For a long time, I allowed fear to run my life. Fear of what other people would think, fear of Donny hurting himself, fear of Donny hurting someone else, fear of what Donny's mood swings were doing to my family. I still feel fear every single day, but we are trying not to let it destroy our family. We live our life one day at a time and we have put our trust in God's hands. Every morning as my son goes to school, I pray that he has a good day at school. I pray that he doesn't lose it and end up back at the juvenile detention center. I pray that his next attempt to hurt himself is as unsuccessful as his previous attempts. I pray that when I come home from work that he'll be here and in a good mood. Like other people living with bipolar, Donny's emotions are like a roller coaster, up and down, whipping first one direction and then another, sometimes crippling you with fear and others times full of exciting joy. Sometimes you just need to hold on tight and scream and other times burst out in laughter.
As a family, we have gone through different phases in how we deal with living our life. Of course there was the initial denial stage where you pretend like there is nothing different in your family than anyone else's family. It's hard to accept sometimes. No parent wants to hear that their child's not absolutely perfect. We want our children to have it all and be the best. Then came the anger and blame game. Whose fault is it that our son is this way? Now I can jokingly tell my hubby it's all his fault and he says back to me that our son is just like his mama, but at one time those comments were said in anger and accusation. We needed to blame someone. If I'm being totally honest, this phase almost destroyed our family. There were times that I would wonder why are we even trying to pretend to be a family. It was a lonely and frustrating time for all of us. Unfortunately, this phase tries to resurface every time Donny is going through bad phases that linger. Last year, when Donny was arrested and spent time in the JDC, my husband and I basically stopped talking to each other for almost a month. I feared that there was no way we would get through the ordeal as a couple, but we did. We started to find our way back to each other. We beat the statistics, so far. One of the things we have learned is that many parents of bipolar children end up getting divorced. I understand and thought about it many times. It's so hard sometimes that I would think that maybe it's just not worth it. I would question whether or not I actually loved my husband. I couldn't understand why we were so miserable. But we were making classic mistakes. We made no time for us. We had one or two dates a year. It's hard to find babysitters for a bipolar child, so when you do find them, you don't want to take advantage of them. You tend to save them for emergencies only. We also wouldn't go places. We let the fear take over and it almost destroyed us. Now we are fighting back. We are trying to make time for us as a couple. We are taking time to have conversations. And although we still don't get Date Night, we have started having a family date night once a month. We are picking a different restaurant each month and going as a family. We are battling our fear of what others might think and at the same time working with the boys on how to behave in public. Things may not be perfect in our home but we are trying to take back our lives and not let fear control us. As I told a friend the other night, we get through each day by putting our lives in God's hands and taking life one day at a time. When things start to be overwhelming, we start counting our blessing and remember the Serenity Prayer. I've always loved the Footprints in the Sand poem, but at this phase in my life, it has taken on a new meaning and I am so thankful for my Lord and Savior. Through him our family is mending its wounds.
