The Crazies, Part 1

This is part 1 of a 5 part post: 

Part two is here.

Part three is here.

Part four is here.

Part five is here.

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So CDQ has been doing her best to convince everyone that she is certifiably crazy.

I believe it is for attention and because we are getting too close for her comfort.

I feel sorry for CDQ.  There will never be enough of anything for her in this world. Never enough attention, never enough of anything she suddenly desires on a whim and it will be everyone's fault but her own. She's inherited that from her bio mother. I couldn't figure it out with her and I doubt that I will get it figured out with CDQ.

She's been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. My problem with that is she is slowly but surely developing a conscience and she actually gets mad at herself after she has some of the behaviors. She knows right from wrong and she usually feels bad about herself after an outburst. She has come to me and told me she doesn't know why she does it, but usually afterwards she wishes she hadn't done it.

Granted, she's pretty coy (or at least she thinks she is) at manipulating people by trying to make them believe she is sincere when it's the farthest thing from the truth.

I've tried to see if I can find the triggers for these outbursts and such to try and prevent it but they are so varied and out of nowhere, I haven't been able to put my finger on it.  The little reading I've done on Borderline Personality Disorder definitely reflects CDQ's behaviors. However, they also reflect her bio parents behaviors too. Both bio parents. CDQ has something different. She recognizes the behaviors. Her bio parents will deny it all until they die.

Then I came across this article that said sometimes young children are diagnosed with BPD when they aren't. When they are young, children sometimes tend to see the world through their parents eyes. I wondered if CDQ was simply mimicking the things she had seen.

It doesn't seem farfetched since she is certainly mimicking her movie-induced ideas of crazy from the past.

Because of our past therapy experience, I am very leery to bring these behaviors to a doctor. I may not know the total ins and outs of CDQ, but I know her better than anyone else in this world. She can be convincing. Very convincing, maybe too convincing for a 15 minute visit to her pediatrician.

So last week, before her appointment with the doc, I put it out there. I may have embellished things a little or maybe what I said is really what happens... I dunno.

I told her that I needed to know if the things she was doing were real because if they aren't she needed to 'fess up now before I talked to the doctor about it. Her reaction towards bringing a doctor into the picture was priceless. It was very "Oh shit!" like. So I went with it. I told her that unlike her disorders, the kind of crazy (Jack Nicholson- and no I've never said that to her or anyone IRL, just right here and now) she's showing us is the kind that therapy can't help. It's the kind of crazy that gets you locked up for good.  I told her she likes to tell me that I want her life and I want to steal it for myself (still don't understand that) but she's going to end up taking her own life by playing these games, but not in those words exactly...

I told her again, if it's real. We need to let the doctor know. But if she's pretending then she needs to let me know so that we don't give the doctor the wrong idea.

Now I know, this seems crazy, or is it just me? I was a bit worried the act might be real and that I might be scaring her into making it nothing. I was very clear not to cross the line to where I thought she would feel manipulated. I left the choice totally hers but I did want her to feel like she was informed. I do feel like I am the last person fighting for her and once I give up, she may end up institutionalized for life, all because she was a kid who didn't know she was  playing with fire. I tried to be nonchalant about the whole thing, like it was par for the course when discussing these matters.

She was biting her nails long before I finished. She decided to let me know that she indeed was "acting" weird on purpose. She wanted her siblings to like her and she thought she was being "normal".

Part of what she was doing was making things up. She had taken her "reality" of being raped in our home, to a "dream" where the same people forced her to write a song and then those same people took her song and sold it. So she couldn't share it with the other kids because it was a big hit and they would recognize it.

Um...yeah... that's the milder of her behaviors. She doesn't see it as straight out lying if SHE says they are "dreams" or for "real" or not what she "meant" or we "misunderstood".

She told me she made it all up so she could be normal. When I asked her how that made her normal, she changed tracks to the whole " I just want them to leave me alone, no one likes me..." So we were off again on the same ---you treat others the way you want to be treated path.

It makes me sad that she lets her fear get in the way of what she really wants.  She really wants her siblings to like her, she really wants to be close to them and to be a big part of their lives and when she feels like she *might* be rejected or even thinks that if she put herself out there and will be rejected she shuts them out and lashes out at them.

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This was written almost two weeks ago. So much has changed already but I will try to post it all.