Do you hear the subtle vocal stylings of Bananarama?
I know it has been a while, and after you read this, you will understand why.
My summer began with my husband being hospitalized for a week. He then came home for less than 48 hours before he was readmitted for another week. It was frustrating and confusing, and we wound up with few answers. Because he has Multiple Sclerosis and Ulcerative Colitis, he is considered “complicated,” and that is why a normally simple (yet excruciatingly painful) case of pancreatitis turned into such a long, drawn-out affair. He lost 30 pounds and is still slowly but surely regaining his strength.
During this time, my daughter was home from school, adjusting to medication for her diagnosis of major depression, anxiety, and mood issues. Her teachers would come to the house to teach her. This added to all of the stress that was already present with my husband’s health issues. I thought it wouldn’t be possible for me to take another item on my already full plate.
Back in January, my daughter asked if she could spend the summer with her father, who lives three states away. He has two young school-aged children with his new wife, and they hire a high schooler each summer to babysit. They offered to hire J so that she would make the money that they would have paid the person they would have hired. I agreed; it seemed like a nice opportunity for her to get to spend some time with them, and make some money at the same time. There were several underlying issues that I cannot discuss (as I posted a while back, I will not discuss my ex-husband here); in short, she felt that her presence there would be of help beyond the children.
J was receiving therapy from a psychologist and her medication was being monitored by a psychiatrist. My own depression took a major plummet during this time, but I didn’t want to up my own meds, choosing instead to manage with what I had. I do not regret this decision; it was hard, because I knew that a little higher dosage would really make me feel better. I needed to trust God and to move ahead, to allow myself to feel these feelings and learn to cope. J went back to school for her finals, packed her stuff, and went to her father’s house at the end of June, as planned.
They spent the first week of the summer in California to attend a wedding. When they returned home, J had a strange tone to her voice that I couldn’t quite place. A few days later, we were at my next-door neighbor’s house for their adorable son’s 5th birthday party. My husband wasn’t feeling well, and he went home to rest. At that point, he had only been out of the hospital for a few days, so I went home to check on him. I was battling depression at that point and needed a little break, too. There was a message on the machine from J’s father, asking me to call him. I thought this was unusual. Did she want to come home early? Maybe watching the kids was too much?
I called him back, and my world fell apart. She didn’t want to come home at all. She wanted to stay, and I was immediately threatened with court if I chose to deny her wishes.
She had decided several months earlier that she wanted to live with him, in her words: “The only way I can have a relationship with my father is to live with him.” (Incidentally, I don’t exactly consider this to be a compliment to him or his abilities/lack thereof to have a relationship with her.) She felt that her relationship with me was so strong that she could live there and things would simply stay the same between us. Had she come to me when she made this decision, perhaps they would have.
Quick backtrack: J has always been a very sweet girl, extremely strong willed, and stubborn. She would do whatever she had to do to get her own way. Her behavior was always excellent; she was respectful, funny, and a joy to be around. Any of her less-than-desirable qualities were accepted by me as being placed in her by God for some reason. Perhaps she would need them in the future; in any case, she was so well-behaved that it didn’t matter to me.
Unfortunately for sweet-little-old-accepting-me, these qualities came into play, and I felt like I was being repeatedly punched in the stomach. First, she told her psychologist that she wanted to move. Her psychologist told her to tell me. J said no, assuming that not only would I say no to her moving, but I would keep her from going for the summer. She then told her father, who was thrilled, and he got on board. She told all of her friends, her teachers, her bus driver…EVERYONE but me (and my husband and son). Her friends signed her yearbook with things like “I’ll miss you when you move to…” and she lied to my face, telling me that they were just confused. She had been lying to me repeatedly for months at this point, and as it goes in situations like these, hindsight became 20/20, and I saw all of the signs that had been pointing to this for the past few months.
Remember when I said she sounded strange? I had asked her several times if she was still planning to come home in August. She faked enthusiasm and assured me that she was. Something didn’t sound right to me…didn’t feel right.
So…I was left with no choice but to let her go. Going to court would mean fighting her, not her father. Even if I won, what good could that bring? She wanted to move. My heart broke as it never has before. In many ways, it felt worse than when my mother died. I had lost my baby, the little girl that I had raised on my own to the father whom she complained about constantly.
I lost waking her up in the morning and tucking her in at night. I lost the four years of high school that I used to sit in awe of, thinking of how soon she would be moving out of the house to go to college. After being there as she battled her illness, holding her through panic attacks, bending over backwards and balancing on that fine line between caring for someone and enabling, she wanted to move.
Had she come to me when she first decided this, I would have been sad, but I would have worked with her. We would have thrown her a “going away” party, cried a lot, but we wouldn’t have felt so cheated, so stupid, so taken advantage of. We wouldn’t have been so hurt. We would have hurt, but not felt so stabbed in the chest.
I fell apart. By the grace of God, I am coming back together a little every day. It is absolutely a time of mourning; I lost a lot in this. My husband and son share in my devastation.
J, on the other hand, is 14 and doesn’t see how much damage she did. She is now enjoying a honeymoon phase, and everything is wonderful. She is getting everything she ever wanted (in her eyes) and everything is fantastic.
In the process of losing physical custody of her (which is what had to happen; I still have joint legal custody, but those of you who understand how these things work know that this only means “If you don’t like what the physical custodial parent thinks, says, or does…take it to court”), I had to do a lot of legwork. Her father got the lawyer and made a few phone calls while I had to do all of the physical running around so that all of her records would get there on time for her to start school with the rest of the kids. I will never forget having to go to the high school she should have been attending to sign away her records. I got back into the car and lost it. I have cried so many tears and experienced pain and loss like no other.
When we first spoke after my phone conversation with her father, I told her I wouldn’t stand in her way, but I wanted two things. The first was frequent communication, and the second was that she attend church. Neither of these things have happened, and I can’t make them happen. All I do is pray. I call her and in her teenage Laa Laa Land, she forgets to call me back. She now has permission to do pretty much everything she wants, and she doesn’t need me. When I do speak with her, I am no longer a figure of authority; that too was stripped from me. I am her friend. My opinions don’t matter anymore. I barely count. She has a crush on an 18 year-old drug addict; her father blows it off, saying he “knows the family and the kid’s father wouldn’t let him date her.” Great.
My daughter started high school this week. I spoke with her on day one, when only freshmen were there. I called her yesterday…no call back. Called today…no call back. I’m waiting to have a relationship with someone who is too young to have a relationship.
I don’t know how to do this. Some days, the pain is too much to bear. I will see her for a weekend next month when she comes for my father’s wedding, again at Christmas, spring break next year, and part of next summer. I spent every day with her and now I barely see her. It’s killing me.
I also lost the child support we were living on. I got hired by an additional school, which will help, but financially I feel like we are drowning in debt and there is no way out. Just when we get a grip on things and are ready to really buckle down and pay it off, something happens…hospitalization…this…enough already. I count my blessings: I am employed, my husband can still work and has a great job…we have money coming in. But there is no extra. I count every penny and manage every dime. I worry about how things are going to get paid. It is constant stress, and I don’t see any way out. We are drowning in our own bad debt decisions mixed with our unavoidable debt decisions, and it all adds up to one giant weight smashing down on me 24/7. My husband doesn’t manage the money, so it doesn’t affect him as much as it does to me.
I research frugality and I do the best I can with what we have, but it’s so hard. Someone gave me money while my husband was in the hospital and I budgeted every dollar, honoring the gift that had been placed before me, but that is long gone. We cannot afford to live where we do and there is literally nowhere we can go; housing is too expensive. My husband cannot leave his job; it is too good, we need the excellent benefits it provides. We are stuck. Our house needs so much work, but we cannot afford to fix it. My husband is too weak to mow the lawn or weed the one bed of plants in our front yard. It looks really bad, our backyard is embarassing. But there is nothing that can be done. I don’t have time to fix any of this myself, between training for my new job and working my current job. I thank God for these jobs on a daily basis; they have truly contributed to the saving of my sanity, as have my wonderful family and friends.
I know we are not alone in our financial struggles. I praise God that we have paychecks coming in. We do not have collections people calling us because we are able to at least make the minimum payments on things. There are people who have it a whole lot worse, and I am grateful for what we have.
I recently learned that 75% of marriages in which one spouse is chronically ill end in divorce. I can understand this, because marriage is hard to begin with, and chronic illnesses make it worse. B and I struggle. He feels like crap most of the time, and his only outlet is, well, me. He is not physically abusive, but very difficult to live with. I don’t even have the energy to go into details right now. I’ll just say that my marriage is no relief from everything else; I love my husband, but he is among my biggest sources of stress.
A pity party sounds like a lovely idea, unfortunately I don’t have time for one. I state all of the above as facts; this is what happened this cruel summer, and continues to happen, and by the grace of God go I. Somehow, I will make it through this. Somehow.
