
Today was rough. I learned that my daughter self harmed again and asked to see it to make sure it wasn’t too bad and healing ok. Looking at all those cuts on her arms breaks my heart – too many to even count. She has been self-harming now since April and while we’re working through counseling, I honestly thought it was getting better when in fact obviously it’s not. I felt so discouraged.
I just wanted to escape and of course first thing that comes to mind is the booze. I didn’t want to feel these feelings. I wanted to pretend just for a while that this wasn’t really happening to me. I have been praying to God and my angels – hoping that we’d catch a break and whenever I think we’re finally turning a corner – BAMM! Something else happens. Between the self-harming, her school refusal, academic issues now too because she’s avoiding and missing school and not handing in assignments or wanting to do any presentations. I fear that she won’t succeed and it truly bothers me. I can’t understand why she is so sad, angry and just not the person I knew just one year ago.
She sees a counselor once a week. The school has been going out of their way to help her. I am doing all I can and yet, there doesn’t seem to be any progress. Until SHE decides that she is going to join in the effort, it feels like it’s futile.
I try to appreciate our good moments and verbalize those with her. I try to stay positive – but today, I just wanted to cry and hide away with a bottle of vodka and just fucken FORGET!! Then the rants in my mind started about how resentful I feel that their father is living his life in oblivion of what is going on with his daughters and how they each are hurting in their own way. While he said he’d be willing to take my youngest in of course she doesn’t want to go. And to have them say that if she were there – she would not be self-harming – like I am allowing this just pisses me off to no end because it’s obvious they don’t understand what this is all about and how I can NOT watch her 24/7 – if she wants to self-harm she is going to find a way to do so. Her weapon of choice – a friggen blade from a pencil sharpener!! She managed to gather 8 of them!! From school!!
I lock things up and try to do my best to monitor her but I don’t want to have to do room searches all the time. I found out today because I happened to lift her mattress and found bloody kleenexes … she denied and avoided answering my questions but she finally fessed up that she had cut yesterday when she missed school.
All of this is taking a toll on my and while I’m strong, today I didn’t feel so strong. I felt like I was going to slip like so many times before. I reached out to Belle, to Soberistas. I went for a drive. I tried to change my thoughts. I ate – junk and realized I need to cut myself some slack. While I want to be healthy in all areas of my life – number ONE priority right now is being SOBER. I did manage to get 100 mins of exercise in today (this morning before all this happened). I did treat myself to a bath and I will be in bed early tonight. I did do a few more things in the house – fixed a chair, hung a few things up and tomorrow’s a new day.
I did NOT cave… I am finishing up day 19 AF! I know I will wake up tomorrow feeling very good about the fact that I managed to make it through the day without alcohol – even though the cravings and the VOICE was real loud!