so, thursday morning, about 3am, i got a call from the police in ashland oregon telling me they had stopped my daughter’s boyfriend on a traffic violation and discovered he was a runaway and she had been in the car with him and was now in their custody. she was fine apparently, they had told the cops they were going camping somewhere in ashland. about an hour and a half later, we got a call from the juvenile authorities in the area saying they were booking her and we could come and get her in the morning. the following morning, i heard from the young man’s parents saying they were also heading up to get him. there were two other kids with them, i don’t know what happened to them.
i grabbed my mom and we proceeded to drive up to oregon to get the child. lucky for me i was also interested in seeing fall colors. the drive was pretty glorious on that account. what sort of pollyanna nitwit am i that i look for the good in absolutely EVERY situation? am i just stupid? is it a coping mechanism? i just don’t know….
we got up to oregon by about 2:30 pm. lucky us, we happened to have arrived just as the young man’s parents arrived. they might have beat us by about ten minutes. i chatted with them briefly and we all thought it was a really bad idea for these two kids to keep having contact with each other. sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much you love someone, your interaction with them is toxic. that definately seems to be the case with these two. i have never done anything to choose her friends for her, but in this case, i am firm.
when she came out of the jail, i guess, i gave her a big hug and told her that i loved her no matter what. then i told her i thought her behavior was atrocious and completely rude and unaccetable, but it was the behavior and not her that i disapproved of. when she came out, she had only socks on. turns out she had left one of her shoes at the house of someone before she left town, so she had been borrowing shoes from the other girl who was with them, but she took them as her property when they all got arrested. so she literally had no shoes. we stopped and bought her some on the way out of town. it took over an hour to get her processed out. by this time, there was no way i was going to be able to drive home to get to bellydancing class, so we decided it might be best if we relaxed and stayed in a hotel that night and headed back early the next morning. my mom also wanted to watch the baseball game, so that was an extra bonus….
while we were driving around, i had told b that i thought we might stay in ashland. when we got there, we discovered that’s where she had spent a good deal of her time on her little adventure. that made me want to get the hell out of ashland as quickly as possible, to remove any temptation from her of running again. we ended up staying at this little hotel in yreka california, which suited me much better. would have been much more difficult for her to run back to any friends in ashland from there.
what am i doing? at this point, i am so freaked out about her taking off again that i have put the child safety locks on the doors and she has to be let out of the car. i don’t even feel a little bad about this. my husband showed me how to work them before i left.
we walked half a block to a chinese restaurant right next to the hotel to eat dinner that night, and although i had threatened to put one of the beds in front of the door, i didn’t do that and she was still there in the morning, so it’s all good. by this time, i am starting to figure out that i think she draws a lot of her strength from her friends. i am unsure whether or not she would run on her own. i think perhaps she would not. because she knows she’s safe if she’s with other people she knows and trusts, but if she were on her own, i don’t think she would do it. please, fates, do not prove me wrong.
i don’t know what to do now. i don’t know if i should send her away or keep her home. i want her to get help. i don’t want to be a warden, but she has to learn how to exist within the parameters of home. i need to call the psych today. i need to call the school, i need to do all sorts of things today. she makes me mad, still…and i am hurt. i will write more later, as i can.
peace.
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