So, the funny bits.

Can you believe that there were parts of yesterday that amused me, in a sad kind of way.
We sat for so long in the dismal waiting room, that Casualty department is so bleak, I always feel I want to gather a group of volunteers to clean it and brighten it up and put magazines in or something. It is being remodelled and it's taking forever. The seats are ripped, the walls are shoddy, the whole place is enough to make you feel horribly ill, even if you just went there to drop someone off.
We sat for a long time.....nearly 2 hours and we watched the waiting room fill up and empty and fill up and empty and remember that Sophie was bored ( Fucking bored) she was loudly bored.
"I'm F*in' bored, what the hell? Why are all these people going in before me, we were here first and they keep going in and this whole place has emptied and filled up TWICE and I'm still here, tell ya what I'm going if they don't get me in there soon and WHY AM I STILL HERE?"
"Oh Sophie, all these other people are just physically maimed and injured...you are special and need a special doctor that wouldn't know what to do with all these common bleeding people, you need a doctor of mental patients.....doesn't it make you feel special?"
All the while hoping that she didn't work out that actually that would mean she would have been seen first because HELLO? No other mad people in the waiting room!
Then she began a game of " Maybe that tatty looking man was actually mad because I didn't see an injury ..did you?" That's a fun game and kept us amused for like 13 minutes at least.
I laughed out loud ( you know, Lol'd) for real when they eventually showed us into a room, totally empty apart from a tiny little stool about 4 inches high, one chair and a rubber covered mattress leant against the wall.
"Sophie! Look! They believe you, sort of, because you get a 1/3 of a padded wall! How cool is that?" ( I so make jokes about the things that make me saddest and truthfully? I haven't stopped crying yet. This really is a sad thing, I know I trivialise it but you just have to do what you have to do and this, this is what I have to do.)
She is pitiful right now and I don't see that too much. Seeing that feisty loud mouthed, embarrassing girl of mine, who will punch a grown man, twice her size, as soon as look at him, sit in a huddle and just weep, with fat old tears plopping down her cheeks because she is so lost and so unhappy, well that tears at something inside.
The thing is, just lately I see that the way she reacts to stressful things, is very like the way I react, the difference is what she does after the initial shock wears off. I will panic and I very often shout....then I quickly think about what I need to do to rectify the situation and I get on with it. Sophie panics, yells and then she just keeps yelling. And yelling.
I took her to lunch today and those little things, where it is just her and I, they make her feel so good, when she thanks me and goes away happy, I feel I have done something right. The rest, this awful tough love stuff. I hate it. It does not feel good, it is not empowering and it makes me feel like the lowest of low.
I do it because I owe it to her to help her have a happy adulthood. I can't ( although it would seem easier most days) just have her here and put up with it all because at least I would know she is safe. She won't stop doing what she is doing until she sees that it gets her nowhere.
In her sobbing last night she said that she had stopped drinking and taking drugs because I had told her that Mel and Jordan will not allow her to look after the baby while she is living the way she lives. The fact that she heard that and took such huge steps as to stop doing what she does, is huge. I want for her to see great rewards for what she is doing, right now she just hurts.
I want to look after her and every time I drive away, leaving her sobbing and pleading to sleep the night here....I just can't quite find the words to describe how that feels.
I am sad....but I am not depressed. I know that all this is good in the long term. I can see the tiniest of glimpses that this tough love is working, slowly but surely, she is learning, it is so painful to see and to be involved in, as sad as it is, I know it is the only thing to do. I cry but it is a cleansing cry, it is not a hopeless, lost crying. I am not sinking into a box of misery with the lid closing in on me.
I cry, because it is so sad. She is such a beautiful girl, she really is and as my only daughter I would love to shower her with gifts and beautiful things, to see her have all that she deserves. Life isn't like that though, is it. I do think that when she gets through this, when she has grown and learned and she is standing tall again..she will be the most incredible woman you ever saw.
I just have to pray that she makes it through, the things that have enveloped this girl could kill her, the people she has mixed with, could destroy her.
I actually saw Mr tattoo face yesterday, what a slimy looking, lizard faced man. My skin crawled and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I am so thankful she is away from him. I drove past his house to get to school and there were 2 police wagons outside and a circle of policemen outside his door.
She survived living there.
She was fired from the job in that pit of iniquity, praise the Lord. They don't want her there because she has changed..she is no longer that in your face, body flashing, good for anything girl, she is a sad, frightened little girl. They don't want that, they liked her drugged and high. Thankyou Lord for saving her from them too.
I say it again and again, this child of mine has guardian angels. May they never leave her side.