I Don't Know How

So many things I have to say. So many things I can't control. I have nowhere else to say them, which is both sad and fortunate. I've been watching my youngest child struggle with mood and behavioral issues she since was a toddler. We asked for an IEP, which was denied because despite her many and varied behavioral problems in school, she excelled academically. We agreed to in-school counseling, which was offered - and then pulled - several times over the course of her schooling. She has been medicated with a number of different substances for about 18 months, and has had weekly therapy. She has been hospitalized for suicidal ideation. She is irritable, has delusions of persecution, will fly into a completely irrational rage at a moment's notice, is hypersexual, has experimented with drugs and alcohol, is an expert manipulator, worries obsessively about things that most teens don't even think about, and suffers extreme anxiety about unlikely and sometimes unreal situations.

 She is me.

 Once I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, my entire life made so much more sense. I think I've related this elsewhere in my blog. Since my critical incident and the prescription of the medication I will take for the rest of my life, I've forgotten to take that medication a few times, and realized quickly that I functioned most of my young life in a surreal unreality. This is the unreality that my youngest daughter lives in now.

 And no one will help her.

 My entire life, and the life of my family, is held hostage by the chemistry of her brain. Her disrespect and sometimes outright verbal abuse is embarrassing and humiliating. Her rages are unmanageable, and I end up trying to manage both her rage and the subsequent rage of MSU, which escalates into total PTSD meltdown for me and solves NOTHING. MSU is frustrated and often takes it out on me because he feels that i am being "lenient," though he knows as well as I do that punishing her doesn't work, typical parenting doesn't work, and he actually reinforces her rages by attempting to lecture her - or yell her - into submission. Her impulsivity is terrifying, her absolute uncaring attitude toward dangerous situations even more so. I can't count how many times I've sat in various school offices listening to administrators, counselors, and teachers tell me how ineffective I am as a parent. I can't tell you how many times I have asked for help from these same administrators via IEP requests, 502 plan requests, IEP/AB2726 combinations, and the like, always to be denied because she is so very intelligent. Doctors - even psychiatrists - have dismissed her obvious rapid cycling as "hormonal." She lives constantly in a world where her brain won't allow her to rest, won't allow her to trust, won't allow her to tolerate, and won't allow her to see herself as anything but different from everybody else.

 She is me. And no one will help her. And I am so tired.

 I have to take full responsibility for the times prior to my diagnosis. Full responsibility for shitty parenting - though I did the best I could. Full responsibility for being a shitty wife - though I did the best I could. Full responsibility for blowing up my life - and the lives of others - more times than I can count. So I realize that many of the issues my kids have are a direct result of who I am when I am the Chemically UnTreated Me. And my youngest is probably a direct product of the Chemically UnTreated Me, and for that I feel so guilty (though an organic disorder can't be my fault, it is certainly my faulty genetics that caused it). And Chemically UnTreated Me had absolutely no resources whatsoever to deal with Chemically Untreated Her. Hell, the New and Improved Me has no resources whatsoever to cope with her. SHE has no resources to cope with her.

 And no one will help her.

Random Thought...

Just before falling asleep last night, I was once again thinking about PostSecret. PostSecret is a good thing for me: from silly to heartbreaking, I realize by reading that none of us are alone. I thought about all the things I would want to say to people throughout my life. Not secrets, necessarily, but things I should have said and didn't. Or things I did say and wish I hadn't. Things that were noticed but not acknowledged. Etc. What about a blog or system similar to PostSecret, where people can post -anonymously or not - things they wish they had said, or feel they should say? Maybe, if enough people would read it, some of those messages would actually be received by those hwy were intended for. Hmmm.