Family issues
I am on the verge of a total breakdown. It concerns me that I know it is coming and I can't divert it this time. It won't be my first; it probably won't be my last.
In my family, if you didn't say it out loud, it didn't happen. My father didn't marry my mother just to please my grandmother, and he didn't have a girlfriend in another town. Well, until the non-existent girlfriend had the baby that is now my very real half-sister. Of course she was 4 years old before my brothers and I even knew about her. My grandmother (paternal) made sure my dad knew he was not welcome back in their home and he was not ever to bring HER or that brat into their home. Even then it seemed strange to me that my mother, my brothers, and I lived with my dad's parents after the divorce. My grandfather would take me to his garage with him so I could see my father, and I learned if you don't say it out loud, hey, it didn't happen.
I got pregnant and married at 16 just to get away from them. I hated not being able to finish school but, as my family put it "I made my bed". The marriage lasted four years, but, somehow my ex and I remain friends to this day. Since, I have married twice more and had a son. I have now been married for 24 years and have four grandchildren. But, it is my daughter and my dad's "other family" on my mind and heart today.
It took years for my dad and I to even begin to reconcile. My sister and I have overcome a lot of the BS and although we are 12 years apart in age we have managed to form a bond. Everything that happened long ago was no more her fault than it was mine. Of course, by bonding with her and reconciling with my dad I have somehow betrayed my mother (can't win with this woman).
My daughter and I have had a very strained relationship for most of her life. I had remained in Arkansas after the divorce and we were fine until she started going to Kentucky to visit her dad and his parents. She was treated like a princess and given everything she wanted by his parents. My ex mother-in-law had raised three boys and she saw Amy as the daughter she never had. I gave up; I admit it. I was not going to compete with them on that level even if I could have. I sent her to live with her dad when she was 10 years old. I felt like such a failure, but my thinking at the time was that maybe if she lived there full time for a while.......I don't know that maybe she would see things differently. Her stepmother took good care of her and I am grateful for her. But, she also instilled a sense of materialism in my daughter that caused more problems when she was with me. I refused to spend the cost of an entire wardrobe for me on one outfit for her, and so it continued. She grew more and more spoiled and I saw less and less of her. Until she turned 15.....
She got involved with a guy 4 years older than herself who introduced her to drugs, marijuana and then cocaine, and then he gave her herpes. Since she was now an embarrassment to the family name she was shipped back down here for me to deal with. Right. Needless to say that didn't turn out really well for either of us. She was a total disruption on our household, stealing, lying and of course, she found the druggies. It was finally decided by me and her father she would return to KY.
Fast forward, the guy she met when she was 15 came back into the picture, several years of abuse (physical) and more drugs later she found out she was pregnant. He kicked her out. They had been staying with his parents and she had taken his mother's car to town to get drugs. She says she was car-jacked by three black guys and raped. His mother says she f***ed and s***ed and then gave her car to them for drugs. Her BF often sent her for drugs and told her to pay for them however it took. I figure there was no rape but the car was stolen from her and she didn't know what else to say.
She came back to Arkansas to have the baby. She struggled but stayed clean durning the pregnancy. Once the baby was born and she knew the BF was the father she put his name on the birth certificate (huge fight resulting in me being told it was her f***ing kid and I needed to butt out). He came down and six days after she was born, my granddaughter was gone.
Fast forward....she finally got tired of the beatings, and came back down here. She got clean and found a job, put my granddaughter in a private school and life was looking good. Then she discovered meth and meth became her life. The school my granddaughter was in became concerned and called DHS. I begged my daughter to let me have Sienna and to get herself straight again. She was running with a guy who was suspected of murdering a few people and I feared for Sienna's life as well as my own if I tried to intervene. I called the father (AKA the sperm donor) and to his tribute he did the right thing and got the child away from here. I've missed seeing her grow up but she is growing up. I still miss her so much.
My daughter finally did clean up enough to know she had made a terrible mistake and moved to KY to live with her grandparents so she could be near Sienna. I made a lot of trips home during that time and got to see how well they were doing. Finally, I could exhale.
Then the phone rang.....my daughter was missing. She left for work one morning and hadn't been seen for three days. I went up there and we filled out the missing persons paperwork and we sat and waited. She finally showed up, strung out, and pissed because we reported her missing. The courts in KY terminated her parental rights; it would be up to Chad if she was ever allowed to visit Sienna again. She went on another binge and was found wandering the streets of town looking for a place to crash.....five months pregnant. I brought her home yet again and nursed her through the pregnancy yet again. There would be no one to call this time; she has no clue who the father his. She gave birth to another daughter Aug 30, 2007, one day after my birthday.
August 26, 2009 DHS removed the child from my daughter's care. It took me until October to get Mia into my care and in Jan 2010 my daughter signed Mia over to me rather than get clean.
I know this lengthy but there really isn't a Cliff's Notes version (actually, this is the Cliff Notes version). This is where the ends tie together. My daughter went to prison for manufacturing; she was sentenced to 56 years but was able to get into a 9 month special needs program through the Dept. of Corrections. While she was in there she began to mend broken fences with all of her grandparents, uncles, younger siblings. it was wonderful to watch my daughter reappear in the broken and abused body of the meth addict. She got out Nov. 1, 2011. We were unable to make a planned trip to KY because I blew my car engine and she started to slip into depression. She really wants to see her grandparents (they are all in poor health) and I have no way to get her there. She has to get permission from her PO to leave the state and her PO won't give her a permit to travel alone.
My sister is bringing my dad and stepmom to visit me tomorrow; I have been stressed to the max over this. I haven't seen them since I got sober and they haven't seen my daughter in over a decade. Both my dad and stepmother have a tendency to blurt whatever they think right out without consideration of anyone else's feelings. If they see they have struck a nerve, they know right where to hit you next time. I don't know if it makes them feel superior or what. I have been concerned about what they will say to Amy and how to politely tell them to shut the f*** up.
And now, for the rest of the story........my daughter has been missing since Monday night. Today is her 36th birthday and I know in my heart she is out there on a binge. I can't do this any more. I also cannot listen to one word from my dad and stepmom about how worthless my daughter is and did I really think she had changed? Because, yes I thought she had changed. The hardest part is knowing these two have the audacity and self righteousness to say these things to me while I know they got married before my parents were divorced and that they had another daughter together when my stepmom was 18. She gave birth in FL and her mother passed the child off as her own. So my stepmom's "little sister" is actually my older sister born two weeks before me.
When my grandma was dying and it was just me in the room with her she kept repeating "to many secrets, there are just to many secrets"......famous last words and should have been her epitaph.