Sometimes there are crumbs

Part One of a two part post -

I must apologize for the long break in writing - I think mostly to myself. Sometimes getting things out on here means I don't dwell on them in my head and can actually sleep. Or try to sleep. Or think about trying to sleep. Sleep isn't really all that necessary anyway. With two little snuggle bunny boys that like to crawl into my bed, I often wake up warm and wet for exactly the reason you are thinking from BOTH of them. That is really not the way you want to start your day off. So skipping the sleep process doesn't look so bad when you skip the warm welcome to the day and the accompanying laundry.

As you may or may not know, for years we have struggled with Songbird and what we thought was severe depression, and a case of bad behavior/attitude. Turns out that the diagnosis of depression was completly inaccurate and the medication she was taking for it - risky for teens to start with - actually was sending her plummeting down into an even darker world that includes delusions, hallucinations, and a stronger level of depression.

Since the medicine wasn't working, the doctors added another in July - which has caused her to gain 50 lbs since then. Gaining 50 lbs to anyone is tough, when you are a self conscious teenage girl who already was battling body issues and eating issues, it is life shattering. Add situational stress and anxiety and there is the perfect recipe for disaster. Which struck and rocked our family off the Richter scale levels. The quakes are beginning to subside, and the rubble is being cleared away, so now I think I can write again.

Songbird often seems very rational even when she is not, and it is often difficult to discern what is real or not - for her, and for those of us taking care of her.  When she says something, it becomes incorporated into her reality, whether or not it is real or not. She also incorporates elements of what people have told her, what she has read, and what she has seen in movies, tv, and other people's lives into her own experiences.  This has caused fabrications of entire people and events that never actually occurred, but to her are real.

Parenting a child with any mental illness is hard. There just aren't enough resources available. And the ones that are there tend to be clinical, stuffy, and have limited practical day to day application options available. Yes, there is prayer, but it is hard to remember to stop and pray, or count and breathe when you have spent all day riding the roller coaster of a child who is both hormonal and bipolar, as well as taking care of two preschoolers, a toddler, an emotional nine year old with learning disabilities, and you know, that whole house thing. 

During this time we have also been forced to close the business, and thusly loose our primary source of income. Ordinarily in a situation like this I would return to work, but there isn't daycare for a 14 year old, and I can't leave a child who is fine one hour and suicidal the next, who cuts, who doesn't know what is real all the time, home alone. Nor is she ready to be in a regular school environment yet.

My husband is also living temporarily in an apartment several blocks away, and has been living outside our home for almost two months.  Songbird's struggles have caused this to be necessary, though we still love each other very much and currently have goals of reuniting our family, it may be some time, such as several years, before we are able to do so.

So sometimes, life can be a little crumb - y.