Not too fast

Without reading it, my memory is telling me that my last post was pretty depressing. I was having a really rough day. Like I told Penelope's Attachment Therapists a couple weeks ago, I have been having a hard time enjoying Penelope's success in controlling her behavior and temper because I feel like it's just a matter of time. Her ups and downs are brutal to tolerate. If I ride along for the ups, I'm afraid it will make me ride along on the downs and I just don't know if I can survive any more downs. I'm sure I will - day by day. But it's just so extremely hard. I sometimes think she is in a healthier place than I am. Like I'm the person who has jumped in the pool and saved the person who is drowning, but in the effort that saves them, I end up drowning instead.
Anyway, I concluded the reason that I was so depressed was because I had started to see some of those old symptoms poking their head out - that we were on our way back down. She had been off for Spring Break and just started back into school. Maybe it's something that happened at school or she just had "too much happiness" as it's been called in the past and really was fighting having to adjust back to doing things she doesn't like, like going to school. She stole some money and lied about it, she became argumentative again not wanting to do anything she was suppose to. She starting saying things that she use to say like "I don't want to school." "I just want to have fun, why can't I just have fun?!?" Nothing horrible, by tell-tale signs of her sinking back into an unhappy place and making the irrational decision that these were the things that were going to make her happy. The concern is how deep is she going to fall back into this hole - start trying to hurt me again, run away, become dangerous?
Then Harriet sent her an Easter card in the mail and Penelope intercepted it before I got a chance to see it. Harriet didn't asked if she could send her a card or even gave me the heads up. She has always asked in the past. If Penelope was in a better place emotionally I might have been okay with that card. But I knew that she wasn't in a good place and feared it was going to make things worse. And it did.
Plus Harriet wrote on the card "I miss you so much. I love you more than anything in the world!" This pissed me off. You might think "What is so wrong with that? Should she miss her? Shouldn't she tell her that she loves her more than anything?" But see, this isn't a normal situation. This is a woman who neglected and emotionally and physically abused her daughter. She didn't beat her, but through her neglect, Penelope has endured untreated illness, rashes from being unclean, malnourished, and been burnt by a iron hot space heater. Her scheduled visits with her were extremely sporadic. There were always excuses. Little ones like car problems, no gas, flat tires to she was raped so she can't make it. And then when she did show, her visits were shorten because she has to go home and make dinner for her husband, or she has to return rented videos. And then to say "I miss you. I love you more than anything?" But this time she says it in the context that she isn't allowed to see Penelope. This was determined by the treating psychiatrist at the hospital when Penelope wanted to kill herself after Harriet missed a scheduled visit because she "moved" out of town to live with friends and didn't have a car. But then ended up moving back a week later but never called to reschedule her visit with her daughter. But of course, because it's what kids do, Penelope is going to blame herself as to why she doesn't get to see Harriet. So Harriet saying "I miss you" is a means to make Penelope feel guilty. Harriet may disagree and say "I didn't mean to make her feel bad." But then, my question is, if you didn't mean to make her feel bad - then why haven't you made any effort to see your daughter? And when I say that I mean within the requirements laid out in the formal letter the treating psychiatrist wrote banning her visits? Harriet is to seek therapy to help her learn to not continue the abusive behavior towards Penelope and when the therapist feels Harriet is ready, and when Penelope is also ready, they would be reintroduced in a therapeutic setting.
It's been about 6 months since this requirement. It's been almost 8 months since Harriet has seen Penelope. But she hasn't done what she is suppose to do. So how does she have the right??
George told me that Harriet has called him twice 2 or 3 in the morning crying that this isn't fair she can't see her daughter and trying to get George to be upset about it too. But he claims he has pushed it back on her. I know she wrote that card out of her frustration because the things she has written in the past weren't in such a hurtful way. She even wrote Penelope an apology letter - but now, it's all different.
So Penelope get's this card and I asked her how she felt about getting the card. She says "It's okay, it doesn't hurt my feelings." Which was an odd statement to say when, on the surface, it was meant to be a loving card. But the rest of the week she was very sad and talked about Harriet and George a lot. She was mad at George for not sending a card. "He never sends me anything." I tried to explain that love is not about gifts and words but about actions. She was having a hard time sleeping. I would wake up in the middle of the night and find her sleeping with a bunch of pillows and blankets at the foot of my bed. At the next therapy session she admitted that she had been thinking about her mom and dad a lot and it made her sad. Basically she was thinking about how her life sucks because she doesn't get to see her parents and that her parents aren't the people they should have been. She was trying to in her head relive her life the way she wished it had been - which is not a good place to be.
The next couple of days were still along the same line. Very argumentative, and very visably depressed. I found these post-its that she had put all over the fireplace tiles that she said "I was playing a game!" but they were covered with things Harriet use to say to her. "I love you" "I will come back soon." "My baby girl." "I miss you." "I love you." Heartbreaking.
Then last night, she couldn't sleep so she made a cartoon where her dad was a super hero with a cape and everything. And this super-daddy saves her. Just not a good place to be. She needs to understand that her dad isn't going to make her happy. She loves him and misses him and because of their unhealthy relationship, she thinks he is going to make her happy. She forgets how miserable she was with him. I had a long talk with George yesterday and told him that the therapists think he needs to go to therapy to figure out and resolve his own self-image issues that causes him to use Penelope as his surrogate wife. I believe I've said this before but they feel his relationship with Penelope has been emotionally incestuous. It's exactly what it is and what has always had me creeped out about their relationship, I just couldn't put my finger on it. It was like a light bulb going off when they said that. So if he can figure out how to not put that burden on Penelope - to make it so she is the one who takes care of him, who he tells all his problems too and they have a true father-daughter relationship, then that will help her as well. This unhealthy/selfish relationship he has had with his daughter has caused her guilt and unhappiness because she feels responsible for his happiness. And she can't make him happy. I told him, "She still to this day would sacrifice all her work and happiness to make you happy. Do you really want that for your daughter?" He agreed no. He said that he thinks he needs therapy too because he has been having a hard time not seeing her. He can't be around kids, he can't watch kids on TV. He goes over his friends house and they have girls and they climb on him and he has a hard time with that. He started to get teary-eyed about it. I asked him how it made him feel. He said "I feel sad.. and guilty." I said "Guilty for what?" He said he feels guilty having fun with them instead of Penelope. That wasn't the answer I was looking for or expected. I was trying to see if he feels guilty for his part in Penelope's abuse. I feel like he can't get to a place he should be until he accepts responsibility. But this answer to me seemed more like he felt guilty for cheating. That's how I interpret it anyhow. Which goes into that unhealthy relationship. Kids do that, where they don't want to "replace" mom or dad with step-moms or dads. But as an adult, being around other kids do you feel like you are cheating? It doesn't make sense to me. But he seems to be willing to do whatever. I hope he sees that what we are doing with Penelope is working and, even though he struggles with the fact that part of her healing process is to stay away from him, that it is the right thing to do.
I told him that the biggest reason for me for him to get this help in order to have a healthy relationship with her, is that it will directly affect the kind of relationships she will have with boys and men when she becomes an adult. In a lot of ways, daughters marry their fathers. Does he want her to marry someone who yells at her all the time, makes her fetch and clean after him, doesn't let her have an opinion? Does he want her to take this type of treatment and feel like she would give up her happiness for theirs? My other fear is that she will look for this inappropriate love and the first person that gives her the time of day will knock her up and she will be another teen pregnancy statistic. He hates when I bring that up because he hates the idea of Penelope having sex. As most fathers do, but I think that incestuous mentality makes it more so than normal. A father should want his daughter to get married and have children.
But overall I think that Penelope's period of being down isn't as severe as it could have been which is a good sign overall. It could have been worse. She could have started to get paranoid again about her mother coming to kill her. Not that I haven't seen little signs of that, it's not something she talks about and obsesses about. She hasn't said that she wants to go live with George like she use to. She still seems to be understanding that she is with me, and seems to want to be here - which is a great sign that she has attached to me! It has to start somewhere. We just need to pull her out of this regression. I think this week we are going to have to address how she is viewing her parents, at least her dad. I really don't like how she has been idolizing him lately.