1 week from now is our discharge date. A sobering thought in some ways, and yet the longer she stays in, the worse she gets. We’ve been given a date twice before, and each time it resulted in near disaster. Those trials led to a series of bad decisions that will forever be etched deep in my soul.

I remember having each one of my 3 children. I loved the baby stage so much. I loved holding thdm, snuggling up, rocking and singing them to sleep. If I didn’t want them to do something i just picked them up and changed directions. I never had to worry about them getting in to things as long as they were out of reach. They all loved playing outside but always stayed close. Taking care of them was pretty easy. The words “don’t touch” was all it took. Same baby, different circumstances.

I had a piano student once that was a mom of 3. She was tired and a little bitter, and when she met my kids she said to me, “Just wait till they’re older. It’s not so much fun then.” I’ve never forgotten those words I was so horrified that someone could speak so poorly of their children. It’s funny how we judge when we don’t know the whole story. She used her outside voice to express the pain she was feeling on the inside and I didn’t understand. I think I understand now a little of what she was saying. I have never felt resentful of having children, but I am guilty of muttering, “I’m too old for this s**t” in the middle of an escalation before.

As I look around my house, and the constant disaster it’s in I wonder to myself, “ How did things get this way? Is this all because of the divorce? I worked too much, wasn’t there enough. How in the world do I fix this? I hope it’s not too late. It just can’t be…….” Time to prepare for the return.

There’s no possible way to hide and remove every danger from your house. No way to get rid of every sharp or potentially sharp item, and every string or cord longer than 3″. I wish I could barricade doors, put in alarms, nanny cams, voice recorders, baby monitors, motion sensors, automatic locks, electronic property barriers………sounding paranoid? Not me, nope, lol! Reality is, there no way to get rid of it all, make the whole world safe until her brain develops enough to understand, we don’t always need a reason to be alive – we can create our own reason.

That’s what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to help her, we’ve got to help her create her own reason important enough to be here. She needs to believe.

How hard can it be?