Did I Make The Right Decision?

When I held my eldest daughter in my arms for the very first time - I felt a love like no other.  My only goal was to give her the best life I could possibly give her.  My dreams and hopes for her were numerous.  I would send her to the best schools, have lots of play dates, love her, cherish her, help her to become the woman that she was meant to be...  I believed with all my heart that my love for her was so great that we could overcome every obstacle. I believed that she would never doubt my love for her....  I believed that she would have a wonderful happy healthy life......  Seventeen Years Later..........

Mental illness is a terrible destructive disease...  There are so many things that can go wrong... The highs and lows can knock you off your feet....  All the love in the World at times just isn't enough...  When you have a hormonal daughter who is Bi-polar and therapy and medication haven't touched it yet - it's hard to see that the future could be bright....

I always knew my beautiful and smart daughter marched to a different drummer than most other kids...  She had a little dream world that she lived in that made it almost impossible to make friends - pick up on cues of good and bad choices.. She had started therapy when she was in kindergarten because she would constantly steal things from other kids' pencil boxes...and she was a little different...  As the years went by - her grades were always good - her teachers never really cared for her because she was that kid that didn't pay attention in class and was often caught playing with her hair - her pencils - her fingers.. Whatever distracted her that particular day.... In other words - she drove her teachers bonkers...

We went through all of elementary school without too many problems...  Middle school was a challenge the last year - her 8th grade year...  I think this may have been the start of her illness..  She had an extreme behavior - nothing was ever a enough - enough food, enough money, enough attention...  She joined Facebook that year and the inappropriate flirting began....  The dangerous behavior started...  The lack of impulse control started to happen....  I thought that I caught it in time but I was wrong - so wrong.. She just got better at hiding it....

Fast Forward to the beginning of her junior year in high school.... She started her 11th year with a nice boyfriend she met the year before...  At the beginning of her school year - a girl that she felt was her soul mate - someone who just clicked with her decided to turn her back on my kid...  I don't know what happened...  The girl just stopped talking....  Would look through my daughter...  That was the trigger to the complete downfall of my beautiful girl... 

First it was the appearance - the beautiful hair - bright clothes - light makeup - smiling face - turned to dark clothes - dark hair - dark makeup and constant frowns and lack of tolerance for others...  She broke up with the boyfriend..  She would constantly argue with us.. She tallied up over 50 detentions for tardiness - smoking on campus - kicked out of a class for dropping the F Bomb.. But the biggest sign and wake up call to our home - our family was when I received a call from Child Protective Services...

My daughter started to hang out with the dark kids - the kids that all have been "abused" and have multiple stories to tell..  The kids that got caught smoking pot in the bathroom - the kids that tried to hook up with my kid for a "drug day"..  The kids that believed themselves to be bi-sexual and sex was good if it was over the top..  Watching - reading porn was good....  Sending naked pictures of oneself to strangers was the norm...  My kid as I learned through therapy is a cameleon...  She becomes what she thinks is cool....  Because after going through her dark moods - her constant yelling - her constant extremes - I yelled at her - I called her ugly..  I was wrong to yell - I'm a grown up for God's sake but regardless -   It was exactly what my kid wanted to happen because now she would go to the counselor at her school and tell them I verbally abused her.... CPS came out and interviewed everyone...  They determined that my kid wasn't that credible... But therapy was needed.....

Several weeks later - the diagnose of Bi-polar was agreed on by several therapists and psychiatrists.. Bio-feedback was used... Different meds - so far nothing has worked except for she is allergic to several - she gets massive tremors from others - and one med made her worse that she was hospitalized in  psychiatric hospital for a week - determined by the doctor that she was a danger to herself.. Especially after the fact that she cut the word DIE into her arm with a razor blade... I really hoped that the hospital stay would help to turn her around... But unfortunately - it lasted only a week...  Now she is much darker...

She found an app on her smart phone - an app that meets up people who live locally...  I discovered last weekend that she had been meeting strangers at the park in our neighborhood....  Strangers that wanted only one thing from my innocent daughter - think Chris Hansen 'To Catch A Predator"....  Thankfully - she hasn't been harmed and thankfully we did discover it - Her phone service has been cancelled permanently due to the fact that she has done many dangerous behaviors on line and via text... She no longer has access to the Internet...

This Summer my husband and I made the very tough decision to send our daughter to a 2 month therapeutic camp in hopes of helping her to love herself... depend on herself... help her gain the confidence she needs to make healthy life choices.A camp that has therapy daily - single and group... 

We will take a family trip together and then my daughter will be off to the Outback - I hope - I pray that we made the right decision and this camp will help my beautiful smart and loving girl to come back to us and be able to move forward towards a happy healthy life......