Thursday, February 25, 2010

Happy Joy

There is something unique about the combination of early onset Bipolar Disorder and  Attachment Disorder in one medium sized kid. You get your highs and you sure get your lows. You get all kinds of up and down in between. You get your throw down wango tango tantrums daily. Sometimes hourly. Sometimes one just starts and never ends but for a few opportunities to take a deep breath.

Scrunched inside of all that tangled up crazy hiding under the stealing and lying and cutting her hair, are the tiny bits of pure, happy, undiluted joy. The happy that shows itself only rarely in it's true form. Often we get fake happy. Daily we get manipulative happy. Genea used to have an 'on-demand' happy that was so void it terrified her psychiatrist. Terrified, it's the exact word he used. There is definitely over happy. Hyper happy. In your face happy.

Once in a while, just often enough to prove we really did see it the last time, Genea has moments or even minutes of pure, happy joy. It used to be that a compliment would spark that happy. Not just an ordinary compliment and I am not even sure I could pick out which compliments did it. Just here and there, if I told Genea hey Genea, great job waiting your turn, I could see you really wanted to jump in there but you held it back and waited, that was really good and will make people want to play with you more, she would float. As broad and wide as her features split when she is having a cry is as broad and wide as they split when she is truly happy. It is like opening a window that has been stuck for years. Clear, clean light that beams and takes over. It elevates her. For that minute she is happy. She levitates to me to give me a hug and smooshes her face in my clothes and I can hear her muffled little smooshed up voice saying, thank you Mama.

One thing guaranteed to bring out the true happy is to go back and get her. Whenever she stays at her grandparents for a few days with her sister and we come back for her, we see the happy. It's not manic or crazy or weird or disproportionate. We meet halfway between houses and when she gets out of my parents car, she runs around to find me as soon as she can escape the seat belt and gives me a big hug. But it's that moment when we first make eye contact as she careens around the back of the car, somehow eluding the restraining clutch of my mom, in that moment is sheer and total, pure happy.

If we really push it sometimes we can get several days out of that happy. If we dedicate our lives and omit all the nonsense, if we leave all the daily requirements of life go by and focus only on keeping that happy, we can stretch it. I used to try a lot harder to keep it and carry it on. Now, I just focus on the time.  Remember the time that was happy.

17 comments:

  1. So you are home now?

    That kid has gorgeous hair by the way.

    And, I loved this post: pure unadulterated happy. What a gift that despite everything, she can find that and you can appreciate the glimpses.

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  2. Revel and bask in the glory of happiness. Hoping it lasts for a long while.....

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  3. I love this post and I get it. We see so little of any emotion in our boys that is pure and honest. Most of it is manipulated, contrived, or unregulated altogether.

    What a gorgeous kid!

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  4. What a beautiful post. So touching...and to think, I was worrying about you! Anastasia will behave beautifully if we leave her, but when we come back she will NOT be happy; she will be deeply crazed. Being left is definitely a trigger (no wonder, but still....) Being left is NOT good. She stayed home while I took Zhen to BB practice last night, and even that hour and a half caused obvious disregulation.

    I'm glad you get happy! Takes the sting out of re-entry.

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  5. We used to get "punished" (upon our return) with tantrums when we left Miss. We had to have the break for sanity sake but knowing what was coming for us made it very close to not worth it. Now though we see what you describe here so beautifully, this true joy happy confidence that we came back. Great post!

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  6. Well, I should probably say that our punishment WILL come and it WILL be bad. For whatever reason, when we come back from a trip she is so happy to see us she revels in it for a bit. But in about a week she will drop a loaded diaper genie on us and all will be hell.
    I was going to write that in the post but I didn't want it to be like, she is happy but... I wanted it to be positive. We have great moments. They won't last. But we get them!
    Yes, btw, she has unbelieveable hair. It is beautiful and crazy!

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  7. She is beautiful! Keep enjoying the happy moments! Nice post.

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  8. She is beautiful! Keep enjoying the happy moments! Nice post.

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  9. Beautiful crazy hair, beautiful kid, beautiful words :)

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  10. Wow! What an incredible life. I'm speechless. I don't know how to respond to living like this. It must be very hard for you on so many levels.

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  11. I love the picture of Genea... so cute.

    BTW, is Genea her Russian name? How is it pronounced?

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  12. Lindy, Genea is actually her "stage name". The fake name I made up for her for blogging to keep identities disguised. Her sister Teena in real life has a very distinctive name and anyone who searched it would find this quickly. Not that I am trying to hide. Well anyway, it seemed like the thing to do at the time.

    In my head, it is pronounced "Genie- ya". Like I dream of Genie, then ya.

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  13. That is SURREAL. The only other Romanian child I know is a little girl who was in our RE program. Her name IS Genea! I figured it was a common Romanian name.... Except it is pronounced Jen-AY-yah. Too funny. BTW - when I first met her, she was in second grade and a very disturbing and weird kid, with odd physical tics, strange energy; she'd do inappropriate things; say inappropriate things; I just didn't care for her at all. I often thought that if we hadn't just adopted Sergei she would have put me off international adoption! Then fast forward. I had her in my 8th grade religion class and don't think I've ever had a student I liked more...she was polite, gentle, kind, such a deep thinker, absolutely devoted to her mother. She is a sophomore in HS now and whenever I see her, she is the same sweet, mature girl. So - there's hope!

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  14. Annie that is really funny! I totally made up the name from scratch, spelling and all!

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  15. That HAS to have been in your subconscious somewhere as a Romanian name....otherwise that is simply TOO bizarre.

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