I remember reading the Gerald Durrell book "My Family and other animals" during my first year of senior school, of course never imagining that approximately twenty years later I'd use it for the title of a blog entry. This was the innocent time before the internet even existed in my life; the idea even of owning a mobile phone was so incredible it almost ranked with flying to the moon. I never dreamed that one day, in another life, I'd sit in bed using a laptop computer, and that my children would play with a stack of my discarded mobile phones before rejecting them because they don't have cameras built in or play tunes. It was the era of "Eldorado" the highly criticised show which I secretly still watch clips of on YouTube occasionally and quite enjoy. Jason Donovan was still just about clinging onto his hunk status, and everyone was scrawling NKOTB (New Kids on the block) on their school bags. Of course nobody knows what the future holds, what lurks just around the corner, that's the exciting and terrifying thing about life, the main thing probably. I had no idea what lay in store for me, how the world around me and my life would change over the next two decades.
I often look at my kids, usually when they're asleep as there are less arguments that way, and think how incredible it is that their whole lives are ahead of them. Neither of them have done some of the simplest things, the things most people take for granted, like catching a bus by themselves, food shopping by themselves, ordering food in a restaurant by themselves. They have so much to experience, to enjoy, so many new things to learn and discover. But then comes the big thing, which is that in Darcie's case, her life's spoiled. Logically it can't be, but sometimes I see a flash of the adult she'll become and it terrifies me. So much of her childhood has been spoiled already, and I believe that in many ways your childhood is the most significant part of your life, the framework, the springboard and then everything else just follows. Darcie is clearly so deeply unhappy; she spends so much of her life in tears, screaming, battling with jealousy, resentment and anger, terrified by emotions which she can't understand or control much of the time. She thinks she's stupid, fat and ugly; and I know I make her feel worthless sometimes when I reach the end of my tether and say horrible things which I can't believe are coming out of my mouth. I don't want my daughter to feel worthless, and sometimes I imagine Darcie starting her adult life deeply depressed, and things spiralling out of control. She could turn to alcohol, drugs, get involved with the wrong people, end up in an abusive relationship because she feels that's all she's worthy of. Most parents have these concerns, but I'm so scared that she'll go from being an unhappy child into an unhappy adult, and her unstable behaviour will lead to disaster.
I'm sitting here tonight feeling very AAARRRGGGHHH and maybe like the best thing would be for me to go and drink a bottle of bleach or something - don't worry I'm not really going to do that, mainly because I don't think suicide/damaging myself is a good plan and also because we haven't got any bleach. Thinking about it, I'm certain I bought a bottle very recently and am now feeling slightly concerned about what's happened to it. Most likely I tipped the lot down the toilet in a late night half asleep random cleaning frenzy, but there's always that slight chance that one of the kids has poured it over some hidden area of carpet, or that I gave them a drink of Domestos rather than squash one tea time and they were too polite to say anything.
So I'm not going to kill myself, but this situation with Darcie has got to improve. My wish for 2011 was that we'd get her sorted out, and the main reason I want things to get better is so that she can be a happier little girl who grows into a happy adult. Sometimes I'll look at Darcie and think how beautiful she is, how grown up she is, and just sometimes she'll be okay with me and just for a little while we get a taster of how things could be, how they should be. Usually when she comes out of school she glares at me, immediately on the defensive and snarls "WHAT?" when I smile at her, like some hormonal teenager. A few days ago I saw Darcie coming across the playground just before she noticed me; she was smiling and chatting with her friend Amber, laughing about something and I tried to freeze those few seconds in my mind as proof that sometimes she can be normal. She just looked so happy, so relaxed and just like she should be.
The good thing is that after years of struggling to get someone to listen to us, our friendly counsellor psychologist type person, Carole Law, has come into our lives. She's based in Falcon house which is a fairly new and really funky little building on the grounds of St James Hospital, not far from the university campus where I lived for a year in another life when I was eighteen, young and (fairly) innocent. Falcon House is for children and young adults with mental health issues, and Darcie has had a few Art Therapy sessions there. We weren't sure about the art therapy from the beginning, although Cliff, the guy who worked with Darcie seemed nice in a quirky, eccentric kind of way. Simon and I have spent far too long debating whether Cliff is gay, the jury's still out and I guess it doesn't matter either way although I have a hunch.....maybe we should both attempt to seduce him, see which one of us he veers towards and then rest in peace? Cliff's sexual orientation has no relevance to the art therapy, but perhaps he's sensed how strange we really are and that we're a family to be avoided, as he's declared he doesn't think it's the way to go. After discussing several possibilities, Carole (the midget, I can't understand how someone so tiny can survive; I know I'm a horrible person for thinking these things about other people and deserve to perish in hell) is veering towards Aspergers, possibly OCD with reference to the "what on earth is up with Darcie?" dilemma. She does have Aspergers traits, but Carole has warned us that we're very unlikely to ever get a formal diagnosis, probably the nearest we'll get to one is being told she has traits of Aspergers or something else, or is on the spectrum. We've spent hours with her talking about our families, histories, everything under the sun basically, and for a while Attachment Disorder was on the table. This seems to be when a child forms the wrong kind of relationship with a main carer, and some of the symptoms fit Darcie very well. However, it normally occurs when the mother rejects the child completely and sends it to live with someone else, which obviously hasn't happened in our case (god knows I've been sorely tempted to send her to live with someone else though, and threaten her with it regularly) I felt like I was being accused of not caring for Darcie properly when she was a baby, or something similar, although Carole never said anything like that - I'm sure I had Post natal depression when she was tiny which is one of the main triggers of this Attachment disorder. However as I said, Carole now thinks that it's more likely that Darcie is on the Aspergers spectrum, after hearing us ranting on about her behaviour and all the issues we have.
It's apparently a conundrum and nobody knows what the hell to do basically. I don't know whether to be impressed or worried that proper professionals are stumped; Carole has contacted Darcie's school who confirm that she doesn't have outbursts there although they are apparently noticing oddities about her. Darcie has never believed that she's truly a child, and her teacher apparently told Carole that sometimes Darcie can't understand why the rules apply to her as well as the other children, and seems detached from the rest of the class. The word "sad" was used way too much, apparently thats the way she comes across at school and her teacher from last year said the same thing to us once. I hate it when people describe my daughter as sad, I hurts me deep inside because it confirms I am basically a terrible mother. I know what it's like to feel sad and I don't want Darcie feeling like that.
I feel that with Carole, someone is finally listening to us, although I'm certain she thinks Simon and I are stark raving mad. Darcie has to go through a full psychological assessment, starting with a language and speech assessment. As I understand it, they'll be looking at the way she uses and understands language - one of the key things is that she takes things literally, e.g. if I say we'll go out in a minute, she literally thinks that one minute later we'll go out. Most 9 year olds wouldn't think that way, so it could be a sign of something. I don't know what the language/speech assessment will through up; Darcie's speech has always been good and she has no obvious major problems so it's all a bit confusing really. I don't think that all these assessments will do much good, but it's worth doing......it's a relief knowing that we're getting somewhere but a bugger realising that we're never going to get an official diagnosis.
I promised myself that 2011 would be the year I cope with Darcie better. Carole is giving us some tips and helping us with some strategies to make things better, but it's all so hard. Tonight I ended up having a row with my dad on the phone; he's a miserable sod at times and Darcie was nattering away to my mum for too long according to him. In truth she'd been talking for over an hour which is a long time, and was supposed to shout me so my mum could speak to me - in true Darcie style she did her own thing, carried on chatting and it all ended in disaster. Darcie ended up screaming like a toddler, my dad was horrible to me and I didn't speak to my mum at all; I was upset and angry and lost my temper with Darcie as I'm so fed up of her at the moment. It's just such a struggle and nobody really understands, nobody can do anything and everyone gets sick of us moaning. On nights like this I find myself standing next to her bed, watching her while she sleeps and hoping she some little part of her doesn't hate me and realises that I love her.
Anyway, it's off to bed I go, tomorrow's another day........
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