She's baaaaaaaaaaack...

My daughter, the one that we kicked out of the house 4 weeks ago, is back home.  My fabulous father (insert sarcasm here) couldn't deal with the drug use and crap and tossed her out. 

I spent some time with my therapist today, chatting about the issue and what I should do about it.  We have given her chance after chance to deal with the issues at hand, and she repeatedly takes advantage of our love and kindness and ends up in the same place she always is - our bad side.

I know there is more to her, there must be a chemical or biological issue.  Neither of my other two kids are as oppositional, defiant, combative or rude as her.  She can't hold down a job, doesn't go to class, and has no respect for anyone else but herself.

So, she's going to sleep on the couch tonight; we've told her that having a place in this home is a priviledge that is earned, not owed.  In the morning, we will go to child and family services to chat about some family support systems that we can implement to make sure she is successful this time.  She will need to keep up with her AADAC appointments, go regularly for individual and family counselling, and partake in the behavioral clinic at the hospital.  We will be performing random drug tests so that we know she is clean.  She will not have keys to my house until I know I can trust her. 

We have told her very clearly that there will be a zero-tolerance for attitude, deceit, drugs, alcohol and skipping school. 

We will see what the coming weeks hold, and whether or not she is still in our home.  We will not be held hostage in our home ever, ever again.

3 - 1 - 1 +1 = 2

It looks as though that even with the excitement we've had the last two weeks since tossing out middle daughter out of the house, we may have a taker for the empty bedroom.  It seems our eldest wants to move back to Calgary, back into our house, and go to school down the road from us.

I have mixed emotions about this.  Firstly, I was really warming up to the idea of only having one child living at home.  That would mean the grocery bill would go down, the water bill, and the stress.  We were down to our last 5 years until we became empty nesters.  On the other hand, she does seem really excited to come home, and her little sister missed her the last 2-1/2 years, and the program at the university here would be a much better fit for her, given her learning disability and anxiety issues.

We would need to set some ground rules, of course, considering she's an adult now, and the idea of consequences as a teen is a bit old for her now.  We will have to lay out clear expectations.  But will she follow them?  Will she be respectful of our home, our time, our concerns?

There are alot of trust issues that run deep with her and my husband and I.  She would have to agree to stick to counselling, school and find a job.  There would be a zero tolerance for lies.  Will she be able to deal with that?

I guess time will tell...

Hello?? Is anybody out there??

I know this is a new blog, and there is nobody in the world reading this yet, and for the most part, I'm okay with that. I never intended this to be a big deal, just a way to get some thoughts and feelings out of my head and down permanently so that I can reflect.

But today I could really use someone, anyone, to just say, "you're doing the best you can".  I want to die.  I hate my life.  I hate being a mom.  I wish my children were never born.

I regret not having a mother when I was growing up that - in the precise words of my 14 year old daughter - "cared too much" and had taught me the consequences of premarital sex.  Maybe then, I wouldn't have been pregnant at 17 and not knowing what to do.  Looking back, my now husband and I had only been dating a few months, and didn't really knew what laid ahead.  Knowing what I know now, I would have aborted that baby. 

Nothing I do is ever good enough, I always seem to care too much, be too concerned about their safety, want too much info about what they're doing, who they'll be with, etc.  I always thought that was what a good parent was supposed to look like.  My parents never asked questions, and I ran rampant.  Now, in the age of internet and Facebook, my kids find it offensive that I am curious enough to know what is on their profile pages so that they aren't being stalked by some creepy internet predator.  They think I should be providing the basic necessities of life, and that's it. 

That, to me, says I don't care about the welfare of my kids, especially considering they're all girls.  My 18 year old thought it was okay to go out on New Year's Eve and text me at 2:30 am to tell me she "was too drunk to come home".  I then had to track her down at her boyfriend's house at 7pm because I was worried that I hadn't heard from her all day.  She saw nothing wrong with it.

What is wrong with this generation that they don't recognize genuine concern and respect?  Do they live in such an electronic age with email, Facebook and text messaging that they don't see when someone is just looking out for their best interests and safety?

Where did I go wrong?

She Who Casts the First Stone...

We sent my eldest daughter to live in Toronto when she was 16-1/2.  She was going through some issues that my husband and I were not qualified to deal with.  She has an anxiety disorder, was extremely depressed, and was cutting.

She was always a little 'off' as a child.  Looking back into her nursery and preschool report cards, the teacher always had things to say about her like, "she is not meeting her social growth", "tends to be reclusive and shy", and "needs to work on relationships".  We just thought she was a shy little girl, but these tendencies turned into something much bigger as she grew. 

Some call this phase 'EMO'.  She wore all black, wanted to die her hair purple, slept alot.  When I was growing up, it was called depression.  We took her to psychologists, tried to get her the medication she needed, but nothing seemed to help.  When she began to skip school regularly, and fell from an honor roll student in an advanced placement program to failing, we had to make the decision best for her.

My sister-in-law is a psychologist, nutritionist and many other things I can't even remember.  She has spent alot of time in university classrooms.  She was the one person that we knew could help our daughter work through the issues professionally, on a daily basis, and under the guise of a family member. 

Our daughter was understandibly angry for about six months.  And the fact that she was pregnant when she left - unbeknownst to us - only made things worse.  She was about 6 weeks pregnant when we put her on the plane that Saturday morning.  A phone call from my sister-in-law a month later indicated that she hadn't had her menstrual period since she got there.  We asked her to take her for a test.

She had an abortion.  At 16.  She was 12 weeks pregnant.  It happened so quickly that we weren't able to get out there to be with her when it was done.  I'm sure she feels like we let her down, and even though she's an adult now, we never have really spoken about it.

When my father-in-law died this year, I went out for the week of the funeral.  I was sitting in my in-law's living room, when one of my sister-in-law's friends turned to me and said, "well, it's so nice that she has another mother now." (of my daughter).  If I were any where else, other than that very living room where all the mourners were sitting, I would have ripped every wiry black hair out of her head with my bare hands. 

I very politely responded, "She only has one mother, remember that.  She is very lucky to have an aunt who cared enough for her to help us out when we needed her, and alot of families would never go to the extent she has to help us, but she only has - and will ever have - one mother".  It was like a kick in the gut that said, "you're an incompetent mother, and should never have had children".

But seeing her now, at almost 19, she has grown into an almost-confident, beautiful young woman, who (I think) knows her family loves her, and missed her during the last two years she was away.  She didn't get this way just in the last two years, I tell myself.  The rearing we did when she was growing up, before she was 16 must have laid some sort of a foundation for who she is today. 

We'll see where that black haired malicious woman is when I'm proudly walking my daughter down the aisle when she is married, or where she is when I'm holding my grandchildren on my lap.  Incompetent is a very strong word.  People should learn to label that lightly.

For Better and For Worse...

When we were married, I remember hearing the whole 'for better, for worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health' thing, but never really thought about what it would mean to me almost 20 years later.  In our up and down 20 years, we've been through the full gammet.

My hubby wasn't always sick, but the last 10 years have taken it's toll.  For years, he had a thriving contracting company, making more than enough money to provide for his family.  We lived in a beautiful home, with a cleaning lady to clean my toilets, and a nanny to help with the kids.  I always had money when I was in university, which was a rarity for a full-time student.  And we would take vacations twice a year.  We lived a charmed life.

Then he started to get sick.  The dibilitating form of arthritis he has kicked in when he was about 33.  Very quickly, each of his joints on his hands swelled up the size of crabapples, and his spine began collapsing.  He has lost about 3 inches in height now, and can't even close his hands over a golf club.  He's always had higher than normal blood pressure, but we always thought it was managed.  We found out the hard way that he also had hypothyroidism, which was the cause of the increased blood pressure.  He had a heart attack at 41.

Since then, he's been on blood pressure and thyroid medication daily, and has days he can't walk up the stairs to bed.  He's had to close down his business, and because he never knew anything else, does retail sales just to feel like he's contributing to the financial responsibility of our family.

So, in the true spirit of 'sickness or health', I have had to pick up the slack on our finances and take responsibility of the income, bills, and expenses.  Thank goodness for good company benefits, or we'd be hooped.  His medication runs about $700 per month, and his income is barely enough to cover the rent.  We had to sell our house that we loved so much, pretty much giving it away.  The money we made from the sale paid off some bills that had been lacking since the heart attack, and we had about $2000 left.

He can't help with the housework, and we can't afford the cleaning lady or nanny anymore.  I do it all myself.  I work the 50 hour week, then come home nightly to do the shopping, cooking, laundry and cleaning.  The kids groan when I ask them to help out and they feel like I'm forcing them into slavery.  So, to save the fights, I just do it all myself.  It's easier.

I sit back and wonder, if I had known when I was married, that I would get the sicker - poorer - worse scenario, would I have gone through with it?

What Was I Thinking?

So, here I am.  I've been married almost 20 years, we have three teenage daughters who drive me nuts, and I'm back in therapy because I feel like I'm suffocating on a daily basis.  I ask myself, "what was I thinking?".  Did I really think that with my broken, abusive, hatred-filled past that I could actually become a contribution to society, a loving mother, wife, and friend to anyone in this world?  I have never learned how to be a mother.  My mother was certainly not a role model for motherhood, or being a wife, for that matter. 

My poor husband... he loves me dearly, and I feel like I let him down. 

We sent our eldest daughter away for school at 16 because we couldn't deal with the lies, the sneakiness, the deception.  It turned out that she was pregnant when we put her on a plane, and she ended up having an abortion a few weeks later.  Alone.  I wasn't even there to hold her hand through it.  I also wasn't there to see her graduate, or to help her on her first day of university.  I've abandoned her, or at least I feel like I've abandoned her.  We really don't have much of a relationship to this day, we're cordial, she comes to visit at the holidays, we text eachother now and again, but that's really where it stops. 

I've never been the "love and hugs" mom.  I never learned how to be.  My middle daughter is very much the physical one, loves hugs and gets angry if someone refuses to give her one.  She is also the most troubled.  She needs a whole set of blog posts for me to tell you about her, so I won't say much now.  We kicked her out of the house almost two weeks ago, and she's now living with my father.  Great, huh?

My youngest daughter is my soccer star.  We've seen what the lack of organized activities has done to the other two, and have forced her to stick it out with what she's good at.  She made a premiere tier II team this year, and she loves it.  Let's hope we've figured it out by now that we don't deal with the same crap as we did with the other two.

Once, when we were in family counselling, the therapist had me fill out a parenting profile questionnare.  One of the questions was, "If you could re-do your life over, would you choose to have children?".  I answered No.  Is that bad?  Does that make me a bad mother?  Is it wrong to admit that I am selfish and wish I had never given birth to these ungrateful, deceitful things that suck the life out of me on a daily basis? 

I feel like I'm suffocating every single day.

Monte the Monster

When I left home, "easier" turned out to be the boyfriend that beat the crap out of me daily because of my clothing, the way I looked at someone, or when he wanted sex and I wouldn't succumb to his needs.

Monte (name not changed to protect him, because he doesn't deserve that respect) was your typical Saskatchewan redneck boy. He drove a big pickup truck with big tires. He was the tough guy with the cute girlfriend (me) and I would never, ever, ever disrespect him; not in private and definitely not in public.

I'm not even sure HOW we ended up dating.  I vaguely remember one of my best friends dating his cousin.  I was dating the sweetest, most thoughtful, respectful boy at the time, Brad. Brad bought me earrings for Christmas the first year we were dating. Who does that at 15?  I do remember that every time my friend would be out with Monte's cousin, I would always be tagging along, because she "didn't want to be the only girl there".  So being the good friend, I tagged along.  After a few parties with Monte, he went to my then-boyfriend's work and told him that if he came near me again, he'd kill him.  Nice guy, huh?

Brad tried on a few occasions to see me, and he ended up having a beat up car because of it.  We're still in touch to this day, and have chatted about the details of our "forced break-up", but there's alot of hurt still.  But that is a whole other blog posting.

Monte started out as a nice guy.  That's how these kind of guys "rope you in".  They open doors for you, take you out to eat, buy you things.  And once you're hooked, they strike like a cobra eats a mouse.  At first, it was a stern, controlling attitude.  He told me who to hang out with, who I could associate with at school, what I could do in my spare time, and it escalated.  He began driving me to and from school each day to see what I was wearing.  If it was something that didn't make me look absolutely perfect, I got a slap and was told to go back into my apartment and change.  One time he slapped me so hard, I cracked the window behind me when my head hit it.  Then he punched me in the gut for breaking the window.

The controlling got worse as our "relationship" progressed.  He would drive out to the country where nobody would hear my screams and sodomize me, using hair gel as a lubricant, in the cab of his pickup truck.  Bleeding, crying and with a red face from being shoved up against the window, he would finish his job and toss me aside.  He got off on the tears. And if I cried too loud, he would slap me on the back of the head to shut me up.  I got real good at stiffling my tears as he had his way with me.

We went to a party once, where my friend and his cousin were going, too.  Another friend of Monte's was there, too.  I remember thinking, "good, there's going to be a lot of people, so maybe he won't hurt me tonight".  But Monte had plans.  When my friend was passed out from too much alcohol, Monte, his cousin and his friend took me to a wooded area, and Monte held me down so that his cousin and friend could take their turns at me.  Then he finished me up himself.  They left me in the trees after they were done and went back to the party. 

Everyone always asks me, "why didn't you leave him?".  Until you've experienced it first-hand, you have no idea how hard it really is.  I would avoid his calls for days, locking the doors of my apartment, hoping he would just go away.  But he never did.  He would sweet-talk his way into the apartment and kick the door of my apartment in, and grab me by the hair and smash my face into the walls.  He would push me to the ground and kick me repeatedly.  Then he would force me down and rape me.  Nobody left Monte.  I could leave when he was done with me. 

One time, when he was working in Peace River, Alberta, he brought me with him.  His father got wind that I wanted to leave him, and held me down on the ground like an animal with his boot on my throat and put a shotgun to my head.  He told me that Monte loved me and that if I were to break his heart, he would hunt me down like an animal and blow my head off.  That's motivation enough to just put up with it, don't you think? 

The police never did anything, either.  They would pull him off me at parties, as he was kicking and punching me, and all they ever did was throw him in the drunk tank for the night.  Then I would be in for a real beating the next day, because he spent the night in jail.

I graduated from high school on a Friday night.  By Sunday morning, I was on an airplane to Toronto.  It's the only thing I could do to get away from him.  He came looking for me, beating my location out of my friend.  Thank g_d, by that point, I was seeing my now husband, and he was able to scare Monte off.  It's been almost 20 years now, and I have never heard from him again.

His father beat his mother, too.  And his sister found a loving husband that beat her too.  It is a cycle in that family that will never end.  I'm told he has a family now, a little girl.  You have to sit back and wonder what that will be like for her, living in that hell all her life, watching her mother be abused emotionally, physically and sexually.  My friend ended up having his child the year I left.  It's hard to look at this beautiful girl and think she was a product of Monte forcing my friend to have sex with him.  I only hope that bad blood doesn't flow in her viens, and that she turns out to be a successful, strong, independent young woman.

Monte's cousin died in a drunk driving accident about 10 years ago.  I received a phone call from my cousin, the only person that helped me patch walls and clean up blood, telling me that Monte and his cousin were in an accident.  My first question was, "is he dead?"; wishing, hoping for some justice.  Monte was fine. What a shame.