Another Altercation with My Daughter

A Warning From Jump

These are my raw feelings. Although no one is in immediate danger of harm, these were my thoughts at the time of and after the altercation. People that know me know better. If yall want to call someone and take my child, I mean, do your thing. I personally don’t like being assaulted by my own child and taking it like a punk but that’s life.

Have you ever had a dream where you’re fighting someone and you can’t do anything because the dream makes it so that you can’t fight?

Have you ever been playing a video game and the battery dies and you’re sitting there getting shot at and killed?

Well, that’s what it felt like yesterday when my daughter literally assaulted me and I had the power to defend myself against her attacks but chose not to. The cuts don’t really show very well in the pics but I can assure you that my daughter has not one mark on her.

When she was a baby, I fell with her twice and she didn’t hit the ground. Because that’s my job as a mother. But I will tell you that yesterday, February 28, 2022 was a day I don’t think I will ever forget.

I am off next week and will be talking to TWO of my therapists (yall know I have therapists because….bipolar disorder). So how did this little incident come to be? I might make this into parts as I am still really going through the motions and feelings that are all over the place because, if you KNOW me, you know I don’t let anyone put their hands on me.

This Time Was NOT Like the Last Time

I can tell you that we were already having a hard day because my daughter continuously said I was yelling at her when I definitely wasn’t as we live in an apartment and I don’t want to wake people up.

However, the child decided to move like a snail and pretty much be disrespectful. Then I go and look in the fridge and one of my Sprites is gone. This is a common point of contention and I tell her not to do it and her response is always “Okay, MOM!” But I know she’ll do it again. Now, I don’t ask for much in this world. I really don’t. I just want my Sprite every once in a while. I’ve tried the water in the bottle thing, doesn’t work.

She has her own juice that’s not even that cheap that she drinks and refuses to drink water so I put some water in her juice so that she can get a little bit of water at least. That’s not the point.

In addition to this, I paid about $150 to get her hair done in gel twists. This style is supposed to last at least like 3 weeks. She didn’t want the gel twists. Took them out. I was like “Okay”. I mean, I do try to do my best. I try to buy her clothes but, as I have stated before, she gets hooked on an outfit and will wear it every day and hides them so that I can’t wash them. It’s exhausting.

So the alarm goes off for her to go out in the hallway to wait for the bus. She keeps asking me if I’m coming (granted, I start work at 6:00 a.m. for overtime because….single mom). I tell her I’m coming and I go out there. The bus comes to get her at 6:42 a.m. She decided that she all of a sudden needed a stuffed animal (never seen it before, it wasn’t needed and she always tries to find reasons to go back in the apartment at the last minute for minute things). So she mumbles the question when the girl can speak just fine. So then I tell her “No” and she continuously asks me.

I’m like “Why are you going to ask me a question and then argue with the response?” She was sitting on the floor and she just kept being disrespectful. I told her to get off the floor (the floor is dirty and you have tan pants on, come on). She doesn’t want to and kicks my foot. I’m like “You’re really going to kick my foot?”

Then the Fight Started

She begins to kick me. Now I’m like “I know you’re not about to try to fight me in the hallway.” She gets up and starts yelling and I told her already that people are asleep and you don’t get loud even in the apartment. So she’s standing up now but she’s by the steps. Remember, I say often that everything is a weapon when I am defending myself. The steps could have very well been that weapon but I moved her away from the steps because she was teetering on falling down them and you don’t want to fall down those steps. So I move her away from the steps and tell her to just go ahead outside and wait for the bus. This is me diffusing a situation because I personally was triggered at that point Knowing Your Triggers. So she decides (and she was taught correctly in Taekwondo) to claw my face and kick.

I literally had to pull this child’s hair and hold her back from continuing to claw my face and kick me. I kept my hands open. I wasn’t going to punch my child.

One of my neighbors who knows about my situation came out in her night clothes and then ran back in the house to put clothes on to try to help. I was just trying to keep her away from the steps. My temper really made me want to just let her fall. That’s that old Kendra that’s unmedicated and I wasn’t trying to let that come out.

So she wouldn’t go outside to just go away from me. The bus was coming so I told her to go ahead and get on the bus. I literally had to push her out the door and close it. When I did, she punched the glass. Yes, she punched the glass. And, in that moment, I hoped she hurt her hand.

Call From School

The poor tech teacher got an ear full when she really just called me because of the clothes issue where my daughter was coming home with clothes but no one told me why. Then she said that Kie’s Chromebook was broken. Must have happened during our altercation.

She then told me that Kie was yelling that she hated her mother and she wanted to go home. She didn’t want to get off the bus and it was just a mess. So the teacher took her outside and talked to her. Basically, she said we had gotten into a fight. I was like “That is correct and I have the pictures to prove it.” She then said that they had to fill out a report and I said that was all fine and dandy. I knew I did nothing wrong. But I had to pay $31.00 for her replacement Chromebook (coming out of her bank account) and the teacher said that she knows that our apartment is a safe environment because she wanted to go back. She told the teacher that she wanted to go back because she thought I was going to kick her out.

Feelings

To say that I felt a lot of things is an understatement. I called my best friend after texting my family to let them know about the altercation. My best friend has teenagers and she knows. Granted, her two don’t have moderate intellectual disabilities or autism but they do have hormone and attitude problems.

She listens and she always just tells me to be proud that I restrained myself but I wasn’t proud. I really wanted to do harm to my own child.

Absolute RAGE!

One thing I pride myself on (and maybe this is more of a pride issue than a rage issue) is that I don’t let anyone disrespect me or put their hands on me. When I talked to my neighbor after Kie got on the bus, she said the same thing, “You restrained yourself. That’s good.” I restrain myself every day. I take my meds, I know my triggers, and I stay away from them. But what do you do when your trigger lives with you and is literally doing everything in their power to get you to the point of pissing you off?

And, yes, she is cognitively an 8 year old in a 16 year old’s body but she’s far from stupid. She is a calculated young woman and I have spoken on underestimating her before. Even my therapist that works with The ARC talks to me about this often. Even at a developmental age of 8, you know right from wrong. And I found out on Day 2 that she knew right from wrong. But that might be a Part 2.

I made a post about the altercation on Facebook and people really were trying to help me and offer kind words even when they didn’t know what to say and I truly appreciated it. But it didn’t get that rage out of me. I really wanted to do harm to her when she was out of my sight.

I usually don’t tell my mother about things like this because she gets really scared but I asked her to get her off the bus because I didn’t even want to look at her. At one point yesterday, my sister asked me about her and I told her that I didn’t even want to talk about or think about her. I was SO mad.

So my mother got her off the bus and took her home with her for a while. My parents talked to her and, when she came home, there was no apology. She didn’t feel that she owed me one. I can say that the last time both of us were wrong, both of us apologized, and both of us were truly sorry. This time, she came in with her head up, didn’t say anything to me and went in her room.

Heartbreak

When she came home and I was finishing up working at 7:00 p.m. (12 hour day), I drank some wine and started listening to soothing music to help me out because I still didn’t want to look her in her face. I sat at my desk and cried. I don’t know if it was the frustration, her total lack of caring, the fact that I felt it was unfair that I always had to do the restraining in EVERYTHING in my life, or hormones. All I know is that I cried a lot.

Suicidal Ideations

This took me back to July of last year when they put me in the psych ward for suicidal ideations. I was ready to eat all my pills and I had a lot (see: Tales from the Psych Ward (Part One)). What is the point of me being here? Is it to be abused by the one person I am supposed to love and protect? I got her those Taekwondo lessons out of fear of how this world would treat her when I am not around. I know she can take care of herself but people prey on people with disabilities and I don’t want that for her. People say that I should take the classes too and there are two older women in the class but I can’t do the rolling on the floor and forms are hard. I used to stay in the gym. Maybe this will make me get back on my treadmill and hit my weights again. I have them at home. Just no motivation.

My mom texted me this morning (Day 2) to see how it went and it went fine except that my daughter refused to look at the scars she had created. And she, again, knew she was wrong because she said “No, I’m looking out the window”. When I took her down to the bus today, I went to give her her protection kiss on her head and she pulled her hood down so I had to fight for it. It burned. But what I said in the texts to my mother about my own child were hateful because I still can’t fathom my child doing what she did to me and me just taking it. And why is everything so difficult?

I was already still mad about the whole situation and frustrated at all of this being a good mother stuff and she did that. I can’t wrap my head around being able to do some serious damage to that child and restraining myself to the point that I’m all marked up though.

People are checking on me and all. They gave me some resources for if this was to happen again. People are praying that it doesn’t happen again. I am personally praying that it doesn’t happen again because I can’t guarantee that I can forget this. I can forgive her. I know her disabilities. I know what I am against. But it doesn’t make me numb to feeling a certain way when I’m getting assaulted by my own child that I am very capable of treating like some woman on the street.

I’m still not in a good headspace and was having homicidal and suicidal ideations yesterday. I am calming down with the help of my friends and just trying to get over the frustration and what I feel is betrayal. I have to remember that my 16 year old is still a child with hormones and that her brain isn’t fully developed even for a “regular” 16 year old.

Doesn’t make it burn any less though. I can tell you that much.

Maybe I’ll feel better soon. I don’t want to eat all my pills today so that’s a plus. I haven’t really said much to her. She is still being fed. I did make her stand outside of the apartment door for a while today when she got home from school. She greets no one and I swear she thinks she got away with something and that makes me mad too.

In the End….

I’m still trying to sort my feelings out. My feelings really don’t matter as I am the mother and am supposed to be the bigger person but, if this gets old, I don’t know what I’m going to do. A person can only take so much and I don’t want to go to prison or the psych ward so it would probably just be easier to take myself out. The whole situation is unfortunate but I’m not going to be where I’m not wanted and I’m not going back to the psych ward.