Blues4U
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I have no clue why I am compelled to write this, let alone why I would ever post it on a public internet forum where I have only actually met a handful of the members-Maybe it's guilt, maybe it's self pity, maybe it's wishful thinking and that our story will help somebody in some way-
I guess I am writing this with the hopes that it will be sort of a public service announcement for the masses. I will give a brief personal history of my life prior to being married at age 25, then I will get into the details of my life post marriage and the beginning of our family-
My parents got divorced when I was around 4-not exactly sure when, and it really doesnt matter. They should have never been married as they were oil and water. My father was a mean S.O.B. as a young man and my mother wasnt much better. He was a wife beater, she was an antagonist/war monger that could possible drive a priest to give her a beatingAs you can see, this is not a match made in heaven.
There were a lot of gaps in my family life that didnt make sense as a kid, but it was all I knew and didnt start to figure things out until I was an adult.
My dad wasnt much of a dad to me, as he is one of the most selfish humans I have known. He was never physically mean to me, as I truly only remember getting 2, maybe 3 spankings from him my entire childhood, and frankly, I deserved them all, and then some.
My mom seemed like a good enough parent on the surface, she worked hard, most times multiple jobs, and many of those at nightmostly because my father never paid any child support. My mom did use me as a weapon with my dad, and with most of my family, it just took me being an adult before I figured out the rest of the family deal. Between the age of 4 and 9, I cannot count how many houses I lived in and different schools I attended. I literally mean I cannot remember them all. I do remember telling a friend that when I was 22 I remembered 22 different houses I lived in, and that wasnt all of them, just the ones I remembered. That in its on right is pretty screwed up.
Looking back, my mother was always at war with somebody in her or my family. She was always estranged from a brother, a sister, an aunt, a grandmother or a parent. Pay attention here, as this will come into play when I start talking about my oldest daughter later on.
My mom had a smattering of boyfriends between me being 4 and me being 9, when she started dating and married my stepfather. My stepfather was truly the first guy to ever treat me like a son. He was a good guy, treated me like I was at least as important as he was to himself and for many years, we enjoyed a good relation, all the way into my adulthood.
My stepdad was a journeyman lineman and the mid mid to late 70s brought a lot of economic turmoil to North Western Ohio where we lived, so he started job hunting around the country and eventually settled on southern Indiana, where his work was plentiful. So half way through my 7th grade year, my mom and step dad moved me and our dogs to southern Indiana, into the middle of Amish country. That was a culture shock, to say the least. Not a huge deal if things would have been handled properly, but see, remember me saying my mom was a war mongerwell, she conveniently saw to it that she was estranged from all of her family that were left alive, both of her parents had died a few years earlier, but we wont get into those gory details. Any way, my mother moved me 400 miles from any family and saw to it that I had zero contact with either side of my family for years
Fast forward many years to me getting married at age 25 to my current, well only wife. Mrs B4U and I had been married in Sept 1990 and chose to have our first child a couple years later. Our first born, a beautiful daughter was born in January of 1993. We had some complications during birthing and ended up having an emergency C section as things were getting ugly. Mother and baby seemed fine afterwards and we were all happy. My first born was beautiful and smart as a whip. She learned to walk and talk early and was the first grand child and everybody fawned all over her.
She seemed like a prodigy from birth until her sister was born at age 4. Then we started having some odd behavior problems but we worked through them. About the time our oldest turned 7, she was showing a little more not so pleasant behavior difficulties, but she was getting good grades, was still smart as heck and a good kid for the most part. Half way through her second grade in school it was as if one day you just flipped a switch and this kid became the mother of all problem children. It was so sudden and bizarre that I started thinking maybe she had had some sort of traumatic experience such as molestation. The behavior and the outburst and the resentment she was showing towards her younger sister was not normal and worrisome. She once tried to push her little sisters stroller out in front of a car at a shopping center. Like I said. Not Normal.
We had dealt with this every way possible and it was getting worse so we sought out a councilor/ psychologist. We played the typical games with the metal health industry for years. Not a place with more voodoo and witch craft than the mental health profession, trust me when I tell you this-I dealt with them for 10 years.
For a couple of years, during adolescence, my daughter had a therapist that actually got somewhere. This woman was good and tough and a hard ass, but my daughter liked her, opened up to her. This lasted for a while, then the shit started hitting the fan. Her second sibling was born, a brother, she really didnt like having him around and things got worse. She started making threats towards her siblings, and now was old enough and big enough to actually follow through. Try sleeping at night when your oldest child has made death threats towards you other children. She would have maniacal outburst and tantrums to the point that it was as if she was possessed. I am serious, this shit was getting weird. Tantrums like a 3 year old-banging her head on the wall, the floor, etc. During these years, we had been to many different doctors, therapist, she had been put on all sorts of medicine as she had been diagnosed ADD-ADHD-Oppositional Defiant Syndrome-Bi-polar and a host of other stuff(refer to my note about this profession based on opinion, not science) When she was a freshman in HS she came home one day and told her mom well, I did it. I finally did it! I am going to get you and dad in trouble. I went to school and told them everything. I told them how you tried to kill my dad with a knife last night. And how I am afraid to live here Now first things first-None of this shit ever happened-NONE of IT!
No I am jumping back and forth, but I have intentionally not been telling all of the crap we, as a family had been through. But there were tough financial times for us as a family, and a bought of credit carditis from my wife, which caused us to file bankruptcy, which was also the cause of a lot of discontent and anger from the man of the house ME-and the kids heard more arguing and bickering than they should have had to, but it happened and I take full responsibility for my stupid ass actions. There were many poor parenting choices by us both, as frankly, no body ever expects to deal with the stuff we were dealing with and nobody ever writes a book to tell you how to deal with this stuff, trust me. During this time, we had to admit our daughter for observation and evaluation for 48 hours at a juvenile, mental health facility, as she was threatening harm to herself, her siblings and was actively hurting herself. It was the most horrific 48 hours of my life. And I mean thisAt one point in my life, I was the victim of a home invasion and, well, lets just say, there were 3 people hell bent on doing me harm, I was the only person that walked away from that encounter. This event with my daughter was far more stressful than that. I have never been so numb, and distraught in my entire life.
Anyway, back to this discovery of my daughter intentionally going to school and telling lies in order to get even for some perceived injustice. Her plan may have worked accept for a couple of things. First off, our neighbor is the chief of police and a friend of mine. He had been aware of these problems for some time as he had been down to the house to take her to school when she would refuse to go etc. We had talked with him and his wife, who is a nurse at a facility for troubled youth-so we would pick their brains and try to get meaningful advice.
Anyway, lucky for us, he was the officer that actually took the call from the school to investigate this, or we very well may have had all 3 kids taken from us, and spent thousands in lawyer fees too. The Chief told the school that there had been a history of this child making these sort of threats towards us in the past, which was true. She had told me several times that she would go to the school and tell them she was abused and they would take her away and allow her to live with one of her friends and their family-(odd I know, but kids dont always think things through) Once when she told me this, I explained that if she ever did this, they would probably take all 3 kids away and it would be traumatic for her little brother and sister and it would cost thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and truthfully, I only would have enough money to get 2 kids back and which two would she think I would get back? (just a little sick humor that I would use at times to get her thinking rationally-it usually worked)
Anyway, while this investigation was being conducted, un known to us, my daughter grew impatient with the seeming lack of progress, so when she told her story to three different investigators, it got a little better and wilder with each one---Well, those of us in the know, know, any investigators worth their salt know that ever evolving stories usually mean things are not as they appear. Anyway, we spent the second most horrific 48 hours of our lives waiting to see if there were going to be any formal charges or a further investigation done on usThankfully, we were absolved of any wrong doing and we were told that our daughter was lying, and they were sure of it, and she eventually admitted to it.
At this point, I had already checked into enrolling our daughter into a specialized school for troubled kidssort of a working ranch, with chores, to do, fine schools and on site councilors, therapist and doctors, as well as cool things like horses, sailing, hiking etc. I was fully ready to cash in my retirement to make one last chance at helping her through this portion of her life and whatever was causing the problems-
I knew that we had to do something and fast. We couldnt have a child living with us and being under the threat of this crap every day. I told my wife, we are going to do one of two things. We are going to send her away to the bording school for the remainder of the year, or we can see if she can live with her parents and go to a different school, with different friends and live in a place where she feels secure and has no distractions such as brothers and sisters etc. My inlaws agreed to allow her to stay there with the condition that if she kept doing this shit, she couldnt- My inlaws were her last best hope at not having to go to a school half way across the country. I explained this to her and she understood.
She went down to a new school, with all new friends and she adjusted well and actually liked it better than her old school, She seemed like she had her act together, I was very proud of her and the time away from each other was actually good. We all were getting over being pissed at each other. She would come home on weekends and she got along with her siblings and her parents, she was starting be a joy to be around, she was turning into what I had hoped for herA good kid with as normal a life and outlook on life as was possible. She was still on some meds, but these were add meds and a mood stabilizing med. These two things we had found actually did help her live a normal life. Even she admitted that it helped her concentrate in school and control her anger issues.
She was doing so well and had sort of made amends for the BS and we were ready to have her come back home. She had been gone for a couple of months. I explained that it was going to be the end of the semester and it would be the best time for her to come back to her home town and go back to school. She told me she missed all of us, but she really liked going to school there better and she was making better grades and the kids in her new school treated her better and liked her for who she was, there was none of the class warfare crap or social ladder climbing crap-she just liked it better and asked if we would allow her to finish the year there. We asked our inlaws if that would be OK and then we discussed it. I didnt want her gone for that long, but she asked if we could do that for her, and frankly, she was doing so well, I thought she earned it, if it was what she wanted.
Well, looking back, it was probably the best/worst thing I could have done. It allowed my daughter to get used to being an only child somewhere else. It allowed her to disconnect with her immediate family even further. (all my fault) Then, after the first year, she asked each year after and we eventually allowed her to go all the way through high school living with her grand parents. She came home a lot on the weekends and the summers and the holidays, but we still missed herBut at this point, things were going so well with her at school and in her personal life, we were afraid to mess it up.
Her senior year, she turned 18 in JanuaryThis is when the shit hit the fan---I mean big shit and a huge fan. The day she turned 18, she quit taking her meds, cold turkeyNever a good idea. We had tried to wean her off the 2 summers prior, to see how she did, and each time, even she noticed that she couldnt get by with out them and not have anger/mood issues and stay focused at work etc. But she stopped taking them when she turned 18 and she went to hell in a hand basket and quickly. Goofy, mean ass mood swings, to the point I would be laying in bed and start getting these crazy ass text that were unprovoked telling me what a bastard I was and how she was never going to speak to me again and how her mom wasnt welcome to help out with her prom and how she didnt want us at graduation.
This will be a long enough read--So I will break here and post the rest of the story in a few---
I guess I am writing this with the hopes that it will be sort of a public service announcement for the masses. I will give a brief personal history of my life prior to being married at age 25, then I will get into the details of my life post marriage and the beginning of our family-
My parents got divorced when I was around 4-not exactly sure when, and it really doesnt matter. They should have never been married as they were oil and water. My father was a mean S.O.B. as a young man and my mother wasnt much better. He was a wife beater, she was an antagonist/war monger that could possible drive a priest to give her a beatingAs you can see, this is not a match made in heaven.
There were a lot of gaps in my family life that didnt make sense as a kid, but it was all I knew and didnt start to figure things out until I was an adult.
My dad wasnt much of a dad to me, as he is one of the most selfish humans I have known. He was never physically mean to me, as I truly only remember getting 2, maybe 3 spankings from him my entire childhood, and frankly, I deserved them all, and then some.
My mom seemed like a good enough parent on the surface, she worked hard, most times multiple jobs, and many of those at nightmostly because my father never paid any child support. My mom did use me as a weapon with my dad, and with most of my family, it just took me being an adult before I figured out the rest of the family deal. Between the age of 4 and 9, I cannot count how many houses I lived in and different schools I attended. I literally mean I cannot remember them all. I do remember telling a friend that when I was 22 I remembered 22 different houses I lived in, and that wasnt all of them, just the ones I remembered. That in its on right is pretty screwed up.
Looking back, my mother was always at war with somebody in her or my family. She was always estranged from a brother, a sister, an aunt, a grandmother or a parent. Pay attention here, as this will come into play when I start talking about my oldest daughter later on.
My mom had a smattering of boyfriends between me being 4 and me being 9, when she started dating and married my stepfather. My stepfather was truly the first guy to ever treat me like a son. He was a good guy, treated me like I was at least as important as he was to himself and for many years, we enjoyed a good relation, all the way into my adulthood.
My stepdad was a journeyman lineman and the mid mid to late 70s brought a lot of economic turmoil to North Western Ohio where we lived, so he started job hunting around the country and eventually settled on southern Indiana, where his work was plentiful. So half way through my 7th grade year, my mom and step dad moved me and our dogs to southern Indiana, into the middle of Amish country. That was a culture shock, to say the least. Not a huge deal if things would have been handled properly, but see, remember me saying my mom was a war mongerwell, she conveniently saw to it that she was estranged from all of her family that were left alive, both of her parents had died a few years earlier, but we wont get into those gory details. Any way, my mother moved me 400 miles from any family and saw to it that I had zero contact with either side of my family for years
Fast forward many years to me getting married at age 25 to my current, well only wife. Mrs B4U and I had been married in Sept 1990 and chose to have our first child a couple years later. Our first born, a beautiful daughter was born in January of 1993. We had some complications during birthing and ended up having an emergency C section as things were getting ugly. Mother and baby seemed fine afterwards and we were all happy. My first born was beautiful and smart as a whip. She learned to walk and talk early and was the first grand child and everybody fawned all over her.
She seemed like a prodigy from birth until her sister was born at age 4. Then we started having some odd behavior problems but we worked through them. About the time our oldest turned 7, she was showing a little more not so pleasant behavior difficulties, but she was getting good grades, was still smart as heck and a good kid for the most part. Half way through her second grade in school it was as if one day you just flipped a switch and this kid became the mother of all problem children. It was so sudden and bizarre that I started thinking maybe she had had some sort of traumatic experience such as molestation. The behavior and the outburst and the resentment she was showing towards her younger sister was not normal and worrisome. She once tried to push her little sisters stroller out in front of a car at a shopping center. Like I said. Not Normal.
We had dealt with this every way possible and it was getting worse so we sought out a councilor/ psychologist. We played the typical games with the metal health industry for years. Not a place with more voodoo and witch craft than the mental health profession, trust me when I tell you this-I dealt with them for 10 years.
For a couple of years, during adolescence, my daughter had a therapist that actually got somewhere. This woman was good and tough and a hard ass, but my daughter liked her, opened up to her. This lasted for a while, then the shit started hitting the fan. Her second sibling was born, a brother, she really didnt like having him around and things got worse. She started making threats towards her siblings, and now was old enough and big enough to actually follow through. Try sleeping at night when your oldest child has made death threats towards you other children. She would have maniacal outburst and tantrums to the point that it was as if she was possessed. I am serious, this shit was getting weird. Tantrums like a 3 year old-banging her head on the wall, the floor, etc. During these years, we had been to many different doctors, therapist, she had been put on all sorts of medicine as she had been diagnosed ADD-ADHD-Oppositional Defiant Syndrome-Bi-polar and a host of other stuff(refer to my note about this profession based on opinion, not science) When she was a freshman in HS she came home one day and told her mom well, I did it. I finally did it! I am going to get you and dad in trouble. I went to school and told them everything. I told them how you tried to kill my dad with a knife last night. And how I am afraid to live here Now first things first-None of this shit ever happened-NONE of IT!
No I am jumping back and forth, but I have intentionally not been telling all of the crap we, as a family had been through. But there were tough financial times for us as a family, and a bought of credit carditis from my wife, which caused us to file bankruptcy, which was also the cause of a lot of discontent and anger from the man of the house ME-and the kids heard more arguing and bickering than they should have had to, but it happened and I take full responsibility for my stupid ass actions. There were many poor parenting choices by us both, as frankly, no body ever expects to deal with the stuff we were dealing with and nobody ever writes a book to tell you how to deal with this stuff, trust me. During this time, we had to admit our daughter for observation and evaluation for 48 hours at a juvenile, mental health facility, as she was threatening harm to herself, her siblings and was actively hurting herself. It was the most horrific 48 hours of my life. And I mean thisAt one point in my life, I was the victim of a home invasion and, well, lets just say, there were 3 people hell bent on doing me harm, I was the only person that walked away from that encounter. This event with my daughter was far more stressful than that. I have never been so numb, and distraught in my entire life.
Anyway, back to this discovery of my daughter intentionally going to school and telling lies in order to get even for some perceived injustice. Her plan may have worked accept for a couple of things. First off, our neighbor is the chief of police and a friend of mine. He had been aware of these problems for some time as he had been down to the house to take her to school when she would refuse to go etc. We had talked with him and his wife, who is a nurse at a facility for troubled youth-so we would pick their brains and try to get meaningful advice.
Anyway, lucky for us, he was the officer that actually took the call from the school to investigate this, or we very well may have had all 3 kids taken from us, and spent thousands in lawyer fees too. The Chief told the school that there had been a history of this child making these sort of threats towards us in the past, which was true. She had told me several times that she would go to the school and tell them she was abused and they would take her away and allow her to live with one of her friends and their family-(odd I know, but kids dont always think things through) Once when she told me this, I explained that if she ever did this, they would probably take all 3 kids away and it would be traumatic for her little brother and sister and it would cost thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and truthfully, I only would have enough money to get 2 kids back and which two would she think I would get back? (just a little sick humor that I would use at times to get her thinking rationally-it usually worked)
Anyway, while this investigation was being conducted, un known to us, my daughter grew impatient with the seeming lack of progress, so when she told her story to three different investigators, it got a little better and wilder with each one---Well, those of us in the know, know, any investigators worth their salt know that ever evolving stories usually mean things are not as they appear. Anyway, we spent the second most horrific 48 hours of our lives waiting to see if there were going to be any formal charges or a further investigation done on usThankfully, we were absolved of any wrong doing and we were told that our daughter was lying, and they were sure of it, and she eventually admitted to it.
At this point, I had already checked into enrolling our daughter into a specialized school for troubled kidssort of a working ranch, with chores, to do, fine schools and on site councilors, therapist and doctors, as well as cool things like horses, sailing, hiking etc. I was fully ready to cash in my retirement to make one last chance at helping her through this portion of her life and whatever was causing the problems-
I knew that we had to do something and fast. We couldnt have a child living with us and being under the threat of this crap every day. I told my wife, we are going to do one of two things. We are going to send her away to the bording school for the remainder of the year, or we can see if she can live with her parents and go to a different school, with different friends and live in a place where she feels secure and has no distractions such as brothers and sisters etc. My inlaws agreed to allow her to stay there with the condition that if she kept doing this shit, she couldnt- My inlaws were her last best hope at not having to go to a school half way across the country. I explained this to her and she understood.
She went down to a new school, with all new friends and she adjusted well and actually liked it better than her old school, She seemed like she had her act together, I was very proud of her and the time away from each other was actually good. We all were getting over being pissed at each other. She would come home on weekends and she got along with her siblings and her parents, she was starting be a joy to be around, she was turning into what I had hoped for herA good kid with as normal a life and outlook on life as was possible. She was still on some meds, but these were add meds and a mood stabilizing med. These two things we had found actually did help her live a normal life. Even she admitted that it helped her concentrate in school and control her anger issues.
She was doing so well and had sort of made amends for the BS and we were ready to have her come back home. She had been gone for a couple of months. I explained that it was going to be the end of the semester and it would be the best time for her to come back to her home town and go back to school. She told me she missed all of us, but she really liked going to school there better and she was making better grades and the kids in her new school treated her better and liked her for who she was, there was none of the class warfare crap or social ladder climbing crap-she just liked it better and asked if we would allow her to finish the year there. We asked our inlaws if that would be OK and then we discussed it. I didnt want her gone for that long, but she asked if we could do that for her, and frankly, she was doing so well, I thought she earned it, if it was what she wanted.
Well, looking back, it was probably the best/worst thing I could have done. It allowed my daughter to get used to being an only child somewhere else. It allowed her to disconnect with her immediate family even further. (all my fault) Then, after the first year, she asked each year after and we eventually allowed her to go all the way through high school living with her grand parents. She came home a lot on the weekends and the summers and the holidays, but we still missed herBut at this point, things were going so well with her at school and in her personal life, we were afraid to mess it up.
Her senior year, she turned 18 in JanuaryThis is when the shit hit the fan---I mean big shit and a huge fan. The day she turned 18, she quit taking her meds, cold turkeyNever a good idea. We had tried to wean her off the 2 summers prior, to see how she did, and each time, even she noticed that she couldnt get by with out them and not have anger/mood issues and stay focused at work etc. But she stopped taking them when she turned 18 and she went to hell in a hand basket and quickly. Goofy, mean ass mood swings, to the point I would be laying in bed and start getting these crazy ass text that were unprovoked telling me what a bastard I was and how she was never going to speak to me again and how her mom wasnt welcome to help out with her prom and how she didnt want us at graduation.
This will be a long enough read--So I will break here and post the rest of the story in a few---
