Back to Square One

Ameri called on Monday with complaints. She was not having the romantic adventure that she had her heart set on. Boy friend comes home from a twelve hour shift at dawn and after a couple of beers with the boys. He wants sex and sleep. Ameri wants other attention and she has already slept. It's an old story.

Yesterday Mom had to do the four hour drive to meet up with her. Ameri's refuge is the hospital or in patient treatment center. In the area where she is staying there are no treatment facilities or hospital psych wards. She had Mom take her to a small regional hospital. It is a rural hospital in an agricultural community. In the waiting area there were farm workers with grievous trauma, farm worker children in feverish distress, and an unconscious black convict from a private prison shackled to a gurney hand and foot. There are no psych facilities. Mom sits with Ameri for nearly four hours while the sick and injured come and go. Finally, Ameri is admitted provisionally and will be transported to another facility further from home. Mom still has a four hour drive home. She had to leave Ameri at the hospital. It was not an easy decision but there was no other way. Ameri does not seem to feel any discomfort being in the care of strangers. She recognizes that there is a professional ethic and SOP that will be followed and she feels safe with that.

Ameri's behavior is predictable over a cycle of days, weeks and months. The long cycle is tripped by the coming of Halloween and begins to wind down after Easter. This cycle also coincides with her birth trauma, abandonment events by caretakers and the Holidays. Within the long cycle we find that Ameri experiences episodic cycles of functionality and then breakdown. Even in these sub cycles there are yet other sub cycles of mood and behavior. Even in the best of times her attitude, habits and behavior toward us can only be described as execrable. We do on occasion see some glimmer of a smile and a bit of laughter, but that is very rare.

So to wrap up for today. Ameri is somewhere five or more hours from home. She is being questioned and evaluated. They may or may not hear right away about the hospitalizations that she has experienced since August 2005. No one has contacted us. This situation is not as personally traumatic as it has been in the past. Mom is coping and putting her cheerful spin on things. I am seething and as hurt as I have ever been. There are things I need to be doing in my life but I need only start a project and Ameri pops in with a need that is complicated, requires an expenditure of cash and will require driving time. The cycle continues.

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