Wow!

Thanks for the comments and e-mails. I had no idea that anyone would even come back and read this blog.

I hate that I can't post happier news on here. I try to think of positives but every time I say anything I jinx it all.

It does get better but everyday is still a struggle.

I know some people were happy for me when they heard I was finally getting some help. I chuckle at my own desperate stupidity. So the update on that is this... Instead of help, I now have the financial responsiblity of my mother and grandmother and the threat of my mother moving the rest of her children to the state I live in.   My grandmother's alzheimer's has progressed and my mother seems to think she's on a permanent vacation. When I made the deal with my mother and she asked if my grandmother could come and "visit", I told her that I couldn't physically help with my grandmother's care. My mom doesn't seem to grasp what RA or fibro is. She thinks I'm a wuss and that her pain is greater and let me tell you, when she asks what's bothering me and I start to tell her, she always says "that's nothing, my blah, blah, blah...". My mom just likes to complain. If she would get up off my couch and move around, then maybe she wouldn't hurt so much.

She doesn't help with the kids, in fact, the kids hate her.  I don't know how I never saw it before, but my mother is a big kid with RAD and selfish as they come.  There were other reasons for her coming to help me. None had to do with actually helping me and all of it had to do with running away from financial problems she was having.

I'm still angry about all this. I was paying my mom to help me. But she was just basically coming to me on payday and taking my money and then going shopping leaving me to take care of my grandmother and the kids and everything. I have to yell at her to clean up.  I even found out I was paying my youngest sister's rent on her apartment! All that time my mom went on and on and how she had to help the kid's bio mom because she had all those kids, etc... and now I have those SAME kids and she's taking from us!

So I stopped paying my mom completely, room and board should be good enough for her to pretend to be a grandmother. My sister AND her boyfriend are homeless now but you know what she's f'n going to be 30 in a couple of years! I have come to terms that when my mom talks about her "kids" she is not talking about me. I have come to terms with the fact that my mom wants to see me fail and I also have come to terms with the fact that my mom has never been my mother.

The good in this is I have been able to show my kids what they will become if they don't work things out now. They have seen her lying, stealing and manipulation and they have also felt it.

The kids hate her because she plays dumb and she acts like she didn't know the abuse that was happening.  She didn't know it all and not even the worst of it but she knew enough and did nothing.

What hurts them, I imagine is that even after they told her outright that their mother is part of the sexual abuse and that other family members were as well, she still talks to and defends those people. You can see how hard it is for my kids and how inconceivable their experiences have been and my mother is in denial. I know how this feels because that's what she did when I told her about my step-father. She told me it was the father of her kids and she would always have to talk to him.  Mind you the youngest of these "kids" was well in her 20s at the time. I guess she would "always" have to talk to him meaning whenever HE bothers with HER.

She says that those are her kids and their mother is her daughter. She told me I can't make her choose when I was trying to explain that she was choosing her daughter over her grandkids. So a choice was being made. I also told her not to worry, she didn't have to make a choice because as far as I was concerned when my grandmother passes we are done and she could go on her way and I would never bother her again. I told her it was just done. I was making the choice and I am choosing MY kids.

So that's what with all that mess. In a way, I'm glad it's turned out this way.  My kids always thought they could threaten me with their grandma- "I'm going to go live with grandma!" etc... but now they seem to appreciate me more and like I said, I am able to parallel their behavior exactly with their grandmother's at times and I can see the wheels turning when I point it out and they get it. So it's helping tremendously with being able to show them their behaviors and why it's not ok. I can see at times she means well and she's doing the best she knows but it's still self-destructing and hurtful to those around her and that's what I want my kids to see and learn from.

Aftermath

I've debated on whether to update this blog. It's been such a source of negativity for me and I've been trying to find the light.

So much has happened. So many truths and abuses have been revealed and it's so not right and so heinous.

But I feel like I left things hanging. I know when I searched for people in my situation, the blogs always died out when the child was removed. What ever happened? Were they able to pick up the pieces? Did they really dissolve the adoption? I had only found one. Gala's blog.

So, I figure it's only right to let you know how it went.  We did not get a dissolution. We had a lying thieving lawyer who I had to go after to get my money back and thankfully, I did. All of it.  He made false promises.

So where are we at? CDQ is still in TFC.  I was threatened again by California's post adoption social worker. She lightened up...but still.  It lingers, you know?

My other kids are all in therapy. In the course of that it came out that CDQ had sexually abused some of them in my home...before the cameras and the intercoms. I just thought she had tried to kill them.

I read that last sentence and I think: "How can I say those words so flippantly now?" I guess because I feel like I'm recounting some kind of horror story I just read or something... or maybe I'm just numb to it all still.

SS had all her repressed memories come back to her and it manifested in her attacking her clothes and her stuff with a knife and then cutting her hair with it. She had a 10 day stay in the hospital CDQ stayed in.  It was scary stuff, but she's doing better now that she knows her bio parents were wrong and full of shit and that none of it was her fault nor changes who she is to the world.  I envy her a little. She's tough...

My childhood memories are still mostly repressed. They've been coming in my dreams every night for a month or so now. I don't know which is better the nightly edition or a full blown revelation as a one shot deal.  Probably it's better for me one night at time, considering SS's reactions to her mind finally allowing her full disclosure.

I've always said if my mind doesn't want me to remember it must've been to big for me to handle.

Anyhow, with the news coming out of why the other children don't want CDQ back home, I am at a loss of what is going to happen. Seems they are still trying for reunification.  But Poufy's therapist said something to me that shook me to my core.  The gist was how could they make a victim live with the perpetrator? All I could think of was how I wouldn't want to live if I were forced to live with my step-father again. It already happened when I was 10 and then when I was 16 and this time around, I just couldn't do it. I believe that very notion is what has brought my dreams to where they are now.  How can they do that to my children?

All that is still up in the air.

So, in the mean time, I've had more allegations set against me by CDQ because of the kid's accusations towards her.  Basically, CDQ has blamed me for everything. EVERYTHING.  Her parents abuse against her, her siblings not wanting anything to do with her.  It's all my fault because I'm the only one who is there for her.

The question is how much longer can we as a family take her bullshit.  Call me heartless, but I've been at a point where other people need to matter. I know she is hurting and I know that she is a child. But I think we are all sending her the wrong message. She can't treat people like shit and think they are going to be around. Yes, she went through some tough shit but who in this family hasn't?

At what point, do we start to matter and we can say this is too toxic...she can fester but the rest need and more importantly WANT to be saved? People can't be changed, they have to want to change themselves- even children.

I just feel like we are magnets that people keep trying to push together. For some reason the family is a trigger for CDQ and she is a trigger for the family for more obvious reasons. It doesn't feel like anybody but the system's best interests are in mind at this point. I feel like it's going to boil down to having a scapegoat at the end of the line and CDQ is trying to make sure that the scapegoat is myself.

That's where we stand.

I don't know if I will continue to blog here. I have another address parked where I might do a family blog something along the lines of what I had started blogging 8 years ago, something a little more open yet still anonymous and unconnected or related to this blog. Something along the lines of..."normal".