Is This What I Am Here For?

The past week has been a heck of emotions and anxious feelings, but today has been good.

My oldest daughters 16 yr old friend is in foster care and has been running away from her carer, she’s been skipping her cocktail of medications. After running away multiple times last night and self harming (cutting) each time finally our hospital kept her in overnight while her case worker and carer organised for her to come spend some time at our house while they try to organise things for her in the hopes to get her to talk to someone who knows and has been through what she is going through now and hopefully prevent her from ending up in a group home or worse.

It broke my heart seeing her arms and neck cut to ribbons, and hearing that she is doing this because her mother hasn’t done any of the work to see her or try to get her back. She’d made plans and when the day for visitation came around she was a no show. How can you do that to your own child? Its bad enough she was abused by her own father and uncle under her mothers own roof and she didn’t do anything to stop it until her kids were removed and sent to live away from each other… Some people piss me the fuck off..

As a survivor of long term childhood sexual abuse, having abandonment issues because it was easier for my own parents to push me onto other family members when ever I got too much for them handle after my own abuser (my uncle) was outed for doing the things he done to me and 2 of his other nieces.

I tried to take a cocktail of tablets to end my life at 13 and by the time I was 17 I had been raped by 2 ex boyfriends and 1 of those ex’s had him and his best friend rape me when we closed up the youth centre on our own. Which ended with me depressed to the point I was self harming and on my own daily cocktail of Zoloft and some other meds which made me a zombie and living in my own little world.

Its a hard dose of reality for me, but being able to sit with my daughters friends who has been through the same and is struggling with the after effects on top of navigating typical teenage hormonal stuff. And talk her through her anxiety and urges to self harm again feels good.

I have told her we both will forever be labeled as self harmer’s it will never go away, and there will be times throughout the rest of both our lives that those urges will resurface, especially when we start feeling anxious. Because even now at 40 yrs old I struggle withe the urges and sensations of what it feels like, and have tried to self harm again even though I’ve never told my own kids that I have been dealing with this recently myself, but I wanted her to know that I am going through the exact same things in my life as she is so if she ever needs someone to talk to she is free to come to our house any time she needs to, and I will talk to her and when she is ready she can talk to me too. And I will do my best to help her find ways to cope until the urges ease up and pass….

I think although she is 16 talking and helping her manage and cope, will be good therapy for me too. We both can beat these shitty situations together…

I feel like this is what I should be doing, I feel like maybe I should become a foster carer for kids who are going through things I have been through, but I need to heal myself a bit more first…