4 Months

Closing in on it anyway. There is so much to write and so many emotions to share that I am overwhelmed just thinking about how to put them down on a web page.

Hunter is still inpatient at a psychiatric facility and it's been, as this post is titled, almost 4 months. It's been a long road full of frustration, tears and one very painful "Oh-My-God" when I learned Hunter tried to hang himself with a belt he borrowed from his roommate.

I can't even go in to the range of emotions I felt when I heard that, nor explain to you how it felt to see the obvious signs of his desperation on his neck.

I'm still unsure where my marriage stands.

My job is going very well. I still LOVE what I do and the people I care for. I wouldn't trade it/them for anything.

I am currently taking classes to be an OEC (Outdoor Emergency Care) Technician for one of the local Ski Patrols. We are almost at the half-way point, which means mid-terms are coming up VERY soon. I have already passed my "Professional Rescuer" course for CPR/Airway Adjunct/AED. It was grueling.

This is all I have for now.

Hello, Again

Hunter has been in the hospital 40-something days now. In a way the days have flown by. Mostly though they have dragged slower than molasses. He continues to exhibit the violent, aggressive behavior that landed him there in the first place. There have been slight med changes over the past number of weeks, yet ~ and still ~ there is no magic potion to cast the demons from his brain.

I miss him so much I cannot breathe. He's my buddy, my shadow, my boy. I somehow fooled myself into believing that with him I had a chance to be a mother in ways I could not be with Matthew or Connor. It seems I have failed Hunter too. I feel as though I have lost all my boys.

I hate this fucking disease called bipolar! I cannot express just how much I do. I hate that because of it I had to even make the choice to let Matthew and Connor go. The demons I live with over that decision haunt me constantly and on such a deep level that at times I want to scream "do over!". Yet, the time has past. I lost all of it. Every single nanosecond. I missed so many firsts...I was excluded from their lives. Purposely or accidentally is anybody's guess.

I hate this fucking disease because now one of my children has to live with the same darkness clouding his mind that I do.

I am a horrible mother and a bad wife. I want to lie down in a hole and exhale my very last breath...

No Beds

Hunter is sound asleep on a gurney, approximately three feet from where I sit. We've been in this room inside the emergency department of a large metropolitan hospital since around 6 p.m. last night. Almost twelve hours...tick...tock...

Henry and I brought Hunter here last night because it is something the court had ordered us to do; a psychiatric evaluation. I dragged my feet. I couldn't (still can't) bear having him in a psychiatric hospital again. I thought those days were behind us. Wrong.

It is so hard to believe this sleeping young man, who, snoring softly, and looking so peaceful, has so much venom inside him that he wants to kill people. If you ask him he'll tell you as much and add the names of the people on his list. He went so far as to one night pull a knife out of the kitchen drawer to kill his stepbrother with.

Dear God, please help this man-looking-child survive his lifetime.

Happy New Year?

I wish that ~ more than anything ~ this year will be a happy year. So far it's not looking very good.

I have been loathing sitting down and adding a new entry to my blog. Until a few moments ago, literally, I couldn't put my finger on the reason why. It finally occurred to me that I am afraid of the tears.

I am not scared of the tears themselves, rather I am terrified of the emotions that are bottled up behind them. The emotions are raw, potent and deep and what bubbles to the surface now and again rock me to my core.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ Hunter ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Today we went to court with Hunter regarding his assault and battery charges. In addition to a woman from Child Protective Services following us, Hunter now has a Probation Officer. In exchange for a guilty plea (which we planned all along because Hunter admits what he did), of the three cases pending, totaling six people assaulted, two of the cases (five people) were dismissed. The remaining case/charge is against his teacher.

How did CPS become involved you ask? Well, right before Christmas Hunter pulled a knife on his stepbrother with every intent on killing him. (Henry intervened.) I was asleep at the time of the incident and woke up the next morning to find a very large knife laying on a table near my side of the bed.

I was furious.

When I woke Hunter for school the next morning I bombarded him with questions and statements. "What were you thinking?!", "Do you have any idea what will happen to you if you kill somebody?!" On and on I went.

Up until that moment Hunter had never seen me so livid and I think at first it surprised him. I pushed (verbally) too far and Hunter became frustrated. When he becomes frustrated he gets angry, when he gets angry he becomes violent. When he walked away from me and descended the stairs to the first floor bathroom, I was right on his heels.

As I moved to grab his arm, a quick succession of punches were sent in my direction, landing in various places on my body. I fought back. That is until Hunter grabbed and tangled his one hand in my very long hair. Our bodies were so close together that the only body part of his exposed to me was an arm, so I bit him. HARD. By this time my stepson, Jake, had intervened and had Hunter pinned up against the bathroom mirror and Hunter let go of my hair.

When I retreated upstairs I heard Jake talking to Hunter and Hunter calmed down enough to finish preparing for school. Shortly after, and still shaking, I left for work and Hunter left for school.

Later that afternoon I received a call from the school nurse, someone who has known Hunter and our family since he was in kindergarten. She started off by saying she and the staff at his former elementary school and current junior high school were behind Henry and me 100%. She said everyone knows we are great parents and that we are totally involved with helping Hunter and that it hasn't been an easy road.

Then came the "but"...the teacher noticed the bite mark on his arm and they were required to report it to either CPS or the police and which one did I want them to turn to? I told her to call CPS because the police would defer us to them and it would just eliminate the monkey-in-the-middle.

So that's how CPS became involved in our lives. Although I don't *dislike* the CPS worker, she does have a tendency to annoy me greatly with her idiosyncrasies.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ Relationships ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The stress of all things Hunter are more than enough for me. Unfortunately, on top of that, my relationship with my husband hasn't been what it used to be, although very recently, it has slightly improved.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ Health ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

My health is still not the best and more issues have arisen that, in addition to their own set of symptoms, only exacerbate the tiredness and fatigue I already feel from the diseases we already knew about.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ Activities ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

One thing I am fighting hard for is to stay active and not let the tiredness and fatigue cause me to sleep my life away.

I recently began training for the National Ski Patrol ~ even though I'm a snowboarder ~ at one of our local ski areas. Currently it's on-hill training, twice a week, (plus one duty shift a week) and it totally wears me out. Yet I LOVE the exhilarated feeling I get when I'm learning a new skill and I finally accomplish it, or I'm just free-styling wide-open down the hill.

Being outside ~ and in the cool air ~ is a bonus!

I am still viciously determined that 2010 be a much better year than 2009.

Only time will tell...

Hunter Bear

Today is a mandatory parent/teacher meeting with/for Hunter.  I am so frustrated at his behavior as of late that I don't know which way to turn.  It also makes me terribly, undeniably sad.

Hunter really is a terrific kid. Really!  If his peers and teachers only saw a small part of what I see, they would know just how awesome he really is.  I sound like a parent, yet it's true, he is amazing.

In all the years of fighting for Hunter I often wondered where we would be when he became a teenager.  Technically he's not yet a teenager ~ he is only 12 ~ yet his physical attributes tell a different story.  For starters, his height.  He's taller than I am (5' 9") now.  Which is terrifying to me because he has the physical strength of a full grown man. 

I find myself walking on eggshells when Hunter and I are alone together and he becomes frustrated.  I do what I can, without giving in to his demands, if there are any, to not escalate his frustration into a full contact sport.

Last night Hunter asked me when his brother Matthew started shaving.  Matthew is 20 years old now and, as far as I know, he hasn't started shaving yet!  Then Hunter asked me when his brother Connor, almost 16, started shaving (he had a mustache at 10) and I guessed and told him he's probably been shaving for a while now.

Hunter is smart.  He has an amazing memory.  He has well-developed fine motor skills and recently assembled his very first model car.  He loves computer games, his X-Box and his DS.  He's also crazy about Lego's and Bionicles.

Sniffing the air around me, Hunter frequently notices my perfume.  He tells me when I look pretty, too.  He has also become much better at recognizing facial expressions and what they mean.  Something he struggled with (still does to some extent) for years.  If you asked Hunter which expression he sees on me the most and he would probably say frustrated!

I pray to God that we are somehow able to find the magic potion that will tame his ferocious temper when he becomes frustrated.  Sadly, society will not accept a child like Hunter, believing that his anger is manifested deliberately by him instead of it manifesting and taking hold of him.  That statement probably makes very little sense to someone that hasn't raised an Asperger's kid.

Hunter has been "Hunter-Bear", or some variation of it, since he was a newbie.  Initially I called him "Pooh-Bear" or "Pooh".  Over the years it's taken on a life of its own so I usually call him just "Bear".

I'm the only person in the world that calls him "Bear".  MY "Hunter-Bear".  For always.

Thank you, God, for another day.