It's so hard.
When my family and I agreed to this, we didn't know what we were agreeing to. Yes, she was losing favor in the household but no one really thought it would turn out like this. So what you think I'm a bad mom she says? Well you aren't winning any awards they said. Some signed papers, some visits from CPS and a little lying and betrayal and next thing you know we are refusing to let her come back into our house or leave it with her daughter.
A couple signed papers from a judge and it becomes legal. Her child lives with us now and if she wants to change that she has two pages worth of work to do. She visits a couple times but never alone and the first time she drinks half a bottle of rum straight. It was only a couple sips she says. Drunk off her ass, she shows up later that night begging for a place to stay. She'd already been denied on the phone, maybe she thought in person she'd get a different answer.
Go sleep in a hospital waiting room my mom said. SHe starts walking that way and next thing we know she's in the Psych-ward. She decided to kick up my mom's advice a notch I guess. They offered he help after her 48 hour hold. That help came with rules however and everyone that knows her knows you follow her rules not the other way around.
I try to stay detached from the child at this point. She's a painful reminder of her mother. Of our years of friendship or as everyone is/was telling me, her abuse and manipulation me. I'd tend to her needs of course, read her books, kiss her boo-boos and tuck her in but all with the same emotional connection a robot would have. It wasn't her fault but she has so much of her mother in her. Some days it would be all I could see.
She wasn't always this way, the friend I love is still in there I know it she just needs a little help to come back. I was saying that for almost a year by then, but meth, heroin, pills and whatever else...they were stronger than me. They turned her into someone I didn't know anymore. SHe was only using my help to hurt herself. When I stopped giving her cash to buy the things she wanted, she stopped asking me for it. When I refused to send her pictures or she'd kill herself she didn't threaten too again.
After things where changed so she'd have to do her visits through CPS she disappeared for a while. Partly because my mother would have called the cops and had her picked up for an arrest warrant if she knew where she'd be ahead of time and the other part... My guess would be her distaste for following rules and listening to authority figures. She went over half a year without making contact.
It may sound terrible but this time away from her mother helped me move past who her mother was and focus on the fact that she was just a confused toddler that needed someone to love her. I loved her before as my friend's daughter, or a niece before but I love her as a daughter now. At this point she's started calling me Mama and my fiance Daddy. I start researching wondering if it's healthy for her to call me this, if it'll damage her when her daddy gets out of prison and hopefully gets his act together. Everyone is betting on her daddy at this point, no ones even knows what she... her mommy is doing.
When everyone gets on the same page we get a phone call. Her mother wants to visit her. My stomach sinks. I've been fearful of possibly running into her on accident... now I'd have to see her on purpose. What if the baby calls me Mama in front of her, what if the baby ends up more damaged than soothed, so many what ifs...
I spent the whole two hours buying stuff for the baby. Talking about the baby, wondering about the baby, looking at pictures of the baby. Crying...
The baby was happy to see us but my worst fear happened. The caseworker told the baby to say goodbye to Mommy and the baby waves good-bye to me. The look on her mother's face... The poor child was crying when we left and don't get me started on how I was feeling.
It went well the case worker says, we set up more visits. they'll be in touch. Great...
She missed the first two visits. I am ashamed to say I was happy about that. After all she'd just gotten done texting me not so long ago, pretending to be her brother asking to take "his niece" out for a day because they missed her birthday party.When that plan didn't work because she'd already burned that bridge long before she tried to cross it, it was somehow my fault.
Apparently, we where the ones to tell her caseworker that her father and grandfather sexually abused her as a child, not her. People she was pretending to be, people she allowed around her daughter and frequently would drop her baby off with with little notice and leave. I don't believe they did, it was her grandmother's ex-husband that abused a baby, not her grandfather and her not always there mother told her so many times that her father abused her as a child after they got divorced to keep her on her side, that she was starting to believe it.
She called me an array of names that day from "f**got" to a "c*nt like my mother". My mother changed my phone number. I left work early in tears... I don't know why, it's not the first time she behaved that way. It's why I knew it wasn't really her.
Like I said she missed her first two official visits but she showed up to her third bringing her brother. He wasn't allowed in though. Like any other time she hadn't thought to read the rules or even be so nice as to tell her father, her ride, how long he would be waiting in the car.
I did though. We took her brother to breakfast and let her father know he had enough time to go waste some at the local superstore. We talked for the whole two hours to her little brother, he told us he was doing much better, getting back on the right path. Showed him pictures of his niece and told him stories of her good and her bad days. It was almost like old times, back when we were children, except without all the unsupervised fighting with one another. He told us he knew we where taking good care of his niece.
So now the baby visits her bio-father in jail one week and goes to visit her bio-mother the next. It's easy enough to manage, after all we only have to take her to see her mother, her grandmother takes her up to the prison.
Now though things are harder, my fiance got a job and can't stay home with her anymore. Well he can but he's asleep, 3rd shifts a killer. It's ok, I've always wanted to be a stay at home mother away. It's a shame I've got to work. Definitely suck at the getting babysitters thing... ANyway, you're all caught up now.... I think I should start a tv show, couldn't be any worse than honey-boo-boo right?
A couple signed papers from a judge and it becomes legal. Her child lives with us now and if she wants to change that she has two pages worth of work to do. She visits a couple times but never alone and the first time she drinks half a bottle of rum straight. It was only a couple sips she says. Drunk off her ass, she shows up later that night begging for a place to stay. She'd already been denied on the phone, maybe she thought in person she'd get a different answer.
Go sleep in a hospital waiting room my mom said. SHe starts walking that way and next thing we know she's in the Psych-ward. She decided to kick up my mom's advice a notch I guess. They offered he help after her 48 hour hold. That help came with rules however and everyone that knows her knows you follow her rules not the other way around.
I try to stay detached from the child at this point. She's a painful reminder of her mother. Of our years of friendship or as everyone is/was telling me, her abuse and manipulation me. I'd tend to her needs of course, read her books, kiss her boo-boos and tuck her in but all with the same emotional connection a robot would have. It wasn't her fault but she has so much of her mother in her. Some days it would be all I could see.
She wasn't always this way, the friend I love is still in there I know it she just needs a little help to come back. I was saying that for almost a year by then, but meth, heroin, pills and whatever else...they were stronger than me. They turned her into someone I didn't know anymore. SHe was only using my help to hurt herself. When I stopped giving her cash to buy the things she wanted, she stopped asking me for it. When I refused to send her pictures or she'd kill herself she didn't threaten too again.
After things where changed so she'd have to do her visits through CPS she disappeared for a while. Partly because my mother would have called the cops and had her picked up for an arrest warrant if she knew where she'd be ahead of time and the other part... My guess would be her distaste for following rules and listening to authority figures. She went over half a year without making contact.
It may sound terrible but this time away from her mother helped me move past who her mother was and focus on the fact that she was just a confused toddler that needed someone to love her. I loved her before as my friend's daughter, or a niece before but I love her as a daughter now. At this point she's started calling me Mama and my fiance Daddy. I start researching wondering if it's healthy for her to call me this, if it'll damage her when her daddy gets out of prison and hopefully gets his act together. Everyone is betting on her daddy at this point, no ones even knows what she... her mommy is doing.
When everyone gets on the same page we get a phone call. Her mother wants to visit her. My stomach sinks. I've been fearful of possibly running into her on accident... now I'd have to see her on purpose. What if the baby calls me Mama in front of her, what if the baby ends up more damaged than soothed, so many what ifs...
I spent the whole two hours buying stuff for the baby. Talking about the baby, wondering about the baby, looking at pictures of the baby. Crying...
The baby was happy to see us but my worst fear happened. The caseworker told the baby to say goodbye to Mommy and the baby waves good-bye to me. The look on her mother's face... The poor child was crying when we left and don't get me started on how I was feeling.
It went well the case worker says, we set up more visits. they'll be in touch. Great...
She missed the first two visits. I am ashamed to say I was happy about that. After all she'd just gotten done texting me not so long ago, pretending to be her brother asking to take "his niece" out for a day because they missed her birthday party.When that plan didn't work because she'd already burned that bridge long before she tried to cross it, it was somehow my fault.
Apparently, we where the ones to tell her caseworker that her father and grandfather sexually abused her as a child, not her. People she was pretending to be, people she allowed around her daughter and frequently would drop her baby off with with little notice and leave. I don't believe they did, it was her grandmother's ex-husband that abused a baby, not her grandfather and her not always there mother told her so many times that her father abused her as a child after they got divorced to keep her on her side, that she was starting to believe it.
She called me an array of names that day from "f**got" to a "c*nt like my mother". My mother changed my phone number. I left work early in tears... I don't know why, it's not the first time she behaved that way. It's why I knew it wasn't really her.
Like I said she missed her first two official visits but she showed up to her third bringing her brother. He wasn't allowed in though. Like any other time she hadn't thought to read the rules or even be so nice as to tell her father, her ride, how long he would be waiting in the car.
I did though. We took her brother to breakfast and let her father know he had enough time to go waste some at the local superstore. We talked for the whole two hours to her little brother, he told us he was doing much better, getting back on the right path. Showed him pictures of his niece and told him stories of her good and her bad days. It was almost like old times, back when we were children, except without all the unsupervised fighting with one another. He told us he knew we where taking good care of his niece.
So now the baby visits her bio-father in jail one week and goes to visit her bio-mother the next. It's easy enough to manage, after all we only have to take her to see her mother, her grandmother takes her up to the prison.
Now though things are harder, my fiance got a job and can't stay home with her anymore. Well he can but he's asleep, 3rd shifts a killer. It's ok, I've always wanted to be a stay at home mother away. It's a shame I've got to work. Definitely suck at the getting babysitters thing... ANyway, you're all caught up now.... I think I should start a tv show, couldn't be any worse than honey-boo-boo right?
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