azurelunatic | Relief is a date on the calendar.

Thank fuck my babyfish is 18 now. There are options.

This is in (somewhat belated) reaction to the date, not any one recent incident.

My babyfish is 18. If she needs to be somewhere that her mother isn't, she's 18 now, and if I need to drive all the way down to the East Bay in the dead of night because her mother is unhinged from reality and has chosen to express this in a super toxic way YET AGAIN and even if the police do get involved it might be simpler to find a space to set up the air mattress -- this is now a thing where the babyfish can legitimately give her parents the finger and be all "I do what I want" and we can just kinda skate through somehow until she leaves for college. Because she's 18.

Guess who graduated Valedictorian, btw. Despite in her own estimation (and in an objective count of the number of school-related documents in her folders) slacking off in senior year as compared to junior, she still did well enough to receive that honor.

I am so amazingly proud of her for dealing with a crappy situation with an astonishing amount of humor and grace.

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So over the last year and a half or so:

Spring 2013: Fishie living in the parental home, suffering poor mental health brought on by her mother's abuse, schoolwork starting to be affected, counselor at school unhelpful in a large part because mother situation was not out in the open with counselor, plus counselor was a tool.
April 2013: things became un-ignorably bad.
May 2013: after discussing the situation with the chatfish, fishie decided that going into state custody was an acceptable turn of events.
The Ordeal: Fishie told the truth about her mother's abuse to a teacher. An investigation was launched. Mother reacted poorly upon learning about the investigation. Fishie reacted poorly to the idea of going back to the house containing her mother. Fishie was taken into the custody of the state because of massive mental and emotional abuse from her mother, signed over voluntarily by her father for 30 days until the situation could be stabilized.
Late May/early June 2013: Fishie continued attending school from youth shelter.
June 2013: Fishie received individual and family counseling, during which time the shelter staff came to realize exactly how toxic her mother's behavior was, and the effect it had on fishie.
June 2013: Shelter found it advisable to not send fishie home after the 30 days.
July 2013: Shelter still found it advisable to keep fishie away from mother.
August 2013: Shelter reluctantly decided that on balance, having fishie attend her senior year at her familiar school outweighed the still dodgy prospect of living in the parental home, but mother was starting to realize that those things she did were noticed and not approved of by the state.
Fall 2013: A tentative calm, punctuated by various therapist visits, descends upon the parental home. Mother is still not pleased by the idea of fishie having any degree of emotional autonomy.
Winter 2013: Mother attempting hardcore buttering-up manipulation.
Spring 2014: Mother back with the high-volume haranguing again. Different song, same verse. Fishie is 110% done.
Still spring 2014: Fishie accepted as independent student to a well-suited college in the fuckin' East Coast.
June 2014: Fishie graduates, and in short order turns 18.
Still June 2014: Fishie rather miserably bored.

Edited 2014-06-08 08:26 (UTC)