Getting ready to graduate...

So after months of dragging her feet and procrastinating any way possible, the girl came to me and said "I have a plan that will have me finished with high school soon."
YAY!!!
She working on Chemistry, Calculus, and Economics.
I love it when she gets into her studies. When she's motivated, she's a powerhouse. It's amazing to watch. She gets so much more motivated when she comes up with her own plan. I'm so excited to see where she takes the remainder of her studies.

In other news, some superficial cutting about a month ago. Nothing really deep, and not as often as it had been, but she does still occasionally cut. It worries me, but I know it's hard to stop completely.

Summer

Self harming is an addiction. If you've never experienced it, it might be hard to imagine. But if you have, then you know. 

Cutters, sex addicts, alcoholics - even if you learn to control it, it never totally goes away. 

About two weeks into her summer, she started telling me she wanted to come home. She didn't want me to talk to her dad about it though. She was worried about hurting his feelings. I was concerned, but I try to respect her wishes. 

Sometimes I regret that. 

She came home at the end of the summer with literally dozens of new scars, in two rows down her right arm. Easily fifty new marks. And that's not even counting the ones on her legs. 

When I asked her how old they were, she said two and three weeks. 

I knew she was struggling. I heard it in her voice when she called me. And she called me a lot. Sometimes three or four times a day, even when she was doing stuff. 

The thing is, I did end up telling him that she was struggling. I asked him to make sure she took her meds (which he did). 

But, according to her, he never noticed or mentioned the new cuts. Which means, in her mind anyway, that he still isn't seeing her. 

Several of the times she called me, she told me she just wants to be normal. She thinks her dad would be more present for her if she was. It makes me wonder what he says to her. I worry that he rides her about being normal - or at least about acting normal. 

She's a good, smart, caring person. She happens to have crippling social anxiety. It's part of who she is. We're trying to help her deal with it as best she can, but it's not something she can help. She doesn't choose this. It just is. Making her feel even worse about it is counterproductive. 

My heart breaks when she tells me how much she hates herself, that she wishes she were someone else. That she wishes she were normal. 

My dear, sweet girl - nobody is normal. I hope she understands this, and soon. 

A step back

The girl has recently had a small reversal.
I found some scratches on her arms. Initially when I asked, she said she didn't know what they were from.
Then she admitted that she had done them with a pin. And that she's not taking her meds.
Holy crap. More stuff for the therapist.

I asked the homeschooling group for help getting her involved, and a couple of moms of teens have offered to meet up separately. So glad I live here. We meet one family tomorrow. The other family, we will probably get together with next week. I'm as glad to meet other moms as she is to meet other teens.

My hope is that making some new friends will help alleviate her loneliness. I think that is a factor in her slipping back into bad habits.

This scares the hell out of me. I just have to keep her moving forward, and she'll be ok.
She has to be.

Update on the girl

The girl is doing really well. She's thinking about doing her last couple of years of high school in one year, so she has the option of starting college in the fall of next year.
We haven't had any incidents of cutting in many months, and now that she's back on her meds the depression has been a lot better too.
She back to writing songs, and wants to start taking guitar lessons again.
She's actually joined a snake club, and she's going to play hockey this year.
She's covered the walls of her room with positive, inspirational quotes.
I'm really happy with the progress she's made.

Anxiety

My girl has just spent the last 2 months visiting her father for the first time since she came home. I picked her up at the airport on Sunday. I couldn't really relax until I saw her beautiful face.
She called me every day she was gone, and texted me that she wanted to come home.
I'm so glad to have her back.
I haven't checked her for fresh cuts. I'm too afraid. I know I need to. I just need everything to be ok for a little longer.
I'm a coward, I know.

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.

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.