action, from running into everything and knocking it over and breaking it, to waking everyone up throughout the night and every morning, to stomping with every footstep. Who loves the feeling of power and control, so tells everyone ELSE what to do every second, but can’t follow any rule herself – not even rules to not be inappropriate with the dog, an actual living being. Who screams “I NEED HELP” any time she is faced with a rule, a consequence, a correction, a learning moment, but then absolutely REFUSES to do ANY of the 10,001 various calming technique she has been taught over the last 2.5 years, even with an adult sitting there helping her. Who screams “I NEED A HUG HELP ME” WHILE YOU ARE FUCKING HUGGING HER WHICH YOU ALREADY DO NOT WANT TO BE DOING ANYWAY SO WHY ARE YOU IF SHE ACTUALLY CANNOT REMEMBER IT WHILE IT IS HAPPENING?
I SOUND LIKE A BITCH. I am a bitch. I hate myself every second of every day. I regret the choice I made, because if I can’t help her, then all I did was fuck up my own life. Every time her therapist says “what could help?” we say “someone to come take this kid and give us a break.” That is NOT available. She tells us great ways to touch and love and care for the person who is making us want to die.
We have a case manager for X3, she gets us referrals to doctors, psychiatrists, etc. every time she asks “does anyone have any ideas for how to help?” NO. WE NEED A BREAK FROM HER. That is it. That doesn’t exist. We cannot breath.
They have ideas for how WE can be perfect parents, never yell, always demonstrate calm loving parenting, never escalate, always show how much you absolutely love this child and how wonderful and amazing she is. Oh! Most recent idea “you could sleep with her every night”. SHE IS FUCKING 7 and those nighttime hours are the ONLY RELIEF WE GET (when she isn’t awake and yelling for us). Also, WE DID SLEEP WITH HER EVERY NIGHT FOR FIVE MONTHS. WE FUCKING DID THIS WORK. She literally DOES NOT REMEMBER IT – she whines about how we never slept with her and that’s not fair. Apparently, it did fucking nothing to entirely disregard our marriage, give her every second of our lives and attention, including even our nighttime hours, but HEY! Maybe we should do it AGAIN!
WE HAVE DONE IT. EVERY SINGLE THING THEY SAY TO DO, WE HAVE DONE IT FOR TWO AND HALF YEARS. 1/3 of her life. And nothing we have done has helped reprogram her brain. And now, we have been sucked dry by her needs, with absolutely nothing left to give, and she acts just like she did in the houses where she was being abused and neglected (to be fair – she doesn’t actually purposely destroy our house like she did their – well except for throwing that rock through the window during the summer). WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT? Look, I know the neuroscience. I know her brain was beyond fucked up by her biological parents. And I know that the time in foster care kept on breaking her brain. I KNOW THAT. But if nothing we do actually helps, if she can’t EVER feel safe, if her brain cannot be reprogrammed by literal YEARS OF SAFETY AND CONSTANT CARE, if she can’t learn to actually do the work to calm herself and move forward, AGAIN, what is the POINT?
We need a break from this child, because all we feel every second is ground down into pulp with no hope and no joy.
We try and try and try. We went to the cabin for Thanksgiving. SHE ALWAYS LOVES THE CABIN! She was so excited to go, she spent A WEEK telling every person in her class, they were emailing us she had to stop talking about it because it was too much! It was the worst week we have EVER had at the cabin. On Thanksgiving day she had so many dissociative episodes she literally screamed for 1/2 of half her waking hours.
When she does this she won’t accept anything from my partner – so it’s ALL ME soothing, calming, holding. Hour. After hour. After hour. Note: she also does not do this IF I AM NOT THERE! So it’s a special treat, that we can experience MORE AND MORE because I’m always around because there is a fucking pandemic and we are all in our homes forever (those of us that are responsible citizens).
After I finally dosed her with melatonin and just left her sobbing in bed until she finally slept, I honestly thought about how it would feel to just walk into the freezing lake I could see so temptingly out the window and let the calm, quiet, water close over my head. FYI I WOULD NEVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT – it’s selfish and horrible to everyone you leave behind and I AM NOT A FUCKING QUITTER I would NEVER. But I know passive ideology perfectly well. And I DID immediately reach out, and was immediately supported.
Then she did it again the next day. And then the next day. And then the fourth day in a row. And then, because we had been videoing the fits because we thought she might be having seizures, or that her therapist would need to help us figure out the best way to manage a full episode, we figured out 1/2 the time SHE WAS FUCKING FAKING IT for the attention. We (amazingly calmly and without ever yelling or even speaking with a mad voice) called her out on it and that we knew she was faking it and it was not ok and those actions hurt the family – as a result, she scared HERSELF so badly she went into a true dissociative episode for 45 more minutes. I FUCKING HATE MY LIFE.
There has not been even one day in the last month that has not been miserable. That has not used every single ounce of self-restraint we have – and sometimes we lose it. I screamed the house down the other day. I did. I lost it at everyone, at X3, at my partner, at myself. (Not at X2). Then I apologized to everyone. Then I hugged my kid that I cannot stand being around and told her how much I love her, and how lucky we are to be her parents, and how we would never ever let her go, and would always keep her safe. Of course, I’m sure she is retraumized because I have proven that I don’t love her and can’t be trusted not lose my temper AFTER BEING PUSHED NON-STOP FOR HOURS AND HOURS AND DAYS AND DAYS and that screaming moment bought me six more months of regression in which I have to be PERFECT EVERY SINGLE SECOND or I fuck her up more, while having every joy drained from the world. Happy fucking holidays to all of us.
