Just keep swimming

A little part inside of me dies every time we weather one of those “fits”.

I called her bluff the day she sawed on her wrist with a kitchen knife (I knew the knife was dull). But when she ran out her bedroom window onto the porch roof last night and threw her legs over the edge, I was less sure whether to call her bluff or call 911.

Balancing on the tightrope between giving in to the bipolar fits and remaining strong and teaching her to not use theatrics to get her way has finally worn me down. “Please come in,” I begged, hating myself for it at the same time.

After she was safely tucked in bed for the night and “permanently seal windows” in her bedroom was added to the “To Do” list, my inner self curled into the fetal position once the adrenaline subsided and has remained there. And I hate myself for it.

I was raised to always be strong. Weakness is a character flaw. Like Dory from Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming!” is my mantra.

When my son was a baby, I called my mom constantly for advice. She had been a mom, after all, and bonus – she’s a nurse!

My match.com experience

When my son was about six months old in 1998, I packed up my possessions in Florida and with the help of my mom, drove a 28' rental truck (ironically noted it was the same size as the boat I lost after my fiance died) from Florida to Chicago. We were proud of our female trucker selves, making a cross-country trip in a truck nearly the size of a semi with an infant. We laughed and felt like brethren to the semi drivers we encountered along I-75 and other interstates along the way.

How I got to that point as a single mother of an infant feeling the need to leave the state I'd made my home and move back to my "birth home" is another story. I was so young too -- 25. See, my fiance was killed when I was seven months pregnant. I thought moving back home to my family (but away from my friends) would provide the emotional and family support I desperately needed at the time, as well as get me out of the environment where ghosts haunted my every move. I also thought my son needed the influence of grandparents in the way my grandparents positively influenced me growing up, and he wasn't going to get that living 900 miles away.

I initially moved in with my dad in the suburbs and found a job with an independent Chicago franchise of the medical software company I had worked for in Florida. My son's crib took up residence in my brother's old room, replacing the bed. I occupied my sister's old room and had ISDN installed. At 25 years old, I felt funny living with my dad. What if I wanted to date? Would someone judge me for "living with my parents" after I had been independent for so long? Plus, the commute from Crystal Lake to an office near O'Hare airport was brutal, costing me over two hours of each day that I would have rather spent with my baby.

So I bought a car (sold my impractical 2-seater Florida car to my babysitter before leaving) and rented a house the owners were waiting to bulldoze and rebuild in Park Ridge, IL, mere miles from my office. Also mere pennies from affordable for me -- I mean, the guy in the mansion across the street had a Ferrari day at his house! And then the loneliness set in and about a year after being widowed, I decided I was ready to date again. But I had a child and wasn't really in on the bar scene. So where does one in my situation meet people?

That's where the relatively new-at-the-time site match.com came in. I lived the internet life, so sure, why not? I'd been on CompuServ since 1994. I designed a website for the ticketing software company I worked for in 1995. I frequently inhabited IRC chat rooms. How different could it be?

Vastly.

I signed up and set up my profile. The first few potential matches did nothing for me and I didn't even grace them with a response. One, however, caught my eye. The guy's photo was gorgeous and his profile was perfect. Until that point, I had not sent anyone a message, only received (and rebuffed) them. But this one... I summoned my courage and sent out a feeler message.

We spent the next several weeks chatting on the phone every night after my son was in bed. He was funny, charming and a little bold. Eventually we set up a first date. He said he'd take me to the restaurant on the top floor of the Hancock building in Chicago. I mean, wow! Fancy! So I dropped my son of at my mom's and squeezed myself into my old homecoming dress for a fancy night out on the town in the windy city. I had given him my address to come pick me up.

So I applied makeup I hadn't done in a year. I dressed up. And then I sat at my kitchen counter on my laptop and eagerly waited my first date in a year, jumping every time headlights swept across my living room. But they all drove on by. And time ticked on.

He didn't show up. He didn't answer his phone. And he had my home address. And I had a baby to protect. After a couple hours, paranoia set in and I fled to my mom's house and spent the night there, shedding the dress, and suddenly afraid to return to my "grown up" rental in the near 'burbs of Chicago. So *this* was what I had been warned about the internet.

The guy never answered his phone again. I became pretty confident his profile pic was a magazine model scan. But nothing bad ever happened from it. He just disappeared. Eventually I got sick of the Chicago winter and traffic and not being close enough to family for that help I thought I'd get, so I returned to my friends and familiar Florida where I'd made my adult life. A friend set me up with an IT contractor she had worked with in DC who owned a house near me. We've now been married 11 years (next week) and ended up moving to DC. He adopted my son and we have a daughter together. So a happy ending after all.

After we met, his brother met a woman on match.com. While I was initially skeptical that anything good could come from that site, they eventually married and had two kids together and are happily married to this day.

10 Fingers and 10 Toes

10 fingers and toes. No complications during labor. Takes to breastfeeding easily. That's all a mother hopes for when the birth of a child is imminent. Frankly, I'd rather my daughter was born with a missing digit than the hell she seems to live in (and takes us into with her).

For eight or so months, a mother-to-be eagerly awaits her child-to-be, carefully planning and dreaming. Will the baby be colicky or have a sparkling happy personality? What outfit should be worn first when we bring the new bundle of joy home from the hospital? The next few years are spent fretting over breastfeeding long enough, when to start solid foods, milestones like rolling over, sitting up and standing. Every parent dreams of having the perfect and healthy child who meets (or maybe beats) those milestones. Mothers envision their progeny breezing through school, going to college and stepping out into the world as a productive well-adjusted adult, if they even look that far into the future.

Until it doesn't happen. Parenting is never easy, but adding a possible mental illness to an otherwise beautiful child is heart-wrenching and unexpected. The prospect isn't even on the radar screen of new-child fears.

I've had to remove my daughter from play dates by carrying her out kicking and screaming after a mother calls me saying she doesn't know what to do with this out of control child, please come get her. I've had a hired car driver stop and turn the dome light on "just to get a look at her" after an hour long ride complete with tirade. She has flustered me with her grown-up arguments and emotional blackmail during these episodes, and most recently, stunned me with her sailor language. The best part? She wants me dead.

Perfect child? Not by a long shot - at least not perfect in the sense of what an expectant mother fantasizes. She's brilliant - dare I say a genius, artistic, loves animals and writing. She can work a room full of adults with ease, charming them all. But there's something wrong. If only she used her gifts and talents for good.

I remember her refusing as a toddler to get into the car seat compliantly. She would thrust her hips out and scream so much she'd make herself throw up. We would have to push her down to get the thing buckled. And then when she was old enough to undo the buckles herself? Oh boy! I can't count how many times we had to pull over to secure her back in the seat while she laughed triumphantly. Then came the hitting and biting of peers at daycare. She was "expelled" from two daycares before she finally finished out the last two years before kindergarten at a Catholic preschool.

These sound like normal childhood issues, right? We didn't suspect anything was seriously wrong until....

In first grade (at six years old!), the school said she couldn't return until she was under counseling care and tested. Her crime? She threatened a boy in after care that she was going to go get her brother's BB gun and come back and shoot him. As you know, schools take gun threats very seriously these days. But at 6? Really. She wasn't a threat to anybody. But we had to prove it. In the meantime, we grew more and more concerned that her continuing temper tantrums were not normal. Most kids outgrow those before they begin attending school. Not A.

We've put her through a 42 week group skills and socialization program and had her psychologically tested (both required by the school system after the gun incident). All the psychologist found was that she was incredibly intelligent and highly ADHD. Huh. That didn't jive with my own experience with family members (and a son) with ADHD. She has no problem doing homework and chores. No complaining. She'll just sit down and do it. She wasn't forgetful or scatterbrained. So I resisted the recommendation for medication since I've always grappled with the decision to medicate my son (though he clearly needs it) and she didn't have any of the same issues he did. He was so hyper and careless, he was likely to hurt himself or others accidentally and could not focus enough to do homework. Not so in her case.

We've rearranged our work schedules so that after care is no longer necessary and a parent is always home after school.

Her issue has been rages. Big kid temper tantrums. And now at 9 she's so big and I can no longer physically pick her up and make her get dressed or go downstairs for breakfast so she doesn't miss the bus. She doesn't understand that those rages and behavior are unacceptable and her responsibility to keep under control. She'll blame me for "yelling" at her (which may have just been me raising my voice saying you need to be downstairs in 2 minutes or you will miss your bus). Or last night, "You need to get ready for bed and should start before 9:30." Boom! Nuclear war. She wants to kill me. Literally. She says so.

She has kicked me hard enough to leave a bruise on my stomach. She has bit me multiple times, bit her beloved grandmother as we were trying to remove her from a restaurant before she pulled the tablecloth off the table and threw utensils at other people. She has said the most horrible awful things to me.

So it's time for a child psychiatrist to find out once and for all what is going on. And the prospects terrify me. My heart is broken for that imagined child she did not become and the pain she must be in herself when the "other self" takes over. She really seems to have no control over it. I would rather she was born with 9 fingers or toes than have to struggle with this. But here we go.

We met with the child psychiatrist yesterday. He is already talking about bipolar disorder and her requiring mood stabilizer medication. He said his diagnosis will say "Mood Disorder NOS" so she doesn't run into road blocks later in life with a bipolar diagnosis. And my heart still breaks. Where did this come from? Isn't it genetic? Since both DH and I are clueless about half of our biological families, I guess it's entirely possible.

A will see him in five days, then us the following day for the official diagnosis. It can't come soon enough, yet terrifies me at the same time. But this is killing me. I don't have the strength (physical or emotional) to continue these struggles with her. My usual energy and optimistic view have been crushed for the time being. I've questioned my parenting, my DNA, my patience, wondering if the time she fell off the bed as an infant maybe broke her brain... Or the asthma meds as an infant? In the face of these rages, it's really hard to keep your cool and maintain control as the parent. And my heart breaks. But I have to gather my strength because now we have to find the med combo that works for her. I just want her to grow up a happy adult who can have lasting healthy relationships.

In the meantime, I depressed the hell out of myself last night reading the forums on bpkids.org. People post with signature lines worn like badges with their kids' diagnosis and medication.

Where were you

September 11th is a day I don't like to think about. Very much like one other September day. My son was in preschool in Arlington, VA. My husband was a contractor at the Pentagon. I worked as a contractor at the FCC in DC after we got married and moved from our beach life in Florida to the snooty confines of DC for work. Despite the challenges of having a child like my (our) son (K adopted him - thus the funny name)... we thought having a child of our own was in order. I was 8 months pregnant with her on Sept. 11, 2001.

We didn't have TV's in our office at the FCC and it was before the age of streaming news. We had just bought a house in southern Maryland for my mom. She hadn't moved in yet. I heard about the first plane crash into the towers and thought it was a mistake. An accident. Then my desk phone rang. It was my mom.

"Go home! Go home now!" What? I metroed in, as usual. I'd have to metro home. The office was buzzing with news of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center, but at that point, we thought it was an accident, not intentional. "That's New York," I replied, "Nothing is happening here." She told me about the second plane and that one had also crashed into the Pentagon. WHAT?!

I frantically tried to pull up CNN on my computer, but the site wasn't responding. My boss had a TV in his office, and most of our group gathered around it, but I didn't want to leave my phone. I tried calling my husband, but couldn't get through. I left a voicemail. By then we knew it was a terrorist attack. Despite my mom's fears, I was pretty confident the FCC wouldn't be a target, but the government evacuated DC and told us to go home.

A coworker gave me a ride home as I wasn't about to get on the Metro with all the rumors swirling around. We crept through DC - seeing smoke rising from the Pentagon across the river. People were out walking across bridges. The whole sight was surreal. I kept trying to reach my husband, who I thought had said he'd be at a satellite office but actually was in the Pentagon when the plane hit.

Two posts in one day!

Will wonders never cease?!

I used to be a pretty darn good writer. But somewhere along the way, I think I became too "me" focused. Actually, I was always that way, but it worked for me. It no longer does. Partially because I take sniping and criticism to heart (despite advising others to be ducks and let it roll off their backs). I've also apparently lost passion for what I write about. Topics used to come easy to me. I could read one quote and riff an entire post off it. Now, I can go days before anything sparks my interest to take to the keyboard. And now I get paid for it... so I fret over if it's "good enough" for the media site and obsess over word counts (something unheard of before).

Something happened that sparked that passion again and I wrote probably one of my best pieces (on my personal blog, not the media site). Still, it was a little too "me" focused and maybe I should have left that out. I was trying to paint a picture of how the person I was writing about wasn't like his peers in the press box, not make it my horror at not being his best friend. I think I missed the mark there. What I was trying to convey was that the image he presents is not all it appears, but oh well.

I had information he did not. He clearly misspoke and then lashed out at people who "had no information". Which I had. And he didn't. I was enraged. He lashed out against someone he covers day to day who is a national star. It was wrong. So I took him down.

And now I'm regretting it. I'm not one to get negative normally in my writing. I'm not negative in person. But now I feel like a "bad person". I want the good passion back. I don't want to get angered in order to write well (and then worry about showing my face in the press box ever again since it appears this guy will not get fired for his clearly wrong embarrassing remarks). Huh.

So now I'm considering quitting something I've loved and enjoyed for the past 5 years over a single event where I was for once in my life very opinionated. Silly? I don't know. Just when I achieved my goals of getting hired by a major media outlet to write, not be a sysadmin. Maybe I can retrain myself to write with a new style, but my honesty and views are what I've done well. Ho hum, what a conundrum.

I still stand by what I wrote :P

The other side to this is the deeper in I get, the more I see the sniping between (and behind backs of) other writers. I see the lies and misinformation fed to the media. It's lost its shine. That childlike innocence and craving curiosity I possessed that led me to this point has been killed.

I'm a big chicken

I never contacted anyone. I learned the boy died in a motorcycle accident after he skidded off a California highway into a utility pole at high speed. He was in the military and at the base in Lompoc. While discovering his death resurfaced some of my pain, the family has now had 4 years to heal and I decided there's no need to re-open two wounds for them. My heart breaks for the girl, however. In her short life she's lost both parents and her brother. Maybe when my son is older, I'll tell him he has a half sister and how to find her. Next month will mark 13 years since "the event" I still don't like to think about.

In other news, I think it's time to give up wine before dinner. Not the blog (which clearly I don't update enough), but the actual practice!

The Box

A woman sits in her office in Washington, D.C. looking at photos of two children taken about thirteen years ago hung on the wall of her cubicle. The one of the older child, a Korean boy, is a professional photo of him perched on a stepladder smiling at the camera with a basketball tucked under his arm. He is around 11 years old in the photo, the same age the woman's son is now. The other is a Polaroid snapshot of a 4 year-old girl standing next to a screened pool in Florida in pigtailed blonde hair holding a stuffed animal. Underneath the old photos, the woman pinned up the most current photos of the children. The boy, all grown up, grinning in a store dressed in a motorcycle jacket. The girl, sixteen, taking a self-photo which she puts in an album called "There's a hole in my heart" with the caption, "But outside, everything's ok".

They are not the woman's children. They might have grown up in the same house had history played out in a completely different manner. Instead, all three are haunted by a tragedy that occurred twelve years ago and have never met because of it. The woman ran far away and tried to never look back. Every once in a while she tried to look up the children, hoping with all her heart they were happy and fulfilled; that they grew up in their new family feeling safe, secure and loved. She learned the boy was in a high school sparring club and apparently quite accomplished. She felt pride for him and still wondered if he was happy or always haunted by the events of that fateful day.

While taking a bath, she began again wondering about the children. The boy would be about 23 or 24 -- maybe out of college and starting a career? Once seated at her computer, she began Googling his name and followed the first link to a website called familysearch.org. "Odd," she thought as she looked at the landing page. Members of the entire family were listed with birth an death dates, including the children's father, brother (news of his death was a surprise to the woman, but not shocking). No, shocking was clicking the link on the boy's name. She wound up at an individual record page.

Birth Date: 2 Jul 1986
Death Date: 5 Sep 2006

Death Date?! The woman's heart plummeted causing her stomach to turn. "There must be some mistake!" Unbelieving, she read and reread... and read again just to be sure her eyes weren't deceiving her. The birth state and residence at time of death matched what she knew about the boy. There was no mistake -- this individual record was definitely him. No, no, no this was not at all how she envisioned his life path! He died three years ago at the age of 20. He never got married, never had children of his own.

And what about his sister? The woman found her online on Twitter and Facebook. The resemblance to the woman's own son was unmistakable. The new family changed her last name (but had not changed the boy's), making finding her a little more difficult but far from impossible.

The woman grabbed a chair and pulled the box down from an overhead cabinet. Inside, the photos of the children now pinned to her wall had remained hidden in the dark confines for years. She glanced through the other contents of the box - a hat saying "Get Over It" (ha!), a wedding ring set, photos, an old (really old!) cell phone, watch, AMA membership card and a single rose petal dried and blackened. The woman cries as she pulls into the office parking garage for the second day in row while blaring the Dixie Chicks from her Jeep. Scabs were ripped off after staying sealed. Now she has a decade of submerged fears to overcome and doors to consider opening.

I've paid a price, and I'll keep paying
[...]
It's too late to make it right, I probably wouldn't if I could...
...Can't bring myself to do what it is (I) think I should
[...]
They say time heals everything, but I'm still waiting

There's a heartbroken teenage emotion-driven sixteen year old girl in Florida who lost her parents at a young age, then her brother, and may not even know she has another brother out there. But... oh those fears. Opening old memories and facing people the woman ran from...

She meant to send the girl a Holiday Barbie doll every Christmas from age 5 on. That was what her father had given her every year of her toddlerhood. Fear prevented the woman from following through, deciding to cut all ties and let the children grow up in their new family unencumbered. Now...? She guesses maybe it's time to contact the good Reverend.