Tonight Ameri has a Puppy

I got a call from the police dispatcher with whom I had spoken earlier in the week. Ameri came in holding a puppy and said she wanted to go home.

I spoke with her briefly and as usual my words sparked a rage. I tranfered her over to Mom and let them work things out. They worked out a place to stay for the night. Ameri wants to come home by way of Amtrack. A puppy and Amtrack. I am just about at the end of my teather. I can feel nothing but frosty air beneath my feet. In my religious tradition it is said that if one comes to the edge of all that one can walk on and there is a bottomless pit below - if then one steps out over the abyss then one will either fall into the unknown or sprout wings and fly.

Ameri Calls from Someone's Home

Last evening we had one call from Ameri. It was from a payphone that she had used to make arrangements to get a twenty from Mom. We missed the call. When we called back someone picked up but said they had not seen a small woman with golden hair. Our hearts sank.

Today we got another call from a cellular phone. The number and name popped up on the caller ID. I called back and Ameri came on right away. The police had picked her up and had brought her to an apartment house. Ameri's mom was at her office so I rang off and called Mom and gave her the number. Mom called and I heard later that it was a very animated and blustery call from Ameri's end. Ameri said that she was drunk. She said that earlier in the day she had to go to the hospital because she had thrown up blood. I got that information not from Mom or Ameri but from a woman who had over heard the conversation. The woman told me she had arrived at the apartment just as Ameri was getting the call from Mom. The woman told me that she had just been released from 30 days in jail as the result of a parole violation from a DUI. She said that Ameri's conversation was shocking in it content and level of anger toward Mom who was on the line. After Ameri left the woman called me and opened her heart. She said she saw herself in Ameri from her start down a rough road twenty two years ago. There are many damaged people who have good hearts but are trapped in the cycle they have chosen. I told her a bit about Ameri and directed her to this site. She said that the young man that Ameri is now with is not safe to be with. He is cruel to his mother, in whose home he lives, and he has a history with the courts and with law enforcement. I also spoke with the former girl friend of the man that Ameri is now with. She is eighteen. She also said he is dangerous.

My thanks to these two women for speaking to me about this.

I also got a piece of mail today from an agency of state government in the state where she is now. They told me that my information needed to be in a form that was included in the envelope. They also offered to send some brochures if I thought that they may be of any help. My jaw is still clinched.

I once described my relationship with Ameri as a replay of Job. It remains so today.

Ameri Grows from a Toddler to a Kindergartener

Ameri's life with Grandma Lilya continues. By the time she is seventeen months old, however, she is beginning to put a real crimp in Lilya's style and styling. Ameri has been passed around to friends and acquaintances. She has experienced some good care and some not so good care. There is some talk that she has been used in ways that are just not conventional. She has been with older kids and questionable adults. There has been no intervention from any governmental family service agencies and if anything has gone on it has been kept quiet. But, clearly Lilya is not too happy with the way things are going and the obvious behavioral manifestations she has seen in Ameri.

Lilya is acquainted with a couple that she knows from a church group connection and she gets wind that they are looking to adopt a child. They have boys but they want a girl. Lilya finds a way to approach Bob and Diane and to present them with an opportunity. So as to not get bogged down in details we will say that a deal is struck and Ameri is handed over in a relatively unsupervised adoption proceeding that was handled by an attorney and a judge.

Ameri goes to live with Bob, Diane and the boys. We must imagine the joy they must have felt that they were getting such a beautiful child. She has golden ringlets of hair. She has kissable cheeks and she is overwhelmed by so much attention. Bob and Diane love sweet little things. After they were through having the boys, they filled in their nurturing needs with exotic pets and toy animals of various species. But, now, here they have a beautiful child. The camera never stops. Diane loves to dress Ameri up and off they go to the photographers studio for a shoot. I have some of those pictures. Ameri is a doll. She is just sweet and perfect in every picture. In time, though, the effect of birth circumstances and early care begin to show their results. Ameri begins to act out in strange ways and displays motions and activities that are at first puzzling and then as they are to be understood become disturbing. Bob and Diane find that they need to seek professional help for Ameri.

Ameri's behavior and habits become more and more disturbing. She does not seem to want to accept affection, nor does she seem in any way to be attached to Bob and Diane except for when food or treats are involved. The boys have doted on little Ameri. They play with her and watch out for her. They share their treats with Ameri. Still, there seems to be only a tenuous bond with her new brothers. Children seen to have one level of expectation with each other and quite another with parent figures. This is especially pronounced with Ameri. She has rejected all of Diane's motherly overtures and she is even hostile to her at times. That hostility shows itself by screaming and running away from Diane. It also come out in distinctly destructive or hurting acts that are targeted at precious mementos, pictures and family pets. The professional visits ramp up in frequency. As Ameri gets on to her third year she is really starting to show her stuff.
Between age three and four, Ameri is placed out in daycare and therapeutic respite centers. As she moves toward her fifth year she is in pre-kindergarten and then kindergarten. She is a hand full every where. She is accepted for a while and then has to move on. She is not an easy child to manage. When she is with other children with marginal problems, a dynamic arises that causes the allied behaviors to be greater than the sum of the parts. Now, Ameri must experience her first hospitalization.

Ameri in the Cold?

We have heard nothing from Ameri for 36 hours. The over night temperatures, where she is, are in the thirties. We have had no response from the last people to have contact with her. Our last dose of reassurance is now wearing off. Is it time to worry again. Is it time for more aggressive communication. Are there new noses we can tweak or toes to step on. This is a roller coaster. This is a nightmare.

The very manner in which Ameri seeks help and then rejects it is the classic manifestation of Borderline Personality Disorder. The more primitive parts of the inner brain have taken dominance. The escape instincts take over. The cycle is respite, fright, and then flight. We were told that she is just not motivated for treatment now. Where is the starting point for that. We know that medication for the symptom may have to come first. Brain function may be a process of chemical infusion first, then electro reaction and finally the mechanics of chemical transference on to cellular surfaces. Brain chemistry is affected by the chain of events that begins at conception and then is refined in the early weeks of life, ex-uteri, by the quality of care given the infant. Interruptions in these critical early weeks skew the developing processes and misdirect the growing neural links. If, then, any genetic proclivities are added in, the emerging human takes a path that departs from the norm and the result is an adult/child manifesting just what we now see in Ameri. It is all too common a scenario. Our prisons are based in shame and are full of minds that emerged from just that path. The mental health patient population is based in shame and is full of minds that emerged from just that path. Not all those affected by developmental aberrations are in jail or in the hospital. They are on the street and are in high corporate or public office. They exist throughout out our society and the world society. The difference is magnitude of impairment and the functions of a remnant of self control.

Ameri does not feel the cold the way I do. Although it will affect her in much the same way as any other exposed to it, she does not have the same reaction to seek shelter and remain there. Being in a safe place is just not the same to her as it would be to toy or me. The conflict that arises from helping attention and the requirements of bending to simple rules is overwhelming to Ameri. Her inner adult/child reacts like a pet lizard that escapes from a warm display tank. The unknown world outside the tank is preferable to the safety of the tank.

A Quiet Night

Ameri has not phoned since she got her twenty. That would have been about 4:00pm EST on Wednesday. She said that she had to check in at the police station. I received no replies from my faxes and voice mail messages to my police contact. Maybe some thing is working in the background of which I am unaware. Ameri so much wants to be seen as capable and grownup. The problem is a psychiatric phenomenon called splitting. I had not here-to-fore mentioned a name for Ameri's condition but when I Googled the term "splitting" the first return referenced the most recent diagnosis that she had been given in her last hospital visit. That is Borderline Personality Disorder. Many people have an idea that someone just sits around and makes up conditions and then gives them a name; not true. The descriptors for conditions are the result of years of observation by psychiatrist and therapist who make scientific (rational) observations, then report those observations in papers to their peers and then reach definitive conclusions about how one particular condition results in a behavior and how it is alike or different from similarly observed conditions or behaviors. That's what science is. Someone observes. That someone reports. Someone else observes and agrees with the original observations as stated or suggests that additional components were observed. It is an endless refinement of observations that results in the description of categories, types, and magnitudes of observable descriptors.

So, we have always known that Ameri's early experiences had done much to wire her brain and body intelligence in ways that manifest behaviors in the emerging self that are not within the confines of what one would expect to see in conventional child development. Ameri displayed attitudes, behaviors and emotions early on that were identified as troubled. Not just troubled, but disturbed. She was a demanding infant. She was toddler that frightened some. Her personality and disposition became frozen in a state commonly referred to as the "terrible twos". That is essentially where Ameri is today. She is stuck in the "Terrible Twos". She has a woman's body and a brilliant mind. Her behaviors and ideations coupled with the concepts of splitting result in a very troubling condition now called Borderline Personality Disorder. There are at least three major sub components but I will introduce those later.

I must go back in time now and tell of Ameri's life from three months and three weeks to approximately seventeen months. I have mentioned Grandma Lilya in a previous post. When Ameri's mom, Avril, disappeared it was necessary for Lilya to take custody of Ameri when she was released from the hospital. Ameri is now essentially a new born that has survived out side the womb for three months and three weeks. Lilya take her home to an apartment that she shares with a boyfriend. His name is unimportant because he is one of many. Ameri thrives in her new home. There is of course a dynamic in this care that may be one of regret and possible redemption. Lilya's daughter, Avril, has turned out as she has because of something missing between the mother daughter relationship of Lilya and Avril. Lilya is now going to do her best to not repeat the mistakes she thinks she made with Avril. At first Ameri is well cared for and well tended. She has the cutest baby-doll clothes. She has toys as become appropriate and she is the center of attention among the bobes and enchanted auntie type alta kakas (term used in the best sense - not as a slur) that live in Lilya's apartment complex. As she develops and becomes more troubling, the interest and attention from the outside wanes. Lilya find that it isn't as easy any more to get out and be able to have a dependable baby sitter. Her boy friends find that their once enthusiastic Lilya has lost a certain spark of attraction and then there is that beautiful screaming child making it impossible to enjoy any intimacy or even the ball game on TV. Lilya's social life goes into a slump.

Ameri bargains for a Twenty

I had to get away from the madness of the calls, the shouting, and the angry hang-ups. I mowed the lawn and I cleaned the green rime from the bottom of the pool. I let the pool get that way because it is my way of sitting in ashes and wearing sackcloth. Ameri loved the pool. She loved being wet and lazing on her floaty.

I heard bits of the conversation as the phone calls continued over the next three hours. Ameri's mom is an expert reflective listener. While I was mowing, I missed a lot. When I was cleaning the pool I heard more. The listening, the button pushing and the circuit breaking continued. I looked at the caller ID and there were a dozen or more calls and hang ups. We never accept reverse charges any more. We let the phone ring through to the service and then call the number back.

Ameri wanted her Mom to send her twenty dollars by Western Union. We want her to go to a human services agency and we would make arrangements for money to be sent there. Just as it is very difficult to lure in a wild animal, it is just as difficult to lure Ameri into someplace where she can get some real help. I stayed out of the money negotiations. The twenty was the attention grabber that kept Ameri on the phone through so many call backs. Finally some concession was wrung out and Mom agreed to send Ameri a twenty. When Mom left to do that I called the pay phone number and spoke with Ameri. My message is always the same. "Ameri, I love you and I want you to be safe. Your body is your most precious possession. Don't use your most precious possession as a weapon to hurt us. Go to an airport. Go to a ticket agent and we will make arrangements for a direct flight home." This gives rise to coyote spirit and she slams down the phone.

I was hurt but I knew I would be. I then did the most odious thing I could think to do. I went to the back of my property and cut brush. I feel so dirty. I feel so . . . Republican.

Remember. It's my blog. I get to say what I want. You on the other hand must please be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible.

Ameri calls from a liquor store

Ameri has called twice this morning. She first called from the hotel where she was housed by the police. She left there and went to a liquor store. She spoke with her mom and the conversation devolved into a shouting match and my wife breaking down into tears. Ameri is saying things that she knows will push every button and trip every circuit breaker in our emotions.

We have attempted to contact the police but we are shunted to voice mail.

I am going to go do homeowner stuff.

Madness Continues

Ameri is on the phone with her mom now. Last evening she had been in a fist fight with the boy in the home where she was staying. She left there and walked into the police station several blocks away. I tracked the payphones and found that she did take a circuitous route.

The offer to Ameri is that I will get her on a plane today for home. Her counter is that she has a new boyfriend in St. Louis and will go there. To someone this is perfectly reasonable behavior. After all, she is eighteen. She can make her own decisions. Madness is afoot. It is affecting all those who come in contact with Ameri. After all, she is uncooperative and annoying.

Here is our dilemma. The authorities want us to do something. If we do go there and forcibly put her in a car, we are then liable for kidnapping charges. If we just let her be we are innocent of anything. We have the right to let her be until we are asked by some coroner's office to come identify a corpse.

Ameri on the Road Today

I had a night of broken sleep interspersed with anxiety dreams. I had to get up several times to walk around the darkened house. The dogs were restless all night. Their movements and alerting growls that usually give me confidence became an irritant.

We have heard nothing from the authorities this morning. I have posted a fax to the dispatcher and I had to leave a voice mail at the main police number.

The tragedy of the tornado deaths in Indiana may make my tragedy small by comparison but I have to keep at it.

It is interesting that I keep thinking about how societies and civilizations rarely disappear until they go into internal decline. A symptom of that internal decline for America, the country, not my daughter, is the epidemic of mental disease. Who will be the one to turn over the control of the country to the conquerors. Certainly not those who have the least to loose. It will be those who have accumulated the most and will do anything to preserve it. They are in place now and they have made every arrangement against the day they must abandon ship and turn Quisling. Do you supose that the conquerors will allow the psychiatric medication dispensing system to remain in place?

It's my blog. I will rant as I wish.

Ameri on the Road Today

Ameri is Homeless

I must skip ahead in my story. Ameri has been on the street in a rural Midwestern town for about two weeks. Ameri had originally been taken to a hospital emergency room in another town by police officers. She was admitted to that hospital's psychiatry ward. Late in September she was found committable by a judge and was to be sent to a state hospital. She was to remain in the first hospital until a bed became available. That did not happen quickly enough for the attending physician and she was found to be annoying by the nursing staff. That staff then found a way to affect a release. She was put into a cab and sent to another county into the custody of a woman that she barely knew. The woman’s boy friend and the father of at least one of her children had been a patient in the same psychiatric ward as my daughter. She stayed there three days or so. She had a falling out with both the woman and the boyfriend and so she left. She sought shelter from a young man that she had just met and so became a guest in his family home along with his parents and younger brothers and sisters. We did not here from Ameri again until she called on Sunday evening, November 6, 2005. She said that she was not going to be in that family any more and so left and found shelter elsewhere. This evening, when I returned home, I found several calls from pay phones on my caller ID. The answer service indicated that she was attempting to make a collect call. No one was here to take the calls. From the caller ID I made return calls to the last number. It was a pizzeria. They had let her use the phone to make a collect call. She had been gone only minutes. The pizzeria was on the on the rural outskirts of the town. I called the sheriff’s dispatch number that I found on the web. I told the dispatcher about the calls and a bit of the hospital story. Her response was that as long as someone is 18 years old they have every right to walk along any highway and have every right to expose themselves to any danger they chose. I broke down into tears of frustration. The dispatcher then asked me to hold. I continued to weep and wait. When she came back on she said that my daughter, Ameri, had been picked up from the roadside by a patrol officer and that she was now sitting in a chair across the room from her. I was asked to hold again. When she came back on she said that she knew of the entire set of circumstances regarding my daughter and that she had been in contact with a police officer with whom I had spoken days ago. They made arrangements for Ameri to have a bed for the night in a safe place. I am to call the police officer tomorrow to make some arrangements. It is now 8:41pm EST on Tuesday, November 8, 2005. My daughter is safe for the night. This nightmare has been going on now since August 28, 2005 when my daughter left home with enough money to catch a Greyhound to Memphis, TN. With the exception of the period of time that she was in the hospital, we have not had a moment of peace.

This whole thing is becoming disjointed and may confuse some. Please accept my apologies. This is a complicated story and it is difficult to tell sequentially. Too much is happening. My phone is ringing again.