madison

Many of you who read this already know of our journey with Madison. It has been such a long road. So much heartache adn pain has filled the years. Just when I feel hope and see light at the end slowly growing ~ I am thrown into a sudden detour that takes us off road into uncharted territory. Now is one of those times. Freedom For Youth was supposed to be the next best step towards total healing and achieving independance. Promise of graduation and wonderful things to come. I was able to get myself to a place where I could push my maternal fears aside and embrace the excitement of what was ahead. I have had to fight the waves of fear and uncertainty. It has been a stuggle for me to step aside and allow things to unfold naturally. I have struggled with the fact that they do not call. That Madison gets a 20 minute phone call each day and NEVER calls home. Fear takes over and my mind races forward to what we may be facing in the near future. But I still mustered up all my courage and stepped back and waited. until now...
I could kick myself in the butt for taking this stand. What was I thinking?? I had all those feelings for good reason it was not courage I used to push it all away. It was selfishness fueled by exhaustion. I am not really sure what it was. Maybe for once I wanted the luxury her bio mother and scott have had all these years of not having to face the reality of life with my sweet girl. Because she is sweet...under all this stuff....under all the traumatic events, drama, the poor choices, horrible mean words and attitudes she really is sweet and generous and loving...I just want to find her again. I am afraid now I may never see that side of her again.
It seems each day brings new information, new traumatic events I failed to protect her from when she was small, new things she has done, experimented with and lied about. How could I have missed so much? How could I have explained away all my fears and suspitions all those years ago? Why could I not protect my little girl? Maybe those people were right after all...maybe my heart was just not big enough to fit her completely inside and love her as a true mother should.
I stand here today staring in the face of devestation looking at the rubble left over from years of abuse and trauma and poor choices. I hear the cries of my daughter begging for me to rescue her. Cries I could not hear then but fill my senses now. The aftermath is so huge so overwhelming so massive I can not even envision where I am to begin the clean up. I ache an ache that is totally impossible to describe, an ache that fills me up completely.
Wednesday I sat with Madison in the waiting room of yet another office, waiting our turn to share her story one more time. Sitting in the peacefullness of this new office was a welcome change to the normal sterile cold unfeeling offices of our recent past. The mind is an interesting creature. It has the ability to clearly recall events, or distort reality so dramatically that it barely resembles the truth, it also has the unique ability of swallowing up a memory and burrying it in the deepest darkest places. Its the burried memories that are the most dangerous. They can surface at any moment. A simple smell random sight or sound and call them up from the deep and they come exploding out for all to expereince. These moments have been coming a lot lately. The thing is with a young lady who has bipolar it is most difficult to determine if the memory is real, imagined or actually belongs to someone else and she has taken it on as her own. The scary thing for me is that a lot of the memories that have surfaced in the last few months are believeable. Not because of what they look like alone, but what they look like in hinde sight when I return in my mind to that period of our lives and look at what life was like then. It feels kind of like watching a bad rerun of a horrible made for TV movie. Only it is US as the main characters. As I sat there I had to consciously will myself to have no reaction to the things she was sharing. Telling myself over and over dont react dont blink dont cry PLEASE DONT CRY!
Mixed in all of the trauma pain and devestation of a hurting little girl is an attitude and bitterness that is unreal. I am not saying she has no right to feel these things. It just makes it extremely difficult to be with her, she is so hateful, so angry, so bitter. I can not take all of that away. I desperately WANT to take them away from her and replace them with happy wonderful memories of hugs and kisses and sunshine and rainbows and candy....reality is I can't. I cant make this better for her. I cant erase the unspeakable things.
While I am spilling all of this out for the world (or noone) to read. I must admit I struggle with even being with her right now. For many reasons all mixed up together. Because she is so bitter and her attitude is so nasty it makes it hard for the rest of us to enjoy being with her. Because onestly I look into that face of hers and blame myself. I blame myself because I knew in my heart and spirit all those years ago it was a bad idea to send her on those visits, I knew in my spirit it was a bad idea to allow her to go with certain friends and certain places, yet I did not fight for things to change. I did not fight for her. I let the fear of the court system taking her completely away from us rule my decision to not fight. I allowed my lack of proof to back me up dictate my decision to NOT fight for her. I allowed the voices of people around me who said repeatedly that my love for her was not strong enough and her porblems were a result of my not loving her enough. All these were mere excuses to not listen to my spirit as it screamed at me to protect my daughter. And now 15 years has drifted by and I may never see that sweet tender side of her again.
I know that God is a miracle making God, He is the great Physiscian, He guides and protects us all when we call on Him to do so. My call has never been louder and my cries have never been so deep as they are today to save the life of my beautiful daughter. This journey has me exhausted.