Three days ago I became aware that my daughter was arrested. Again.
Here's a little history. We adopted this child when she was 2 months old. She was biologically half black and half caucasian. It was during a time when racially mixed children were not adopted by white couples. She was likely destined to spend a great deal of time in foster care as a ward of the state until we arrived in the picture. We fell in love. She never did.
We dealt with bigotry in the Jw congregation we attended, subtle at times, and more open at others. Then we dealt with a child who began to lie to us at every turn, eventually began to rebel against everything we stood for [not just the Jw things, though that was part of it of course]. By 12 she was an accomplished liar. By 14 she had begun to run away - frequently. Everyone else lost count, but I didn't. She eventually ran away 18 times. She was picked up by every law enforcement agency in our part of the state on one runaway or another. By 15 she had stolen my car in the middle of the night and went to a gang initiation, told her friend on our wiretapped phone that she had devised 3 different ways to kill her dad, me, in order to gain some imaginary freedom from my oppressive rulership over her. She began to bring her boyfriends home for sex during overlaps in my wife and my own work schedules. She was using drugs, probably alcohol, and running away at every occasion.
On one occasion she bruised her arms and hid it while at home, but while at her part time job at KFC she exposed the bruises and told her boss and co-workers that I was beating her. Her reason became clear when she ran off for a week to a drug party. She needed a place to stay and had gained sympathy. I heard once that she had even told some people that I had sexually molested her - WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE - likely for similar reasons, to get shelter when she flew the coop again.
I tried to arrange counselling. You guessed it - she ran away and the sessions were cancelled.
Three or four years into this hell a calm settled in. She announced that she was going to change her direction and now wanted to 'study' and become a Jw. Our reaction was almost ecstacy at this point. She got baptised and played a game with our hearts. That whole thing lasted about three weeks. We, gullible Jw's we were, believed her conversion. We allowed her to go spend the weekend with a witness girl in the next congregation over. She returned with a turtle neck on, and when she moved I saw the vampire bites on her neck. She confessed that her and the other girl had gone partying with some guys and had group sex. Her time as a Jw was over before it started. Or should I say her ruse. She was disfellowshipped within a few weeks of being baptised.
Eventually, at the age of 17 I was forced to choose between my marriage and my hateful, authority hating daughter. I told her it was coming if she didn't back off with her behaviour. My wife had experienced two mental/emotional breakdowns over the stress, and gave me an ultimatum: if she runs away again, she leaves or I leave. I can't take it anymore.
I told my daughter this - she ran away the next day. She lost her home the week after that.
Over the next few years she lived like a transient. Never did she stay in one place more than a few weeks. She did not hold down a job. She went from boyfriend to boyfriend like some change hats. Then from girlfriend to girlfriend in the same manner. By 20 she had her first child. By 25 she had two more. We later became aware that she was accustomed to leaving the kids with babysitters or caregivers whom she had befriended over time. We became aware of this for the first time when we got a call from a tired lady who stated that our granddaugter had been left there for over a week without ever seeing her mother. She was without diapers and formula. We picked up the child and kept her until our daughter showed.
The story is long. It is far more complicated than I here state. But you get the point.
Fast forward to five years ago. My daughter comes to live with us for a forth or fifth time since she moved out originally. In every case we had been forced to have her leave due to drugs or general laziness. This time she had her two kids with her, and was pregnant for her third. [In fact in almost every case it was our effort to assure the grandkids safe haven that moved us to allow her to move in 'temporarily'.] She was [unknown to us at the time] on the run from the law. She had warrants out for her arrest. She finally told us in the hospital just before our grandson was born. In perhaps the only motherly act of her life, she agreed to sign over guardianship to us in case she was arrested.
Our grandson was born, and when he was 6 days old, she just disappeared. A few weeks later she was arrested, charged, and sentenced to 10 years in prison for her crimes. The 'mitigating' circumstances were her downfall. The judge just looked at her and said 'You have no respect for the law. You have shown that by this long list of crimes for which you have skated on the mercy of the courts so far.' He sentenced her to the max.
She was released after 3 years according to the state's probation laws. She had to keep her nose clean and report every month. She didn't. I allowed her to move back to my home, to get herself re-introduced to her children, to get a job, to get a foundation built for a life outside of jail. She went right back to her old ways. Within a few months all bets were off. She came to visit her children a few times, and then after a year we asked the court to establish child support from her. By this point we had been rearing her children most of 5 years straight, and before then we had been acting as safety net for them for most of their lives. Her response was to come to our home a year ago, call her mother an effing bitch, and storm out declaring that she would give up all parental rights before she paid us a red cent in child support.
In the past few weeks we had gotten a couple of nasty emails from her - accusatory. Everything that was ever wrong in her life was due to our failure as parents - even though ironically, it was her very ignoring of the principles we had tried to instill that kept screwing up her life. I was getting worried that she was deep into drugs now. She would not tell us where she lived. She was now wanted on warrants for failing to appear for her probation meetings. And her emails were subtly threatening. I began to review our home security out of fear that she would try to abduct her children in the middle of the night - or worse. I feared that she was using some very serious drugs, running with the worse of the worse. I had no idea what might happen. She had never been violent [with us] before, but paranoia began to creep into my thinking, and we had to work hard to assure it did not leak out to the kids - it was never our intention to poison the well as regards their mother.
Those same emails sounded braggish - she spoke of getting a high dollar lawyer to get her kids back [understand that we have never suggested that she should not raise her children - only that we had legal and moral authority over them and she had to show herself able before the court to have the order changed]. She even told me that she would assure that we would never see them again once she got them back. [Nice reward for half a decade of our sacrifice toward them, eh?] We were a little concerned that she might have some money in pocket due to selling drugs - we knew she was hiding from outstanding warrants and couldn't risk getting a real job [not that she has ever been particularly motivated in that regard anyway].
Well our fears were apparently well founded. She was arrested last Wednesday for running a methamphetamine manufacturing lab in her rented house. Her and her roomate are both in jail for running this lab within 1000 feet of a city park. With the outstanding warrants against her, she is being held without bond. She has made no effort to contact us. She won't. We found out almost by fluke just this weekend.
She will turn 30 next month. I don't know if she will see the outside before she is 40. I don't know how this will end. I am focused on the kids. I am not sure how to tell them, or when. I don't think I will tell them for a long time. They have gotten used to never hearing from her, or knowing what she is up to. I will not hide the truth from them, but see no rush to discuss it at this time.
What a pile of shit life sometimes becomes. I am generally pretty optomistic and positive. But this is ugly anyway you shake it.
I don't want my daughter to spend most of her productive years in jail. But I sure as hell don't want her disrupting the lives of these children, subjecting them to potential dangerous situations, which she would surely do if she was free. I feel a sense of relief that she is behind bars. She long ago destroyed our relationship with her. I feel some guilt over that too. A parent still is a parent no matter what happens. But we are parents also to her children, in many ways the only parents they have ever known. I am so torn.
It has been way too much. We are simple, good people. In one lifetime we have had to try and raise a rebel with no cause, find out our religion was complete fraud, spend our pre-retirement years raising children of that rebel, and now wondering when the other shoe will drop?
As I write this the kids are safe, asleep in the other room. That's the main thing. That's the goal every day. Nothing else matters much.
Thanx for listening.
Jeff