Perception

It's funny, really, to think about how perceptions change over time.

Today I told an online friend that he's amazing, and his response was how much of a compliment it was coming from someone of my character. 

It made me laugh at first, and then think about what that really means.

My "character" has not always gotten that reaction. 

As a younger woman, I advocated the idea that a woman can do what she chooses with her body. I did whatever I wanted, with whomever I wanted, with no regrets about it.

One guy described me as fierce, and a woman I was with called me a force of nature.  I saw myself as a sexual creature, and that came across loud and clear to the rest of the world.

Consequently, like any woman who is free, I was called slut, whore, skank, and various other creative things that primarily denote immoral and unacceptable behavior. 

I didn't care. I am the only one who owns me.  

I realize now that it was about control - of my life, and of my body. 

I can't remember the names if every partner I've had. 

When people comment on my character I always want to say "if only you knew how I spent my 20s".

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.

School and other important stuff

As you know, I made the decision to homeschool last year, after my teen was thrown into a huge school and ended up hospitalized after a suicide attempt.

So, we've officially started our academic year. The teen is studying zoology, and is captivated. I'm always so excited when she gets enthusiastic about a subject.

She asked me to get her back on her meds, and to help her find a therapist that she might click with a bit better. I'm glad she's come to me instead of waiting until things got bad.
We have appointments this coming week to get right on it.

My girl will be just fine.

Moving

Tomorrow we move into our new house. We're so excited!
My teen loves her new room, and my little loves our new yard! We'll have space to set up a work area for my kids, a family room, and a garden!
The teen is motivated this year to get through her academics with as little delay as possible so she can move ahead.

Today, I was attacked by a family member for not sending her back to public school. She accused me of being selfish, and taking the easy way. That I need to think about what's best for my children for once. She told me my girl will be a dysfunctional adult if I don't force her back into school.
If you have a teen in the house, I'm sure that you are aware that having her at home all day is NOT taking the easy way out. The other, bigger issue here is the social anxiety disorder that the girl has.
Am I supposed to send her back to a place where she is so unhappy she has to harm herself to deal with it?
(Here's a hint - HELL NO!)
I understand that my family member is concerned. I get she doesn't understand what our day-to-day life is like. And I even can kind of accept that she means well.
Those things being said, I have every right to raise my children as I see fit. I also have an obligation to do what I feel is best for them.
Public school ain't it.

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.

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.