In need of advice/help

As we continue through 2017… I have to say that I am feeling absolutely exhausted! Physically my body hurts, Mentally I am tired, and Emotionally I am feeling absolutely broken. The question arises… WHY? Why am I feeling like this? Why am I allowing outside influences to affect my day to day? Why do I allow people to bring me down when I have worked so hard to feel absolutely content with myself…

The last 5 years we have struggled as a family… Our oldest daughter has caused a lot of tension… At the age of 12 when it started we wanted nothing more than to just shower her with love and understanding because we thought maybe the lies and manipulation were because her body was changing and she didn’t know how to express it… As 13 approached we still came at every situation with just understanding… With Chandler, we have never left him alone with her because was never nice to him even as a baby. She would pose for pictures, but that’s about it. She would say mean things to him or just shove him, never play with him. (Talk about heart breaking…. When you can’t trust one child with another child) That is enough to just really take it out of you. We spent a lot of time changing things we were doing as a family… 14, 15, 16… We incorporated journals for both the big kids… This is a place they could write 3 things that they liked about themselves, and three positive things that happened that day… This continued and we felt like maybe we were making head way, we tried home schooling because we wanted her to feel good in her learning place. She wanted to stop running and we let her because we didn’t want to be the parents that forced her to do things she didn’t want to do… She came out as a lesbian and we have completed supported her in how she feels and we have given nothing but absolute love! The lies and manipulation continued… we felt like making the move to Florida would be so great for our family… It would give us a fresh start away from what we thought were negative influences… We continued with daily journals this time talking about the day… What positive things happened that day and what negative things happened that day… What could be done the next day to just be better then that day… We eventually had to stop because it was getting to the point where she was scripting her day and being completely dishonest. Well, here we are almost 2 years later and she is still at square one without friends because of lies and just being the bully… She was awful to her team mates as captain basically treating them like they were beneath her… Making one  girl pee her pants because Ashley thought it was funny, throwing her jacket down and making them pick it up… Making these kids carry her bottle of water just because she could… Well she lost her captain ship pretty quick. She has skipped from girl to girl making a name for herself. Even while dating said girls she talks bad about them. We have had to have at least 10 meetings with her coach talking about how she is treating teammates, how she was telling him lies about us and us lies about him… to basically push us against each other. She has a tendency to play the victim and then when caught she shows no remorse for actions taken. We have tried positive self help books, I have tried writing down bible verses for her to look up because I felt like they would help her to just feel better, we encourage youth group, and we do a ton of family activities, we have tried taking stuff away (to maybe help her see how good she has it), we have tried having her write reports on lies and how she feels being lied to and how it feels to tell a lie, we have tried to have her look up consequences for some of the things that she has done to show her that if we didn’t have her back she could have gotten in serious trouble… We have tried being stern, and grounding, but we don’t have anything to ground her from because she doesn’t have anyone to hang out with. We have tried counseling (she just told a ton of lies) a lot of money and time wasted.) She told the psychiatrist so many lies about me that  when we met with her she basically told me that I should not be in the picture (this was when she was 13) when we confronted her she denied ever saying anything. She had to stay at Parkview Behavioral Health for 3 days, she treated it like a vacation… wearing her bracelet for days after the fact… This was for lieing and telling me that she had over dosed on tylenol… Which wasn’t the case… When I took her to the hospital her blood levels were basically normal. What had really happened is that she researched for about 6 hours what would happen if she took 3 at a time.. She took 3 at a time every couple of hours… She had also been messaging with a friend about taking them and how she was going to make it my fault… She has gotten in trouble for sending naked pictures, for sending R rated messages on her computer, she has gotten in trouble for everything in between… We have changed the rule in the house that computers and phones have to be only used in common areas of the house because we can’t enable her to be absolutely inappropriate in her bedroom or bathroom.

This brings us to just recently… She has informed us that she has been telling lies about me especially to her Mom and lies about her Mom to me and so forth and the reason is that she has been basically plotting Josh and I breaking up from day one and she knew that her actions had worked in the past and she was hoping it would work this time. She then said that 2 weeks ago it hit her that it’s probably not going to work. She was basically smiling for pictures and putting on a good show here so that if we were to break up she wouldn’t look like the cause.

Now this brings me to my feelings on the whole thing… My heart is broke in a million pieces because this is a girl that I have loved since day one of even seeing her. Even before Josh and I were actually dating. She was instantly in my heart and I was ready to just give her my world and shower her with all the love a Mother could give. To find out over 5 years later that she was just playing games feels like nothing I have ever felt… Just so we are all clean we all know that I have gone through the loss of both my parents, and many many other life changing moments…. But this one just feels different.

I am sad because here’s a girl that has had so much potential to do so much good! I’m pretty sure that’s how it normally works though… Here’s a girl that at the age of 17 she has no real memories that she is going to be able to look back on and be excited about because she doesn’t have any friends, and really hasn’t maintained any type of a relationship with any single person in her life. To not have relationships with people is heart breaking because this life is crazy enough… Here’s a girl that I feel like we can’t help her. We aren’t qualified.

To add to this craziness she hasn’t apologized because she wanted too… We made her call her Mom, Josh’s Mom, and Josh’s Dad. We wanted her to make these calls to apologize and to just hopefully feel some thing after talking to these people about the lies and manipulation, and just animosity that she has caused just because of playing games. During those calls she rushed through them saying exactly the same thing each time…  A phone call stood out… Josh’s Dad, Dave…. Proceeded to tell her that it wasn’t her fault and that it’s completely normal for her to have done these things and that it was probably mine and Josh’s fault that she felt she had to do the things that she has done. He then proceeded to tell her that he just really misses spending time with her and that he loves her because they share blood and that’s just different as to how he feels about Jacob (Mind you Grandpa of the year didn’t even visit any of the kids when we did live in Columbia City… He always had a reason not too… I will give him credit for his faithful 50 dollars a year that he gives the kids on Christmas) After done with the phone calls she said she was only making them so that she could get her stuff back and that’s it.

Let’s just say the past 4 weeks have been hell with everything coming out… And we are at a loss of even how to handle all of this…. Ashley is off of our phone plan and is paying for her own flip phone, she is finding her own way to and from work, she is now riding the bus, she has a cleaning list, and she has basic clothes to wear… I am at a point where I just let Josh handle her… She acts like everything is fine and this is normal life.

All of this breaks my heart… I feel like I have just opened my whole world to her and really felt so good about it even after all the crap that we have been through, I’m not sure how to move forward with this one…

I am writing this because: number one this is my Blog, and I am entitled to write what I want and need, number 2 I need advice, and number 3 I feel like if I can just get this out t here maybe someone has gone through what we are going through and maybe has some insight. I will say this as well, I remember saying things like oh my gosh I just don’t understand how parents can kick there teens out or how they can just do whatever… I will say that I get it now… Because her actions haven’t just affected her… They have affected everyone in our house… Jacob has had to step up multiple times and take care of Chandler so that we could have conversations with Ashley, conversations with her coach, phone conversations with everyone from Indiana… It has also affected him in the aspect that he isn’t thinking he wants to go to the high school that she is going to because of all the things that she has done. It affects him because when she does something in appropriate and we change the house rules it changes for him too even if he didn’t do anything… Plus all the arguing, tears cried, tension, and everything in between.

This is true just not sure how to go after life at this point…