Rock Bottom

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They say when you hit bottom, there is no where to go but up.

(Did they forget about sideways?)

I cannot catch a break.  I. can. NOT. catch. a. break.

And people, I am so discouraged, I am just about done.  I cannot Pollyanna one step further.

First, the boy.  Who was so sweet and loving and perfect.  My son.  My baby.  Who came home so damanged.  Who dealt with his own trauma by inflicting it on others.  Who hurt my other children, and wreaked havoc on our family.  Saturday was his third “Gotcha Day,” but there was nothing to celebrate.  He can never come home to us.  It has taken us the last 22 months to come to that conclusion.  Divorce has hovered like a vulture over us as we have dealt with this tremendous stress.  We have fought for our son.  There has  been no season of our life that has tested us as this one has.  I cannot ask you to understand it.  I can only pray that you never have to.

The illness.  RAD, you are a motherfucker.  I hate you with every ounce of my being.  You have stolen my son from me.  He is an Angry Boy.  He is manipulative.  He rages.  He lies.  He shows no remorse.  He is argumentative.  He is hypervigilant and hyperactive.  He chatters constantly.  He acts silly when anxious.  He pulls out his own hair.  He smears feces on the walls.  He is sexually “inappropriate”.   He pees where he shouldn’t, on purpose.  He pits adults against each other.  He makes false allegations of abuse.  He destroys his belongings.  He steals.  But RAD, it is not enough that you have my son.  No.  You have my daughter, too.  While he is a child of abuse, she is a child of neglect.  She cares about nothing and no one.  She thinks she’s smarter than everyone.  She’s self-reliant, because she trusts no one.  She’s extremely passive aggressive.  She’s utterly intolerant of rules or authority.  She’s shallow and vain.  She thinks relationships with people are a waste of time.  She wants nothing but to go back to Haiti.  She’s bossy.  She’s hypercritical of everyone around her.  She lacks empathy for others.  She’s very manipulative.   She’s awesome at verbal insults and stabbing people in the back.  She is hard, so, so hard to love.

Financial aspects of mental health care: Dude.  Do not have mentally ill kids.  It’s expensive.  I cannot tell you how much time I spend trying to find help for my kids, and trying to coordinate payment for it, and how much money we actually SPEND on it.  But I will tell you that the neuropsych evaluations for our kids were $2800 and $2000 each. (I think our insurance reimbursed about $900 the first time.  I haven’t gotten the second reimbursement back yet).  This just tells you what’s wrong with the child.  Ours were excellent, and well worth the money we spent.  AngryBoy would not have gotten into his residential treatment facility (RTF) without it.  Prior to that, he had been misdiagnosed several times ($$ that was a waste of time).  Then remember AngryBoy’s first 44 days at the RTF were “covered” at 90% by our private insurance?  Except that this was 90% of the “reasonable and customary” rate?  I fought with the insurance company for 6 months (to no avail), as our portion of the bill was $7000.  Ouch.  Then Medicaid kicked in.  God Bless Medicaid.  Medicaid covered us, but then we MOVED (idiots) because dh got a promotion.  Which meant we had to apply in a new state.  But that new state said AngryBoy wasn’t eligible since he never actually LIVED in the new state.  So we tried to give temporary guardianship to his uncle in the RTF’s state, but despite being told the application would be approved, it got denied.  Then we asked if we could give temporary guardianship to friends in the state that we moved FROM, since they were already providing benefits.. and they said, yes, but only if the friends were from the same county we lived in (they weren’t).. and in the meantime.. we were forced to update our address.. and had his Medicaid benefits CUT OFF.  Which means we are currently paying the RTF $302/day. OUT.OF.POCKET.

Yeah.  That’s what I said, too.  Right before I started bawling.

Let’s talk about something else.  How about my house.  Which one, you say?  HA, HA!  Because I STILL HAVE TWO!  Yes, life IS a bed of roses.  And sometimes the economy sucks, and the promotion that looked so awesome is maybe NOT so awesome, because the relocation company does not ACTUALLY want to buy your 45 year old house.  So they do a ridiculous home inspection, and ask you to fix a quadrillion things, and then they totally lowball you anyway.  And THEN they tell you that they think they found mold in the basement, so they need to do a full mold inspection.  And you laugh, because, WHY NOT?! Everything else that could possibly gone wrong, has!  So they do a mold inspection, and they say, basically, HOLY SHIT, THERE IS MOLD EVERYWHERE!!! And they tell you it will cost $10,000 to “remediate” it, and they’ll have to rip out the finished basement, and this will DEFINITELY affect the buyout price, and by now you have figured out that this is a total sham, but now you have this stupid report that has to be disclosed to buyers (goodbye, buyers!) unless you can prove there is no mold.  So you pack up your children and drive six hours back to your old house that you’re totally homesick for anyway and you wish you’d never moved from, and you spend two days bleaching the hell out of everything and ripping up carpet and sealing basement walls and replacing insulation and making sure the basement is dry as a BONE so that you can pay a different mold inspection company $800 (ack! that’s 2.5 days at RTF!) to come and make sure there is no mold.  And you decide “screw the relocation company, if the house doesn’t sell for a reasonable price by 9/30, we will rent it instead.”

Some days I feel like Job.  Is that overly dramatic?  But, for example, I took Petite for her neuropsych eval, and as part of her writing, she wrote, “I don’t care about anyone in my family except Angryboy.”  And while this is something I knew, this is my daughter.  This is a child I waited for for a year.  This is a child I have lived with and loved for three years.  She doesn’t hate me.  She just feels nothing for me.  It is worse, somehow.  And when I sat with the doctor that day, he told me, “She is going to be a tough case.  You know that conventional therapy doesn’t work with these kids.  Play therapy is not going to work.  Talk therapy is not going to do it.  Family therapy is not going to help.  You could go to (clinic near you), but you are beyond that.  You could send her to RTF, but they would send her back in two years and say she is unreachable.  She does not want to form relationships with people.  She does not want to be in a family.  We are going to have to really reach and and do something different with her, and YOU are going to have to do the work with her.  I’m really going to have to think about what this needs to look like..”  I just thought, “Why, God? WHY?  After all we’ve been through with AngryBoy, this is what you’ve got in store next?”  I try to remember that God has a plan and that I don’t have to understand it, I just have to do the best I can with what I’ve got and lean on Him for support.  But sometimes it just seems like it is ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER and there is no room to CATCH MY BREATH before I get something else dumped on me, and I don’t want to say that it is hard being me, but sometimes (!) life is a little challenging!

But really.  My kids have enough food to eat.  I have a beautiful house to live in (TWO OF EM!)  I have a husband who loves me.  He has a great job with benefits.  We have our health.  I have lots of anti-depressants. (HA!)  My dogs think I’m awesome.  Tonight is the SYTYCD finale.  I am still running.  Jesus loves me/this I know/for the Bible/tells me so.

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