Wanderlust......

timer lady

Queen of Hearts
As you wonder through the maze of GFGdom, don't you find yourselves with a true feeling of wanderlust. Just wanting to get up & find a new, more exciting adventure.

It's been a tough night for sleep & I've been extremely nostalgic this evening. There have been so many of our difficult children struggling .... really struggling. So many of our good :warrior: parents showing the strain...I worry.

Memories of husband & I as DINKs kept sliding through - the times we would take off from Seattle & hit the coast for flying kites & fresh seafood. It was fun - little thought & planning went into it & we came back smiling. Or heading East from Seattle to Spokane to visit the Onion bar & grill for a beer & an order of onion rings. Just to turn around & head home. Again silly.....the fun.

We've grown, matured. We chose to become parents. Ahhhh, the parenting though has brought me, personally, to my knees. I'm honored to be kt & wm's parents yet at the same time humbled. I can think of nothing more that will help my babies & have other things on my mind.

And I dream once again of the fun.......I search for this silly kind of fun for & with the tweedles & have floundered. So I look ahead again with husband....... I miss the laughter - the fun...

I hope you have fun memories with your children - store them as they come. For husband & myself, these types of memories are too far & few between. And once again, we are out of ideas - from the simple to the grand. I guess it's the Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) that doesn't allow kt or wm to relax & have fun with us. To enjoy building that goofy looking lego castle or watching mom totally fail at rock, paper, scissors. The things I would giggle with my mom & dad at.

There is little bitterness left toward the illnesses/disorders that so define the tweedles; more a sense of the bittersweet. A sense of duty - knowing what needs to be done now & down the road.

And praying that one day, we will become enough of a family to enjoy one another. To play together, laugh together, love one another.....to simply be.
 

dreamer

New Member
good morning Linda. Sleep is evading me, too. I have been just reminiscing about the long hard years from difficult children birth to the present. It has been a very hard difficult road, filled with not just bumps in the road but times when the road seemed to disappear altogether. The only thing I would change would be......well, I dunno. certainly there are a LOT of things, if they had been in MY power to change, I would. No bipolar, no bad genetics, the last 2 hours I have even been wondering if I would pursue treatment at all if I had to do it all over again. I really do not know.
I have been trying to decide if it helped at all or not. I have been trying to decide if it maybe harmed her. Her psychiatrist thinks it might have. I tend to agree. BUT .....what did we know? Heck, the docs did not even know. SO the ONLY conclusion I came to tonite (this morning) was that I am profoundly grateful my difficult child is alive........and here......right here......and just about anything else just does not really matter to me at the moment.

LOL, we never did have the ability to just pick up and do things, LOL, been under heavy responsibility ever since..well, since I was 12 for sure. Actually it is right NOW that I have been haveing my first freedoms of MY whole life. and difficult child is right there beside me, LOL and I do mean RIGHT there. Oh in the most literate sense. But it's OK cuz.she is mine, and I love her, even while I am thinking oy vey calgon take me away.
I often think I would not be bothering to be finding any of Lifes little (or big) joys if I were not haveing the kids hands to grab to show THEM Lifes joys.

Be sure, my kids do not always enjoy it. They are not always up to it. Buffy gets way way down, or she goes disassociative, and the rest of us kinda sit here and look at each other for a bit. husband gets psychotic and we all just stop in our tracks and wait, a minute, a week, whatever.

we are NOT Norman Rockwell, be sure. Oh the kids yikes do they fight. 2 girls 18 months apart to the day, and as different in looks, size, abilities, interests, personalities as can possibly be. and then the young son.

Believe it or not many of those memories with the kids, have to do with psychiatric hospital stays, psychiatric hospital visits, psychotic episodes.....either Buffys or mine or DHs.......visits from CPS.......various therapists etc. It was after all, part of our life, the kids will recall those things and tease each other over them, or yell at each other, or poke fun at each other. Sometimes easy child will still get irate at difficult child over some bizarre event of many years ago.
Other times easy child seems to have forgotten some of the worst times of all. Sometimes difficult child remembers really bad bad times, and will come running to hug easy child and thank easy child for still being her sister, in spite of the hard times.

I would venture to say all persons have hard times in their lives, in their childhoods.....siblings have difficulties, families are not always Leave it to Beaver.
I have 3 cousins born to their mother while she was inpatient in a TB sanitarium, then after that she was in state mental hospital for a few more years. Getting together with those cousins? I used to expect to hear them speak of how hard Life was. They don't. They LOL and discuss the fun times, the good times. They share special recipes their mom had, special little secrets shared with her.....
Kids will remember the good. People will remember the good.
My head knows my life was hard, very very hard, and sent to the streets at age 12 to fend for myself. But what I remember is not that so much as my younger siblings and how much fun I had with them.

Is life good for my kids now? I do not know. It's Life. THats all. I know for sure it is far from great We have been on vacation exactly ONCE in their life (and mine) We do not go to movies, we do not go on many outings. Daily they grumble. BUT when I hear them talking to their friends, they tell all kinds of good things....little things they remember. Laughing cuz mom said they could try coffee (it was decaf) Happy cuz mom fund a cool tshirt at walmart for them.
Is my Buffy relaxed> I doubt she would know relaxed from a frog. BUT she can still hold on to a happy moment. And she will still tell it to a friend. I am sure long after I am gone, she will be remembering.....happy things. funny things.

Find the joy in the simplest things. Kinda like if you watch the cents the dollars will take care of themself. Take care of little things, and the rest will be there, even if you are not looking, even if you are not even working on it. Maybe the kids will not tell YOU right now...part of that is their age. One day it will hit them, how they maybe liked to ride in the car....even if it was on way to doctor appointment. Or maybe they will like how kichen duty was shared or handled.
There WILL be something. I am sure of it.
Even dureing the trauma of y sons eye surgery, and he was under effetcs of anesthesa and would not waken for DAYS.....just yesterday he said to hisfriend, - ya know there i was so messed up, and everything that could go wrong was, with me, my body, and with the hospital and everything. but I remember this silly ....milkshake. it musta been the best one I EVER had. Hmm, yeah, mom went and stole it from nurses station. He was not supposed to HAVE it. and he took ONE sip and threw up.......and I got caught......LOL.
and I did not even think he was conscious!!!!!

You might be surprised. You mght be happily surprised.
 

dreamer

New Member
OK my apologies. I think I am in this .....rut.....cuz of the funerals piling up yet again on my plate, my kids plates.....and I am again in this mindset of OMG, I am just SOOOO glad my kids are alive. So glad I am alive. my poor kids have been to far more funerals than most elderly adults have been to in their whole entire life.
Not for adults, but for their pees, friends, classmates, cousins etc.

SO I think I might be ridiculously unrealistically simply joyous my kids are here.

Buffy, she had been suicidal, as a very young child. then a cutter, a druggie, drinking, run away.......gone long periods of time. I was SO afraid ......SO scared. I can take the challeneges she presents NOW by being agoraphobic and glued to my side becuz I am still so grateful she is here at all. IIRC I made some deal with ?? the devil? God? Someone, maybe I made some deal bring her home, safe and I will love her no matter what else? And I will be grateful. I do not remember for sure.

My easy child? Yikes, to have found out she had been molested right under our nose sort of at her fiends, and that she REPORTED it to school, who reported it to CPS and police bt then let it go, and NEVER told ME for 9 YEARS? and that it happened numerous times over those years? She reported it, her sister reported it and the friend reported it, all were victims......as well as 6 OTHER girls?
I am SO grateful she seems OK......easy child had a strange little accident as an infant, and almost died. I am SO grateful she didn't. easy child is driving now and every single day I am scared and every single evening I am SO happy to see her walk in the door, it is just ridiculous.

My son, the miracle baby with all kinds of weird things at his birth. thru his pregnancy. then his 2 eye surgeries. 9 hours each time, I sat very alone, in the surgery waiting room, scared to peices.

Adventure? Living with my kids is an adventure. It is high stakes very scary.......it is pure joy. It has been a LOT of hard work, hard times, hardest thing I have ever ever done. and I am still doing it. But I also love it more than life itself.

I resent most of all, what the school and treatment teams put us thru. How they treated us, how they handled things.

I also hate hate hate how my body let me down and failed and forced my children to witness that.....I hate it but....in hindsight my kids grew some dureing that time. and so did I.
Do I get wanderlust? sure, so long as I can drag one or all or some of my kids along on my wanderings. adventure? every day here is a major adventure. some good, some not so good, some downright bad. do we get on each others last raw nerve? you betchya. do we fight? there is probably at least one fight every day, and some days the whole day is a fight. after all we have multiple mental illnesses going and several different ages here...... and our home is a mere 900 sq feet. add in our various physical disabilities, and it sure can get interesting.

But - again, my apologies cuz I am looking at things thru grief filled eyes today.
 

house of cards

New Member
I think I understand what you are talking about. There just isn't any way I have my parents situation raising these kids. I have come to accept the rages, the ODD, the almost constant conflict, the full time supervision, and I get to see occasional times of true sweetness, comfort and support for one another, enough to give us hope. Yet where is the chance to have a peaceful picnic and come home happy? It just doesn't work to expect everyone to enjoy/handle a good time. I am lucky in that I can take 1 or 2 of my kids out and get this time but I want it as a completer family. It is sad.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
I am very aware, right now, of how peaceful my life is. difficult child is doing so very well, I am really PROUD of him. The violence is GONE, he isn't cutting anymore, he has close friends and a girlfriend. I haven't met the girlfriend, but my parents have and they say she is intelligent and sweet and funny. YAY!

The other day we were at McD's picking up burgers for a snack. The girl at the counter looked at thank you (who was kind of flipping around, not near anyone) and said he looked like he should be difficult child's little bro. I laughed, said let me introduce you to difficult child's little bro. She was amazed. It was silly and fun.

Recently, while I was recovering, Gracie knocked a box off the top shelf of the closet onto my head (no damage to my neck, thankfully!). It was the box of photos I put away shortly after difficult child was removed from our home. I looked through the photos and remembered the happy times with difficult child. It didn't rip my heart out to see the photos, this is a new development. I can see the happy times, and not ache so much I think my heart will just stop.

So I AM finally able to see the silly, happy fun times. I can see the photos of my boys again. I had put up some of thank you's baby and toddler pics because he looked EXACTLY like difficult child and it hurt. But those are back out.

I think I am going to try to focus on the happy for the next while. I am READY now!

Susie
 

mrscatinthehat

Seussical
Interesting that you should bring this up. I had a session with difficult child 1 yesterday before I came up to the college in Ames. She started almost whining when I mentioned that I was staying in a hotel with a pool. I stood and told her that the hotel was my luxery. It was for me. Not for her, not for difficult child 2, not for easy child, not for husband for me. It was mine. I am not allowed a lot of that and this was mine. The look on her face was quite one of surprise. (alas we all know that teenagers do need a wake up call that we are allowed lives occaisionally).

husband and I came into this situation differently. We never had the us freedom. The kids already had the problems in full swing (although he was in denial) when we got together. So we haven't had many of those moments of us. However that doesn't stop me from missing having had them. I don't have a picture of us all together. And at this point never will. We are a very atypical family.

I do understand what you are saying. It can be very strange to love our kids implicitly and still have in the back of the head something different.

Many hugs

beth
 

Star*

call 911........call 911
I feel like a 19th century top. The kind you wrap the string around and then pull. The top spins fast at first, and around and around in a whirlwind of delight and energy only to eventually have it's revolutions reduced to wobbling and eventually die with no energy and fall into a heap waiting for the cord to be wrapped around and pulled and start the process all over again.

I think this process repeats itself like parents helping difficult child's until we either see improvement in our children or we hide the string ourselves and stop spinning out of control.

Personally I feel like Dude replaced the string with a rip cord some days - and others I'm more like a see and say - The difficult child Mom says NO, The angry Mom says ARE YOU FOR REAL? The nice Mom says "That's nice". The Mom in the mall with a difficult child and an apparent melt down says "OH GOOD GRIEF HERE WE GO."

Most days - I'm Mrs. Potato head. My lips are where my eyes should be - I've lost an ear, I have on stick legs, and combat boots, and someone mixed my hats up so now I wear a derby instead of a sun hat, and the kids pushed Mr. Potato head's moustache under my nose for so long it stuck.
 

Shari

IsItFridayYet?
Oh, how I feel this right now.

I look back at life before even just wee difficult child, and I SO miss those times. Even the sleepless nights of the newborn difficult child 2. Don't get me wrong, I love my baby so very much. But there are way too many days that I do not love my existence at all.

I struggle at times to let go of that past, or to hang onto just memories. I beat myself up over choices made. difficult child was conceived while my then husband was in the mist of yet another affair, and I had decided to leave and take difficult child 1 with me. But alas, I was pregnant with difficult child 2. I struggled with the decision to have a baby in a failing marriage with a man who was already proven not to be any sort of husband or father, or not. In the end, I had no choice, even tho I taunted myself that I did. And I live with that choice every day.

But the decision to give difficult child life, at times, seems to have ended mine. My friends are few and far between. My marriage, tho far from perfect, is strained. My other children take back burner. My health is affected. My career is probably hopelessly in the toilet.

I also realize that the things I hold dear are things that half the population, or better, never even notices. In that, I find comfort. Even maybe a bit of blessing that I can live with less, in a sense. But day to day, dealing with the parents of more 'typical' children, I still envy that. I still want that. I want my kid to be able to HANDLE Disneyland. Its not in my cards for right now, so I redefine what I can, throw pity parties when I feel I need to, and get up tomorrow and do it again, cause it dang sure ain't getting better on its own. (tho it may not be, anyway)
 
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