Lovely Daughter

Artist Girl returned home early Thursday. As suspected, she has been battling some of her old demons as well as battling with her (now ex) boyfriend. Early Thursday morning things got very ugly with her boyfriend. She tried to leave, he grabbed her and would not let her go. At one point, she ended up outside and he locked her out of the house. Her car keys were inside and all she wanted to do was to come home. He shoved her at least once during all of this.

The reason we had so little communication with her over the past month or so is because he was monitoring her phone calls. He would accuse her of talking to other guys and also would not allow her to go online.

When she told us all of this Thursday morning, I told her that her dad and I have had arguments over the years, but neither one of us had ever laid our hands on the other. She told us that she knew that and that she was tired of living in fear of pissing him off when she wasn't doing anything. Since she came home on Thursday, she has received quite a lot of texts from him. She finally sent him a text telling him she was not coming back and repeated what I had said about her dad and I.

She also called our health care provider yesterday to go back into counseling. The good in all of this is that she confessed that she had come very close to cutting herself again, but controlled that impulse. So even though she has had another setback in her mental health recovery the fact that she did not turn to cutting to relieve some of her stress tells me she is at least trying to stop some of her old destructive behaviors.

Last night, she stayed home. We watched America's Funniest together. We were both laughing really hard more than a few times. It was just nice to have her home, knowing that she was safe.