Edgar's mom.

Thanks for that. My daughters life didn't go so well either. I wrote out a post then was to chicken to post it.

My daughter is why I left my ex. She didn't deserve to grow up thinking it was ok to get battered. I left when she was 2 1/2.

When I was stable things were good. But shortly before I left they put me on ADs and my life became horrible. When she was about 3 I would just be laying on the couch all day crying. I didn't resent her for needing me but I had no ability to care.

She knew something was off. When she was around 5 she broke my heart. She said when she grew up she was going to get a good job and take care of me.

Like you if it hadn't been for my parents I would not have been able to keep her as long as I did. The summer before she started 2nd grade I was doing so badly I signed over her care to my parents. I mostly decided after I had a dissociative period of around 6 months. It was winter. Then the next thing I was aware of it was spring. I told her we need to go somewhere and to get her coat and boots. She looked at me and said, mom it's warm out side. It was spring. She said we had been having fun. I would tell her she didn't have to go to school and we'd go downtown to the park in the skyway and ride the merry go round or we'd go out to the mall of America. That scared me so much. Being a single mom and having great chunks of time missing and going off in the middle of the night not aware I had left her alone. Sometimes getting picked up by the police and taken to hospitals.

My parents lived in a big house in a smaller town with a good school and could give her stability. I didn't have any of those things. I felt she'd be much better off there. No one asked me to do that, everyone seemed to think I was a great mom. I don't know why but that's what they thought.

taking care of her might have been helping me stay more stable than I thought because after she went to my parents my life really fell apart.

She's in her 30's and tells me she loves me and that I was a great mom. Don't know how she can say that. She too is bipolar but never got the dissociation or PTSD. She says that she knows how important it is to stay on top of her MI and has a 3 year old son. She's been with her husband for 7 years and they are buying their first house. I'm in awe of her. She's amazing.