“Triggers and panic attacks and suspensions. Oh My!” (Long Post not rated G either)

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Where do I start?  You realize that I prefer my hermit ways because the stimuli can be soo overwhelming, right?  Some types of input cause uncontrolled sobbing.  TV is bad, the Olympics are worse, X-Factor or American Idol win the award most recently for salty precipitation.  A male performer was singing (a true tenor) and I couldn’t stop crying.  He had such a beautiful voice.  Pure, sweet, mature and not the typical teeny bopper vibrato laden top 40 voice.  It brought me to my knees.  This was not the Gong Show.

In the past, the only thing that could cause sobbing like that was the award ceremony at the Olympics.  And before you ask.  I don’t know why.  It pulls my heart in ways that open the floodgates.  Since 1976.  If you think its just the American National Anthem, no, no, no.  I love my country and its funny little quirks, but this could be any country, any anthem. The opening strains of “Oh, Canada…” make my eyes blur.  I can no longer watch the Olympics once it gets to the award ceremonies portion.

I just came back from a diversion.  I made the mistake of using a search engine to look for a “list of countries,”  by the U.S. Department of State.  There was a link to Dependencies and Areas of Special Sovereignty , talk about opening a can of worms.  Would I cry just as heavily at the French Southern and Antarctic Lands national anthems? “Île Amsterdam, Île Saint-Paul, Îles Crozet, and Îles Kerguelen in the southern Indian Ocean; the “Iles Eparses” (Bassas da India, Europa Island, Glorioso Islands, Juan de Nova Island and Tromelin Island) in the Mozambique Channel and western Indian Ocean; and the French-claimed sector of Antarctica, “Terre Adélie.”  I am resisting the urge to find all of these countries on a map, cause we all no what happens when you go down the search engine rabbit hole.

Time stops for me and speeds up for everyone else.  I will think I have spent five minutes researching some obscure list of countries that are eligible to participate in the Olympics and look up to find that is it tomorrow.  I bow down to the power of the internet.  I also tread lightly, when my children are with me and I have to get them to school.  Truancy hearings are bad.  Amanuensis at a truancy hearing sobs like the Olympics are on.  “Ms.____________, can you hear me?”  Are you okay?  Do you need help?  Are you in crisis? (Do we have some tissues in here, they whisper to the assistant. Oh, my god, what did I ask? Why is she sobbing?)  Do you have a case worker we can call?”

Yesterday.  I discovered a trigger for my mental depression imbalance anxiety and panic disorders.  Stress and books depicting stress.  Well, duh!  I know, what an epiphany.  I was reading a book about a woman who lost her friends and moved to another country after being raped and becoming pregnant by her best friend’s boyfriend. She was accused of seducing him while she was unconscious/drunk at someone’s house (without the boyfriend there,) where she believed she was safe, then woke up to said naked man in the bed with her the next morning.  He lied about the circumstances and everyone believed him.  She obviously was a liar because he was charming, manipulative and she didn’t stand up for herself and have the bastard thrown in jail for rape.  I digress, my point is that I got sucked into a fictional account that hit too close to home.  No, I’m not a rape survivor, but I feel like some of my friends and a family member abandoned me based upon fabricated information from my ex.

Trigger one, plus financial stress, plus fun and games from the ex, plus an angry man child in my house, plus disability questions, plus sleep deprivation, plus my baby’s seizure this week, plus my fainting, plus, plus, plus, plus equals a 12 on the meltdown scale.

This is a not so funny fact I learned this week during my real research about sex offenders laws.  If a sex offender has committed a crime while a juvenile, their records are sealed and never made public, no matter how heinous the crime.  He /she can be even Tier II in her status.  That means they have to register with the county Sheriff for 25 years. However, they will never be listed on the State Sex Offender Registry.  You will never know that you had a sex offender living in your children’s house for a period of 8 months.  Isn’t that … there is no word.

Now, let me clarify, I never had a sex offender in my house but my ex did, around my boys who were all minors and under the age of consent.  No, they were not molested (that I know of,) but that is the best I can hope for?  REALLY?  My children can be exposed to any type of deviant person or persons (cause this story gets better) for an unspecified period of time due to unsupervised teens in a house with no rules and there is nothing I can do.  Children’s Services can do nothing about it because there is nothing to do now.  I have to prove current neglect.

The boys three, no longer bright and shiny. They have wear and tear, their enamel is faded and cracked. They are still inextricably linked to each other though separated from their parents. A not so charming bracelet.

The freedom we have to f____ up our children is mind blowing.  As a non custodial parent, all I can do is hope that nothing happened.  Hope that nothing happened?  Hope that a custodial parent has the common sense to notice a person lurking around the house after they have been asked to leave 8 times.  Shouldn’t the police have been involved the first , second or third time?  Why does he have custody if protecting the children is not his main purpose.  Isn’t it the responsibility of parents to protect their children.  Shouldn’t it be ingrained in you as a parent to want to protect your offspring from the world?  Shouldn’t it be so?  Why isn’t it so?

Wait, I said there was more.  So after the juvenile registered sex offender left the house, my 17 year old son starts dating a 20 something year old registered sex offender that found him on Facebook.  I’m going to call her a predator.  She is a Tier II sex offender who had interaction with a 15 year old boy.  My younger children are 12 and 14.  She was allowed to spend weekends overnight at the house around my younger children.  I believe the age of consent is 16 here, so there is nothing I can do for the eldest child, but the younger two have been exposed again to another deviant person.  Without her last name and the city that she is registered in, there is NOTHING I CAN DO.

You can ask rational questions like: Did my ex know she was an offender at the time he let her spend the weekend?  Why is it okay for a woman to spend the weekend with a minor for the weekend and sleep in the same bedroom.  How could he have known?  Why should a parent be expected to do security checks on their children’s friends?  Well, when said girl is in her 20’s, has two children already and is pregnant with a third (not my son’s,) wouldn’t you start snooping on your child’s facebook, twitter and cell phone texts??  Wouldn’t you do SOMETHING, if you really cared?

The truth is no one cares.  No agency cares.  My boys are safe in the eyes of the agency.  My ex’s parenting skills are great because the standards are so low.  He’s not a drug dealer using the children to create and package Methamphetamines in the house. Wow.  He is not pimping them out.  Wow.  He has not molested the children himself.  Wow.  Anymore revelations like this and I will have to become a nun.

Consequently, yesterday morning was a major melt down, anxiety attack/panic attack.  I called for help.  I got help.  I have a network.  The baby was taken to a safe place.  I got to go to therapy.  On my way home.  I got a call from angry child’s principal.  There was an assault.  Multiple children were involved.  It escalated quickly.  Ten day suspension for AC.  Possible expulsion hearing in the future.  He could have paralyzed or broken bones of his friend for what he did.  A fist fight would have been less violent.  More calls to therapists.

My crisis was deferred to take care of the child’s crisis.  That is my job as a parent.  Suck it up and be strong when you aren’t.  Pretend if necessary. Sacrifice self for the children.  I no longer sacrifice my self for my ex or for any man I am in a relationship with. I have discovered my self esteem and I like having it as a blanket of protection.

He wouldn’t take all of the books out of his locker as I requested.  I don’t let things go.  A teacher came out of the hall to remind angry child that he needed to serve a detention.  He found AC to be argumentative, pulled him aside and gave him a box to hold all of the books I requested he take out of his locker.  AC came back to me in full oppositional mode.  Another teacher heard the commotion and called the principal for help.  The principal came upstairs and had to help me escort AC out of the building.  AC has given so many cries for help that go unanswered.

In spite of the constant fighting with ex regarding parenting and blaming me for all of the children’s issues, I left a message and spoke to him when he called to find out about the day’s incident.  The response from ex regarding the suspension was thus: The child involved has an anger problem, not AC.  The teachers have had it in for AC since second grade.  Three schools worth of teachers, guidance counselors and principals are out to get poor AC.  It’s not his (AC) fault.  He has done nothing wrong in his father’s eyes.  The same way there was nothing wrong with the eldest child when he started beating me.  No, the fault is mine.

I had to hang up abruptly.  I no longer argue with stupid, delusional, manipulative people even if I once loved them.  I had AC call his father and give his version of events so that he could get sympathy where he deserves none.  These are appropriate consequences for his actions.  He has been given the benefit of the doubt numerous times.  He has been living in detentions, in school restrictions and in the principal’s office at two schools since the abuse and melodramatic break up of his parents.  He has problems with females in authority who don’t let him do whatever he wants.  So does his eldest brother and his father.

I don’t back down.  That is my flaw.  I believe a parent is the adult and the child must learn to follow direction within reason.  If I asked my child to walk outside barefoot in the snow, I can understand that that is not a reasonable request.  Household chores and doing homework are mandatory.  No negotiating or debating necessary. I love my boys, I don’t love their behavior.

To be continued…

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