Outburst

Yesterday was an emotional day.
The girl has been shirking her chores, and I called her on it. It ended up with her shrieking in my face. When I asked her later what that had been about, her answer was "I have no idea".
Thankfully, we see the therapist today.

I hate feeling like I have to walk on eggshells around my child. I hate not being able to leave a teenager alone because I'm afraid she'll hurt herself.
And I really hate that I let myself get pulled into an altercation with a 14 year old.

I need to talk to the therapist to learn tools for dealing with this.

I was terrified every time she left the room for the rest of the day, wondering if she was cutting herself, how bad it would be, and if she would go too far.

Today, everything is back to normal.

Nightmares

In my dreams I'm searching for my kids. I can hear their voices. I step in puddles of their blood. I find body parts lying on the ground.
Sometimes I'm not searching. Sometimes I'm trying to stop the flow of blood as my teen's life drains down her arm and drips off her fingertips.

I dread sleeping some nights.

In reality, the girl is healing well. And the closer she gets to being healed, the more "normal" teen attitude she has. I realize it's the age. 14 sucks, I remember.
I know that soon she'll be yet another person, and another year closer to the woman she'll become.
Parenting is so bittersweet. I wouldn't give it up for anything.

Progress

It's been a couple of weeks since the last incident. She seems to be doing ok.
She's been in fairly good spirits, and laughing and playing with the family.

We're easing into the homeschool lifestyle. And really, that's what it is. This has changed the dynamics of our household significantly; mostly for the better, I think.

We communicate more. We share our thoughts more. We set goals together.
The girl and I are making the decorations for our tree this year. We spend evenings working on them and talking after the little has gone to sleep.
So I suppose some good is coming out of all this misery. My big girl and my little girl are closer than ever. My girl and I have been able to reconnect. We're home, with my husband as a buffer between us and the world. (He's been wonderful about his anti-social family.)
Things are definitely on the upswing. I expect there will be more setbacks.
That's just life. And it hasn't been all that long.
But the future is looking promising, and we have a mellow kind of contentment instead of the constant despair that seemed to loom over us.

Fear

A relapse tonight.
Just one cut, but a bad one. Emergency room bad.
As soon as she did it, she came to me. She kept telling me "I didn't mean to do it", and calling herself stupid. She handed over the blades to me without a hesitation.
I think she scared herself.
She went right through the skin and exposed the adipose tissue.
She scared me.
I tried to get her to allow the stitches, and she agreed, but then she had a panic attack when the doctor tried to put the stitches in, and we ended up having the nurse put steri-strips on instead.
She said she saw the blade, and was thinking about the situation she just got out of, and just did it on impulse.

As I'm sitting in the ER with her the guilt kicked in. I couldn't help but wonder if I somehow made her like this. If I broke her when she was little with my own pain.
I just don't know.

Healing

No new bouts of cutting since I pulled the girl from public school.
She's been using some alternate ways of coping with stress - snapping an elastic band on her wrist, drawing, writing, squeezing ice, and walking.
Tomorrow I take her home and we start a new adventure.
We are now a homeschooling family. Hopefully, not having to deal with the traditional school environment will help alleviate some of the anxiety that she deals with.
I expect some challenges, but I'm looking forward to this.

I'm Sorry

Tears rolled down her face as she shook her head. “I can't do it”.
“Get out of the car. Now.”
She started to shake. “Please. Please. I can't.”
“I'm going to be late. Move.”
“Momma, please.”
“This is ridiculous. I'm really starting to get pissed. Get. Out. Of. The. Car. Now.”
She inched the door open, but didn't move to get out.

So went the first few weeks of 8th grade. I knew she was having a hard time. Every morning was the same. But I didn't know what else to do. I was a full-time student myself, with a toddler and a job to boot. I didn't have the patience for what I thought was a melodramatic teenager.

I owe my girl an apology. I didn't understand what was happening. I didn't know.
I'm so sorry I wasn't very sympathetic to how you were feeling. I'm sorry it took me so long to get it.
I will do my best to listen to your concerns and fears without my own stuff getting in the way.

My Daughter Is Beautiful.

My daughter is beautiful.
Not the delicate, fragile beauty that is so popular in our society.
She is tall and strong, with laughing green eyes and wavy blonde hair that she is prone to straightening. She has pink cheeks with dimples.
She has the most infectious laugh.
She is kind, loving, loyal, and compassionate. She's generous, intelligent, and very gifted when it comes to dealing with animals.
Her talent for drawing is substantial, and her singing voice is amazing.

Her scars do not detract from her beauty. They show that she is vulnerable, but she's a fighter. She's not afraid to do something just because it's hard. And if she is afraid, that's okay.

Revelation

The more I think about this the more I understand it.

I still have a few scars myself.

And I realized something else, too. I didn't really stop when I thought I did.
The cutting, carving and biting turned into something else.

I stopped doing the physical harm myself, and looked for men to do it for me. From the one who held me down, to the one who left bite marks all over me, to the one who was excessively "endowed" who I couldn't stay away from - no matter how much it hurt. There was the one who always made me bleed, and the one who could keep going so long that I couldn't walk the next day. There was the one who knew just what to say to cause the most pain, and the one who told me "you're so beautiful when you cry".

I did this to myself until I was 34 years old. I'm so worried that my girl will follow this path. I have to figure out how to keep her from it.
I spent so many years hating myself for it, consumed with self-loathing because I kept making these stupid choices that were guaranteed to keep me miserable.
I don't want that for her. How do I keep her from it?

Re-directing

So I talked to my girl about my epiphany.
She seemed open to the ideas I had.
Here they are: for pain - pinching herself or snapping a rubber band on her wrist are some alternatives that won't cause actual damage. Not a solution, but a step in the right direction for her safety. At least she won't accidentally pinch herself to death.
For the "looks cool" - I'm getting her some tattoo pens. She can draw on her skin all she wants. When she gets a little older, she can get all the tattoos and piercings her little heart desires, but at 14 this seems to be a reasonable temporary alternative.

After seeing the severity of the most recent bout of cutting, I'm open to any and all suggestions to help her through this. Group therapy doesn't seem to be doing her much good because of her severe social anxiety. Most days she doesn't even make it into the room. I've already started working with her at home because school was too much for her to handle, especially so soon after getting out of the hospital.

I need her to be okay. Safe.

Scars

The first time I saw the scars on her arm I was scared. Terrified.
She was sitting in a chair in a psychiatric hospital. She'd been staying with her father for several months, and he sent me a text saying she had brought a suicide note to school. They took her to the ER, and then she was transferred to the hospital.
I was on a plane the next day.

She stopped cutting for a little while. Then last week, for reasons unknown to me, she started again. Not just her arm. Her ribs and abdomen were covered. Her hips and her thighs, too. Someone mentioned she had been scratching at her leg and so I asked her if she had been cutting. She admitted it easily. When I asked her to show me, she did. I felt like I had been punched in the face. I told her I would help her find a safer way to deal with things, and asked her to please try not to cut herself.

In my research on this behavior, I've discovered some interesting things.
Self-harming isn't just cutting. It can take many forms, including but not limited to : banging your head, carving things into your skin, pulling out your hair, and biting.

Wait, I've done all of those myself! So now I'm left wondering - is this hereditary? Or contagious? Did I somehow pass this on to her without knowing? And is it sick that the turmoil I'm feeling makes me want to return to those destructive patterns myself?

But I did have an epiphany. She told her friend that she likes the way it feels, and she likes the way it looks. "It hurts, and it looks cool".
Isn't that why some people get addicted to tattoos and piercings?
I haven't figured out how, but I feel like this information can somehow help her.