I Was High

Yep, I was high. Flying. It was lovely. Lovely!


Genea has recently surpassed her own self in greatness. She has achieved the holy grail....... *trumpets blaring*..... of all seriously disordered children. Normal. I have seen flashes of normal here and there through these past couple years. Maybe a half a days worth of just regular, normal boring kid stuff. But it has always been like a "normal for Genea" type thing.


In the past few weeks she has hit her regular low period and it was the most mild low ever. Instead of cranking lower and lower into the constant state of panic, depression and fear that usually comes on, she kept the depths at bay and pulled back out. And that is when it happened.


Normal. Wow.


Last Friday was the last day of summer school. Coincidentally I had given Genea 2 capsules worth of flax seed oil, hidden in the bread of her peanut butter sandwich at lunch. I poked holes in the enormous capsule and dripped the oil out onto the bread. The Husband came home later that day and made this comment:

"What did you do to Genea? Did you give her a Valium or something?"


(please be mindful that is a joke, we do not dose our child with stray medications)
(our lives would be so much easier and I would have nothing to blog about, that is my statement)



I looked over and there she was, I had not even noticed. What I should have noticed was that I was not noticing anything! There was a regular, calm and content child sitting in Genea's body playing quietly with a game. Appropriately with the game I should note.



Well, you all had better believe I went off the deep end myself finding more places to sneak this flax oil in on her! She strongly resists anything of the sort. All the ways on the planet to get ahold of an Omega 3-6-9 fatty acid type thing. Olive oil. Eggs. Butter with it added. Eggs with it added. Flax seeds (found out those don't take later). Almonds. I have been trying on and off to use these foods for that purpose since I have heard from several sources that the Omega's could help smooth out the barbed wire in her brain (my interpretation and summary).



I decided to play to her strengths. Genea does not like things that are new. She only likes things she has met before, and of those she is still pretty finicky. So, we have been on an --all peanut butter and flax oil dripped into the bread for every lunch -- diet for a week. And I thought it was working. A real normal kid came out for 3 whole days straight. NOT "normal for Genea" normal, but normal for any kid normal. NORMAL! Regular! Goofy! BORING! She did normal dumb kid things. One night she thought the bathroom mirror looked dirty and sprayed water all over it and everything else and tried to go to bed without mentioning it. "OH!" she says, "I forgot" (head tilt to the right, pupils dilated, dead eye stare uh huh). A few nights later I found black stuff smeared on the sink. Again, Genea got into my make up and decided to see for herself how it works. If she could make the sink look decorated.



Okay, now as I am writing this I realize that kind of thing is normal for a 2 or 3 year old but take my word for it, it is the most normal mis-behavior I have ever seen out of Genea.



Unfortunately, with every high comes a low. This awesome mom mentioned recently that she feels the regressions harder now that there has been strong progress. The higher you fly the farther the fall and this most recent fall for us has been one of the worst. Genea came after me yesterday, for probably the 3rd time ever, the first 2 being when she first arrived (not to worry, I have taken down bigger and better many times). So what was working? Was it the flax seed? Was it the end of school and now the lack of definition is throwing her off? What caused it and how do I get it back. It's a process, okay, I know. I get it, one step forward, 2 steps back. Progress and regression.



BUT WHY?



Today, she is back on track. The bottom of the pit lasted just 3 days but ooooooh was it a whopper. I swear I am going to figure this shit out or die trying. I don't want to be one of those parents dragging a 12 year old to the Mayo Clinic because they are unable to accept the truth. But that does not mean I will rule out the trip.