[suki44883]

I received a text message today from my daughter asking this question. She and I had argued earlier on the phone and the conversation ended when I told her I couldn’t keep on doing this. As I hung up, I could hear her crying and begging me not to hang up the phone. It hurt so bad. It still hurts. I love her so much, but like I told her, I just can’t keep doing this.

Some of you are aware of our issues. My daughter will be 20 years old in September. She’s a good girl. She has such a good heart. She never drinks or does drugs or smokes cigarettes. But, she has some serious mental issues. At different times, she has been diagnosed with the following: borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder with psychosis, bi-polar, and PTSD. She has severe anxiety and paranoia. She is now living with her father about 2 hours away because after her last suicide attempt (bringing the total number of attempts to 5), I told her she couldn’t live with me anymore. I had told her that after her 4th attempt, but I fell for the BS and gave her one more chance. As I feared, there was another attempt.

She absolutely hates living with her father, and I can’t blame her. He is an insufferable control freak and egomaniac. I should know, I lived with him. However, as I told her, her options at this time are limited. I am adamant that she cannot live with me and other than her dad, no one else stepped up to the plate and offered her a place to stay. Therefore, I’ve told her that she’s just going to have to do her best to get along with him and try to stay out of his way as best she can.

She doesn’t drive and has never worked. She is currently on SSI and Medicaid. While living with me, she was seeing a therapist once a week and a MHMR psychiatrist once a month for med management. Since she has been staying with her dad (about 6 weeks now), she has stopped taking all her meds (without medical advisement) and no longer goes to therapy. The therapy is a real sticky point with me. I have told her that she needs therapy to work through her issues but she adamantly refuses. She says all she needs is a driver’s license and a job and things will be fine. Whatever.

I am trying to take care of me. Since she has been gone, a lot of feelings and thoughts are coming to the surface. For so many years, I walked on eggshells around her because of her sudden mood swings. I am just now getting to a place where I am starting to feel comfortable in my own home. For the first few weeks after she left, I felt kind of shell-shocked. Just going through the motions after everything came to a head. I just lapped up the peace around here. No one but me and the cats. It was wonderful. Now though, I am starting to feel the emotions coming to the surface. I burst into tears just all of a sudden. I get so freaking angry just all of a sudden. I guess this is all normal, whatever normal is. Anyway, I have an appointment with a therapist on Tuesday. I need someone to talk to, too.

Do you like me? I’m not sure exactly how to respond to that. I know I love her, and I think I like her too. I mean, as a person, she is very compassionate and so smart and I am so proud of her in so many ways. It sounds too cliché to say, I love you but I don’t always like you. I do like her. She just needs help so that she can grow into a person who enjoys life and is happy. I want that so much for her and it just hurts so much to know that right now, we are pretty much toxic to each other. Too much co-dependence. I just can’t do it anymore.