Going round the mulberry bush

So, the life and times of step-daughter continue to bounce back and forth from doing well and not doing well.  Apparently while I was gone on my trip, there was a big confrontation of sorts with old roommate and things got stressful so I made plans to pick up this child and take her with me to visit oldest girl-child and grand baby and that would give us a lot of time to catch up.

I had heard rumors that step-daughter wasn’t doing well which was totally contrary to where she was at when we last met.  So, not sure what to expect I swing by and pick her up the other morning and I knew before she even got in the car that things were bad.

Step-daughter doesn’t necessarily realize this but she has this one pair of mirror sunglasses – straight out of some old cheesy cop movie from 20 years ago – that she wears when she is actively using drugs and doesn’t want me to “read” her eyes and figure out what is going on.  As I pulled up the side street where she is staying, she was out front on the sidewalk and these sunglasses were on and stayed on for the whole drive.

You know, my heart sank.  She does so well, then she sabotages it, then she kind of picks it all back up again, then someone else in her family sabotages it.  It’s not even one step forward and two steps back, it’s like this twisted merry-go-round that never, ever ends, just repeats the same track over and over and over again.

All the drama with ex-roommate is long over and step-daughter avoided talking about that like the plague.  What we did talk about was the fact that she quit work (she just stopped going) and has been sleeping in until 4 pm everyday and staying up all night online.  One would think that someone would say something but I guess not.  Not that that would really change things but hey, at least don’t pretend you don’t notice or that this is okay on any level.  This is not normal stuff.

She made it 16 days off dope this time.  While she’s smoking up again, she can’t afford to do it everyday now that she’s not living with her main supplier and not working so I guess that’s a good thing??

At one point, step-daughter was on the ‘teeter-totter’ and she could have gotten it together but she ran away and hid from the world.  She has continued this downwards spiral since.

Every single immediate family member has a serious mental illness that they all pretend they don’t have and refuse to get help for.  That’s all fine and dandy if you’re doing what you need to do to manage it.  Meds are not the be-all and end-all of mental health but just not doing anything at all doesn’t work either.  If she didn’t want things to be better then it would be different.  Middle child can’t hold down a job and has some serious issues but she is okay with that and has no motivation or inclination towards changing any of it.  As long as she is in a relationship, she couldn’t care less about anything else.  This child, not so much.  She desperately wants to go to post-secondary school and achieve very specific, realistic goals.

We are now at the point that I think her mental illness has taken over her ability to get her life together and the help she needs is far beyond what she can do on her own or even with my help.