it's nearly 3am and I'm still awake...

I have a 10am breakfast meeting at one of those timeshare places where you do a tour and they give you free tickets or a gift card. But even though it's almost 3am, I'm still awake. And on the verge of tears.... No, nothing new with Suzy, though actually some things happened last night that could have qualified as something new.

Anyway, I can't talk about her, not now.

When I was 15 my mother decided that I had BPD. I'm not sure if a therapist told her that or if she came up with it on her own. That was 20+ years ago and BPD wasn't well known back then. My therapist had diagnosed me with depression, the trendy diagnosis of the day. When I heard what my diagnosis was I remember thinking, "well that's weird, I don't feel depressed."

By 15 I had been in therapy (1-2 sessions per week, group and individual) for five years. I must have been really fucked up. I know that I was always in trouble, I lied a lot and I was basically unparented even though my mother considered herself to be a very good parent (case in point: in second grade I was going to school unbathed with no socks and underwear on because I was left to wash myself, dress myself and get myself to school on time... we lived about two miles away and I walked).

I don't know that I was really neglected, I think my mom was just a really crappy parent. Raising kids takes a lot of time and energy and she was more content buying us things or sending us to camp or lessons (and letting other people raise us) than she was getting out of her bedroom and supervising us. So, I was a bit ackward and didn't have very good social skills when it came to interacting with adults or being in public. So I didn't have a lot of friends.

I remember talking to my mom a lot. We ate out a lot. She did stuff with us, took us to the movies and relatives houses. We interacted, but she just didn't parent. I don't know why, because she was as embaressed by my behavior in public as I am by Suzy's, but she just never did.

Suzy and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Started bad, got worse, got a bit better for a while and ended very badly. That was our day.

I can barely write about this. I don't even know what to say.

She's in the other room right now talking to Jack. M is over for the night and mentioned that Suzy was in the other room having an cell phone conversation with someone and sounded very upset. I was unmoved. M (of course) was a bit unnerved by my lack of concern. But at this point, I can't be concerned every time Suzy is upset. I try to decifer the times that it's life-threatening or when I couldn't live with myself as a human being if I ignored her, but now with the other stuff I'm just trying to step back.

The problem is, I step back and distance myself from her because she keeps hurting me and accusing me of things I didn't do and lying to me and about me. And she interperates this "stepping back" as rejection and then gets even more upset which leads to more behavior that I can't deal with. I don't reject her and that's what I was trying to explain this morning. I was trying to get her to understand that I'm her mom and I'm never leaving her. I love her unconditionally. But she doesn't believe that I love her and will for ever; she keeps expecting me to reject her.

I am so embaressed by her behavior. M saw me typing and just rolled over in bed to ask how I was doing. I said just that, that I am so embaressed by Suzy's behavior. M's response is supportive, as usual ("you don't have anything to be embaressed about with me." That's what M's saying now, but no one you're casually dating, even if long term, really ever signs up for something like this. Just like Suzy expects me to eventually reject her ("just like everyone does, because no one ever loves me and everyone eventually thinks I'm a total bitch and doesn't want me to be in their lives"), just like Suzy feels that way about me, I feel that way about M. But I think M will eventually tire of the crisis that is my life via Suzy and will back off saying that it's too much drama. I would if I was M.

So Suzy's in the other room and M says she sounds upset and I should intervene. Instead I go to the door and listen. Suzy's in the condo's living room about ten feet away speaking loudy enough that with the door shut and the fan running I can still here. She's tell Jack a story about how something valuable, I think she said her video camera, was stolen from the condo a few days prior. The thing is, an incident happened where someone left the door open and we came back to find the security guy at our door, but even though I couldn't find some money I left out (at the time), we later found it and the Suzy's video camer was NOT stolen. It was the first thing she looked for and it was there. Suzy says her $35 was stolen. I never saw that out, but she also says the thief took $35 bucks from her purse and left a couple of ones, which seems doubtful to me.

She's describing things in detail to Jack but some of the details are wrong. I can't tell if she's mis-remembering what happened or if it's the normal details that get changed in the course of telling a story, but eventually it's clear: she's lying again. She's exaggerating what happened and chaing it so she appears to be more of a victim.

Intellectually I know that all of this sounds like BPD. I know it. But at the same time, it hurts because I just want Suzy to be normal and happy and have a good relationship with me. She's 21 for godssake, this is when kids are supposed to be having good relationships with their parents to make up for all the sucky teenage years (which, for some reason, jsut weren't that bad with her compared to this).

After ten minutes of increasingly loud conversation I opened the door and asked her to keep it down.

"But I wasn't even being that loud!!" (My response if I had been her would have been something more like, "oh god, I'm sorry. I didn't realize it's 1am. I'll get off the phone now and go to bed. Sorry for keeping you up."

I responded with a less than steller answer (why less than steller?  Because it's wasn't honest. The honest answer would have been, "you're speaking in a loud voice and I can hear you. I heard the lies you just said but when I heard you lie abou tme it really made me mad so I decied to come in and confront you. Instaed I said something like "well I guess it's echoing a lot in her because it sure sounds loud to us. Say hi to Jack for me." The last part was what shut her up.

Back at the condo, for now...

So, after much drama Suzy "decided" to come back to the resort condo last night. I'm feeling sarcastic, hence the quotation marks.

She said she'll stay and see how it works out and if it doesn't work out to stay for the rest of vacation she'll return to her abusive husband who rapes her and, by implication, it will be all my fault. Yeah.

Anyway, I drove over to M's place last night and picked her up. We stopped at Applebee's for food on the way home. Of course I hadn't eaten all day since I was waiting until after Suzy's spa treatment to eat and then that's when the blow up happened. Suzy was so moody that even the server was asking if she was okay.

While they were out, M and Suzy had stopped by to pick up my birthday cake. Suzy decided on inscription. When I heard that I thought, wow, she probably had them say something like "happy birthday, f -- you." I wasn't far off. It would have been funny, and it was, mildy, but I am still so hurt.

the saga continues, of course....

So about an hour or so ago Suzy came storming into the condo, banging on the locked door to get in. Banging loudly. I said, "when you want to talk, I'm sitting here" (in the dining area). I went back to my computer. Through the open door I see Suzy throwing things into her backpack. I went in and said (calmly) "You were right, I shouldn't have yelled at you. When you want to talk about this, we should. Both of us should talk about it without yelling or cussing."

Yeah, well that wasn't recieved well. Suzy's response was more anger, as well as this other odd thing that happens from time to time. She remembers things differently than they actually happened. Her response was something like (and I'm paraphrasing here because although it was not yelled, it was forceful and angry and spoken quickly: "sure you want to talk after you called me a bitch and said that even though for the past three years you've been saying I was right and Jack was wrong that now you're saying he's right and that I'm just raging at him. Sure, you want to talk after you yelled at me. You're the one with the rage problem. M and I both agree that you're the one who has problems."

Then she left.

So I called M and found out that Suzy had called M a few minutes earlier. "She's really upset, what happened between you?"  I wish I knew. M's words of wisdom were something like "you two should really just talk" as if that's going to help.

People don't understand. It doesn't matter how much we talk. Things do not get better. They just get worse.

And today, another day of vacation, ruined.

And now I'm a crappy parent because all I care about is my ruined vacation, right?

Anyway, Suzy had called M saying that Jack (her husband) was buying her a plane ticket home and that she was arranging for transportation to the airport. M wanted to know if was okay to go pick up Suzy. Of course I said yes.

An introduction, of sorts....

Blogs are so passe. I really never thought I'd have one. Actually, scratch that, I tried once ten years ago and I think I made like two posts before I gave it up.

Right now I don't know that there's anyone who gets it, anyone I can really be honest with about what's going on. I can't even begin to describe what's happening, though some people reading this may think, "ah, now that sounds very familiar!"

So I'm in Orlando. Family vacation. Our family is not your typical family, but more on that later. My daughter Suzy (obviously not her real name) just blew up and left the condo saying she was tired of being here and was going to find another way to get home. We live in a large urban area in a midwestern state. It took two days to drive here. Obviously she's not walking.

The thing is, Suzy's not a kid. She's 21. But she has these temper tantrums. And lately as my life has been more and more stressed, I find myself having them as well. Mine are more like mini-rages. It builds and builds and builds and finally I scream and yell and say how pissed off I am. And then I feel a lot better and an hour later it's like it never happened.

Suzy doesn't do that. It's, I don't know, maybe.... like her anger is a contant state. She is always made. Nothing I do is right. Nothing is ever good enough. Nothing satisfies her. Not everyone conversation but many, have me saying normal things like "I'm going to be late tonight, you'll have to have dinner on your own" with her responding something like, "but you said you'd be here by seven!" in a ridiculously accusatory voice.

Suzy would be so upset if she saw me call anything she does "ridiculous."  That's one of her trigger words. She has a lot of triggers. I spend a lot of energy avoiding them but sometimes I just can't help it or don't want to bother expending the emotional energy to continually motify everything I do to avoid another confrontation with her. So sometimes I trigger her.

Today was one of those days. I bought her a spa treatment at our vacation resort. She was a little late and was convienced that they didn't give her the full 50 minutes of massage. I talked to the manager who said they did and who gave Suzy a free day pass to use another day plus a gift (some bath salts which were outrageously expensive) when she found out it was Suzy's first time at a spa. Suzy didn't bother thanking the woman (or me for paying for the spa treatment). It was expensive too. I've never been to a spa, but now she has.

Oh, and did I mention, it's my birthday?  Yeah. More on that later.

Usually she's pretty good at thanking me for things. And I think she means it too. But even when she says thank you, she always seems dissatisfied and unhappy. Anyway, that's just background and not particularly germaine to the story. So today we get in the car and we're leaving the spa and my friend calls. The special-someone I just recently started dating a few months ago. We're not really partners but we're definitely what high schoolers would call "going steady."

Anyway, M is down here in Orlando as well, coincidently staying with friends at a nearby timeshare. The coincidence makes a lot more sense when I point out that we both teach at the same university and this is our winter break week. So M (plus a friend) is planning on meeting up with us for snacks and movies after dinner here in our condo. After some negociating we arrive at the conclusion that I need to call back with exact times, etc.

Suzy's first words when I get off the phone were angry and accusatory. "You didn't tell me we were going over there!" I lost it.

"Dammit, Suzy!" I was so tired of her always being mad at me. Always being nasty. Shouldn't we be done wiht this already?  I mean, come on, she's 21 not 15.

Well me losing my temper gave her the permission she wanted to lay it on full force. She cusses, a lot. I do too, but Suzy, she just rages. At some point I said that I was tired of her raging at me the way that she rages at everyone else, meaning her siblings and Jack, her husband.

Yes, you heard that right, she's married.

That comment of course was a trigger. She screamed for a few minutes, inside the car and out. Everyone was staring. I was embaressed. Then she took off saying that she was leaving and finding her own way back home. So that's where she left it. Yet another crisis.

And did I mention, today's my birthday?