March is for milestones

March 18, 2013

March is the month of birthdays around here.  Well, two important birthdays.  Buddy-child and step-daughter both turned 19 a couple of weeks ago.  Their birthdays are 5 days apart.  It’s a big occasion in most of this country to turn 19 because that means you can drink legally and there’s usually some kind of celebration or another.

Buddy-child’s boyfriend took her out for a big fancy dinner where she had her first (legal) cocktail.  She has no idea what she had other than it was pink.  They came back here for cake where she blew out candles and opened presents.  Overall I think it was a nice birthday.  It’s probably not ever the same when you’re not with your ‘family’ but I guess we’re as much family as she’s ever had or likely to ever to get so that’s probably better than sitting somewhere by yourself.

Step-daughter had lots of plans that involved partying and drinking in bars.  Her mom and one of her mom’s friends took her out to one of the local bars for a night of celebration.  I know a lot of parents do that but there’s something weird about that when the relationship doesn’t have proper boundaries to start with.  It just seems wrong somehow.

The more time that passes, the farther apart these two girls lives become.

Buddy got her third university acceptance (go buddy!) and this is to the school she really, really wants to go to.  She’s excited and nervous and is ready to give her acceptance.  I told her to sit on it for a week just to get past the scared “what do I do” feeling before committing herself.  Her mind’s made up though.  Everything she does right now gets her one step closer to her goals.

Step-daughter is still not working and she’s not looking for work much either.  She’s committed to a life of drugs and drinking and not trying anymore.  She knows she needs medication to help her at this point because her anxiety and fears and OCD is completely out of control but she can’t quite bring herself to go to make an appointment and go to the doctors.  For a while she was on the fence and wanting a different life but now she’s turned away from it.  It kind of breaks my heart most days.  Everything she does keeps her from reaching her goals.

I wish I could make step-daughter come back and stay with me and somehow remove her bio-family from her life – just for a short while until she could get better but I know it will never happen.  Sometimes being a parent kind of sucks.

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Going round the mulberry bush

February 21, 2013 2 Comments

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.

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Jack and the magic beans

January 10, 2013 2 Comments

Step-daughter and I went out for a coffee date today.  She had texted me recently to say she wanted to weigh some pros and cons on a decision she was making so we set a date.  We haven’t been in contact much because her phone has been cut off.  I guess she hasn’t paid it for about three months and owes money she hasn’t been able to afford.  She only just got it not that long ago and this was her first attempt at managing her own account and her own bills.  She’s never done that before.  A bit of a steep learning curve.

Tonight I picked up a scared little kid.  It’s just so heart-breaking sometimes.

Step-daughter has come to the realization that she needs to move out and is going to move in with her dad for a little bit in an attempt to save some money and maybe straighten her head out some before she tries again.  She’s been not bothering to go to work, not bothering to pay her bills, and not bothering to work on any school work so that she can eventually get her grade 12 and go to post-secondary education.  It’s catching up to her and now she’s a nervous wreck and realizes she needs to get out.  If you’ll recall, she ran to her mom’s from my place and then ran to rent a room at a drug-addicted friend’s apartment from her mom’s.

There are a couple of things about step-daughter’s situation that are important but it’s too many to put in one post so we’ll start with this one.  Step-daughter has developed this bad habit shall we say, of finding the ‘magic bean’ and seeing that as the solution to all of her problems.  She was flunking out of school – her solution was that all she needed to do was clean her room and somehow that would magically make her do well in school because it would make her organized and responsible and she would magically do her homework.  Having problems living at her mom’s, all she needed to do was move into this apartment with her friend and she would magically save money, finish high school, get all kinds of cool things, have friends, be popular…  These are two examples but there have been many.  The problem is that while the solution in itself is not necessarily a bad one, it’s not going to work if she is not prepared to do the actual work parts that go with it.  You want to finish school, yes you probably should clean your room, get your stuff organized and give yourself a space to do school work but it won’t magically happen if you don’t actually study too.

I call it the Jack and the magic bean stalk solution to life.  You just trade your current life for the magic beans, throw them on the ground and close your eyes and poof, all kinds of things will just happen.

For the first time, step-daughter came to the realization herself that she was doing this when she was listening to herself talk.  That is a huge step.  Unfortunately, she is completely at a loss about what to do about some key things she should be doing but at least it’s a step in the right direction.  Needless to say, I’m all for her moving into her dad’s.  He works days, she works midnights, they’ll hardly see each other but that will work for those two.

As of today, she hadn’t smoked dope for 10 days.  That is a record for her.  I hope she manages to get her stuff moved into her dad’s before she falls off the wagon again.

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