Not-Happy Traumaversary to You

I really should have recognized this. And I did, at least in part of my brain. Unfortunately, that part of my brain was apparently not communicating with the rest.

March 2007. Possibly the worst single month of all time. It's only competitor is April 2004, the month I was told the tumor I had been hosting was cancerous (turned out it wasn't, exactly- another story). March 2007. The first week, we were told the that 8-week-long reunification plan was now a 3-week-long reunification plan. It didn't take long to relate that little detail to the major case-worker quittage that occurred two weeks before. Nobody involved really thought the girls' bio-mom had developed any change of behavior, and she wasn't even participating in any service her case plan outlined, but there you go. Staff crunch, and someone probably figured my girls would be the least not safe of the children on the caseload. So, the first half of that first week was two unsupervised all-day visits, with their first overnight that Saturday. The week before had been one two-hour supervised visit.

Week two. Our beloved rottweiler became sick. He couldn't stop emptying his insides in every conceivable manner. He became part of what was to be the Iams pet food epidemic. By the end of the week his bones were sticking out and he was laid up at the vet's. The next week he came home better (to the tune of several thousand dollars), crawled into the neighbors window well, and died. It turned out he had an unrelated and unidentified tumor that burst from the strain of the illness.

Week three. I came home with the girls from a Friday therapy appointment, and Josh was waiting in the driveway. Extremely pale. He had lost his job, in an unexpected and incredibly painful way.

Week four. I had had enough. The girls were on unsupervised overnight for half the week, and the caseworker called because the bio-mom wanted the girls for Princess's birthday, wanted me to drive them there, wanted my car seats so she could take them somewhere, and had told the caseworker that she felt uncomfortable when I talked the her. I yelled on the phone outside for nearly an hour. And not irrationally, I might add. Some things changed after that conversation.

So. This is March. Princess has been giving me a serious, SERIOUS run for my sanity all month. Hmmmm. I wonder why.

Yesterday was Josh's birthday. Ten days before Princess's. It's so hard for Princess that we wouldn't celebrate it at all if we could get away with it without the other children birthing a cow. But we can't. So we had a cake and sang Happy Birthday. Princess got crabbier and crabbier, and totally flipped her lid at bedtime. After doing a whole bunch of wrong things, I finally crawled in bed next to her and hit on the right one.

"It's hard when it's someone else's birthday."
"NO!!!"
"It's even harder when it's almost your birthday."
(Silence)
"It's really hard, because you remember other birthdays, where you did not feel good inside."
(More silence)
"This is a different birthday. You are here. I am here. You are not going away. I am not going away."

I cuddled her for a bit, repeating that last little nugget several times. When I kissed her goodnight, she had one tear running down her cheek.

Traumaversary.

Stink.