Antlers Update

[antlers]

School has started for the kids. My daughter is living with her friend. That's where she wants to be. She doesn't want to live with her mother and her mother's boyfriend in Texas, and she doesn't want to live with me. She has been living with the people she's living with for many months now...she left her mother's home last Spring and moveed in with these people. I have talked with her a lot...and she says that she is definately where she wants to be under the circumstances. I feel so sorry for her. Her response to the destruction of her family has been to put a lot of hard bark on herself. She tells me that she just "stopped caring, that way it wouldn't hurt". We still communicate daily, and I see her often. She is attending the high school here in town that she went to last year. I talked to an attorney...she agrees that the situation is messed up. She says my options are to leave things as they are and be as supportive of my daughter as I can be...or...go back to Court and sue her mother for custody, knowing that my daughter doesn't want to live with me. The attorney said that a Judge would not put a 15 year old girl in a home that she tells the Judge she does not want to be in. If the child is just going to run away, rebel, skip school, and get into a lot of trouble because she is being forced to live in a home that she does not want to live in...and she voices that to the Judge, then the Judge won't do it. Again, she doesn't want to live with her mother either.
My 14 year old son is in Court ordered random drug screening, and Court ordered counseling. He still has the 5 criminal charges pending against him. They've been put on the back burner for now, according to the Judge, until more pressing matters have been dealt with...like the substance problems and emotional issues. He chooses to live at his grandmother's house here in town. He doesn't want to live with his mother, and he doesn't want to live with me. We have brought all of his things (furniture, clothes, all belongings) over to her house and set his room up there. He is a freshman and started high school here this week. I see him every day. I take him to counseling and his drug screening. I feel sorry for him too. When his mother moved to Texas in June, when the realization set in...he hit the fence with his fist and broke his hand. He has been deeply hurt by the destruction of his family. I believe his abuse of substances has been to 'escape' from the pain he feels. We are taking things day by day. We go back to Court next month. I am taking my house apart, so to speak, little by little. I am liquidating the contents...getting rid of everything. There's not much furniture left in it. I'm trying to get it completely empty, then go to work on it and get it ready for the market. I'm going to sell it. I'm still working in the ER full-time. My kids are struggling...and I continue to struggle myself. It's hard for me to imagine, at this point, that there will ever be a time that I don't feel such sadness. Anyway, that's pretty much the way things are today.
Hope all of you are faring well.