"disloyal," by my daughter

LAST MONTH, I posted a story about what it’s like living with my bipolar child. I’m mostly a poet, and I tend to think in images and metaphors—so it was an extended metaphor about a puppy:

It's like having this beautiful puppy. And sometimes it's great being with the puppy. It climbs up  into your lap, and you stroke its soft fur. It looks at you, and you can see it loves you. It even says, "I love you." And you love it back, and it feels like everything is going to be all right.

But sometimes when you put the puppy's dish down, it growls, "I despise you. Get away from my dish." And you try to explain, you don't need to growl at me, I'm just trying to feed you, but the puppy has a certain look in its eyes that makes you feel afraid, so you back out of the room, slowly, and leave it alone to eat.

 If you're honest, you'll admit that the puppy has actually bitten you, and drawn blood. Sometimes you get out the bandages and bind up the wound yourself, without telling anyone. You feel ashamed.

 Sometimes you wish you had never gotten the puppy to begin with. Sometimes you think it would be best to knock the puppy into next week, and then you can't believe what a horrible person you are to think such things, because you still feel love for this puppy. You know that no one else will understand it or take care of it the way you do, and there are still times when it's good, and you want so much for the puppy to be happy and to have a good life.

So today, the puppy comes running up to you and wants to play. The puppy is all "Throw me the stick! Throw me the stick!" and wagging its tail. So you put aside your doubts and take it to the park, and you throw the stick.  The puppy--really a young dog now--runs full out, and it is truly lovely to see it so free. It catches the stick in its mouth, effortlessly, and brings it back to you.

Its eyes bright, it drops the stick at your feet and says, "Here's your fucking stick, bitch."

THE CHILD is my beautiful 19-year-old daughter. She has light auburn hair, with green eyes and freckles, and stands about five-two.

After high school, she took up with a boy a few years older who was charming and charismatic and almost certainly a sociopath. She began to spend more time with him and finally moved into his apartment. His disease fed her disease, and she went off her meds. He hit her. The neighbors frequently called the police.

 She got very thin, and sometimes her hair and clothes were dirty. After a while, she lost the job she had packing orders for a sporting goods company. It seemed to me that it was only a matter of time before someone really got hurt or went to jail . . . for more than just a night.

I tried hard to follow the advice they gave me at the women’s shelter—not to pressure her but to let her make the decision to leave him in her own time—but sometimes I just lost it and yelled at her to stop being such an idiot and get out.

And then, finally, she did leave him. She moved back home, into my basement. She started taking medicine because that was one of the conditions on the contract I made her sign. And in a few months I saw her gradually . . . getting better. She ate and slept more regularly and began to look more normal.

We signed her up for classes at the community college, and I made her get up every morning and drove her there. When I let her off, the whole thing reminded me of taking her to kindergarten--the backpack, maybe, and something in the determined set of her shoulders as she walked away from me.

But as she was getting better, I was getting . . . worse. She was still extremely irritable and irrational. It was crazy even to attempt to reason with her, but I tried anyway. Even her good moods made me edgy. Her enthusiasm was better than her abuse, but not a lot. It was exhausting and there was something off about it. I was afraid of her getting too happy, because I knew that after too happy comes the next thing.

And the next thing came--she had three major meltdowns in a span of about ten days.

When she broke a window, I demanded that we go to the psych hospital, even though I was scared to get in the car alone with her. A police officer I’d talked to during one of the domestic disturbances between her and her boyfriend had told me that if I called 911, they’d send an ambulance and take her forcibly for an evaluation. The threat was enough to get her to go voluntarily, but of course she didn’t agree to treatment. She was over 18. There was nothing I could do.

I could also see my 15-year-old son was having a hard time, though he denied it. During one meltdown, I left her briefly to see if he was okay. I found the door to his bedroom shut and the light off. He was huddled in his closet with his laptop, but he was fine, Mom, really . . . fine.

I’d wanted her home so intensely that it was a gnawing physical sensation, like a hunger pang. But now I didn’t. Now I wanted her out.

I knew I could lock her out with the second set of locks I’d had installed. But she told me she’d just break in, and then what would I do? I’d have to call the police to arrest her. Would I press charges for trespassing or get a restraining order against her? And where would she stay if she left? She had no friends, and her dad and stepmom wouldn’t have her in their house. I pictured her on the street, where she would wind up really sick, or hurt . . . or worse.

But if she didn’t leave, it seemed certain that I would self-combust. My hypervigilence during the day meant I’d gotten strung out from lack of sleep, and couldn’t concentrate at work. The stress had aggravated  my own anxious depression, and none of the meds I was taking helped. If I couldn’t function, soon I’d be no good to anyone--her or my son.

The conflict was excruciating, and I wrote the story. Before I posted the piece, I debated long and hard over pushing the “publish” button. But after I did, I felt better. At least the pain inside of me was now outside. 

 Of course it was. I’d given it to you.

NEXT: What happened when I showed her the story