Friday, March 27, 2009

Spill!

I haven't updated in forever. Which I'm pretty sure is ok because I have no regular reader's LOL I decided to name this entry "Spill!" because that's what I feel like I need to do. I've gotten so far away from the original feeling/intention of this whole blog. The negativity that I've found myself in, on and off, for the past - oh - 2 years or so, has been so dark and so scary. I don't stay there, Thank God, but we've been through so much and I honestly don't know where to start.

Hmmmmmm....

*thinking "where to start"*

I could go from where it started or backwards from where we are today, but that might be confusing. So, I'll go back to where it started I guess and proceed from there.

I think I have to start on my 30th B-day. April 28, 2007. I broke a tooth that night, as my friends and I sat around a fire in my backyard. I was munching on a Dorito and suddenly felt a molar crack. I got to the dentist as quickly as I could in the days that followed. They couldn't save it. Years ago I had had a root canal but then didn't get the crown that I needed to protect it. (Crowns are very expensive by the way) I had no choice but to have an extraction. A very painful one at that. Because the tooth was cracked down the middle and very fragile as it was from the root canal, they had to literally PRY the tooth out of my skull. They couldn't really get a grip on it. From the body language of the dentist, you would've thought he was pumping up a jack to change a tire...only the car was my jaw, his instrument the jack. How this is relevant to "Choosing Zoey" is that for about 2 weeks after that horrible experience, which was exactly the time of our one year anniversary of having Zoey live with us, I was in complete mind altering pain.

It was if during that time, all the patience I had for Zoey suddenly dried up. Because of the pain I was in, I suddenly couldn't deal with her "stuff" in the same calm and nurturing way I had up to that point. I didn't loose my cool or anything, I just sort of made the jump from understanding and excusing her behavior to being offended by it. Looking back it's clear to me now that it was simply burn out, exacerbated by the physical pain I was in.

We were heading into summer with Zoey #2. The first summer had been horrendous. Thankfully, summer #2/2007 did go much more smoothly than the previous had. In the fall of 2007, I suffered yet another physical blow. While walking out of my back door with Maddie in my arms, I missed a step and my left ankle twisted under me. I fell to the ground, hearing a lous "SNAP!" as I did. I immediately assessed the situation. Maddie was fine but slightly scared from the fall and the obvious look of pain on my face. I assured her mommy was ok, just a little hurt, and then examined my own injury, checking for range of motion. I could move it, Thank God. I hobbled back into the house and made the necessary phone calls. Later at the doctors office, I was told I did have a fracture, but it was from a similiarly severe sprain years earlier that had never been caught by my former physican. This new sprain did, however, have me on crutches for days. I also spent weeks in physical therapy and even today, as I am writing this, my foot and ankle ache at times as if the injury were fresh.

In October of 2007, we accepted a foster placement - a little boy, just over a year old. We were excited to be providing care, but soon realized this little boy screamed like a tea kettle over the littlest things. It was hard. In my limited experience doing foster care, I learned each child brings a whole new experience and foster parents must be willing to learn about new and challenging behaviors. We enjoyed this little boy but by the end of December, things were breaking down. Maddie was picking up the screaming. I had just had yet another physical challenge, by way of a breast reduction surgery right before Christmas, and not being able to lift - as well as some complications in my healing - made it difficult to continue caring for him. I was supposed to be down for about a week and when one of my incisions decided not to heal properly, that week or so turned into over a month of being off work and having weight restrictions. We had to move this adorable, but very challenging, little boy to another caregiver. That was a really difficult thing for us because we know how disruptions in a child's life can compound and end up. Our experience with Zoey made that crystal clear to us, but we just couldn't continue. It wouldn't have been fair to him or to us. (As a side note to this part of the story, we did get a chance in Summer '08 to do a weekend respite for this boy and we enjoyed every minute of it!)

Zoey was busy attending an after school program 3 or 4 nights a weeks, which provided us the break we needed from having to keep her busy and well behaved at home. Police calls were fewer and farther between. Things were ok but I felt a distance from Zoey that I was having a hard time making sense of. It wasn't regreat. I could still feel connected to having claimed her as my child but I just like lost my patience with her and her behavior. I think I just saw the patterns in her behavior and wondered why she still behaved that way. Hadn't we made it clear that we weren't going to abandon her? Why did she still insist on testing us? Would this ever finally stop? Or would we be dealing with some of these outrageous behaviors forever?

We would finally get those answers in the Fall of 2008 when we had Zoey's neuropsyhological evaluation done. The answers were sad and a bit stunning to me. Yet another brutal reality of what years of neglect and abandonment had done to her. Mildly Mentally Retarded it said. Mental age equivalent 7-10 years it said. Our 17 year old was really more like an elementary aged child than a high schooler. Suddenly, while very saddened by the results, we felt we finally understood her better. It wasn't all just behavioral, there are some real concrete developmental delays going on here. We began to see her less as a problem child from the system and more as a developmentally delayed young woman that was going to need our support in one way or another for the rest of her life.

That was the end of October.

In mid-November, we would learn that our mortgage servicing company was attempting to force us into escrow. We were half way through a Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan. We paid our mortgage every month, as well as a payment to the trustee, under terms to repay our creditors. I scoured the internet looking up the term "escrow fraud" and what I uncovered still mortifies me to this day. Someone on a credit related forum I belong to told me I was barking up the wrong tree with the term escrow fraud - "try mortgage servicing fraud" they suggested. We reeled for days, and somedays still do - from what I discovered. Story after story of other families driven to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and ruin by this "mortgage servicing fraud." At first we were intent on fighting with all we had, but taking a look at our financial outlook, our family obligations, Zoey being a huge factor, and the very scary story I read about a couple making it all the way through a Chapter 13 repayment plan only to have the mortgage servicer (the same servicer we had) come and say "you owe us $20K+ in fees, pay us or get out!" we realized the best thing for us was to give up the house and get as far from this servicer as we could. Refinancing wasn't an option because servicing fraud will ruin your credit. We were devastated to loose our home and our hard earned credit history, but we had our family.

When we sat Zoey down and told her we would have to move, she reacted sadly. We assured her that this time she would be moving we all would be moving together, but it was tough. It was tough on both of the girls.

Here is where I'm going to take a break...