So to get help for my younger adopted sister, we moved 2000 miles across country.
I missed my horse FIERCELY and discovered that Utah was not all I expected it to be.
Both of my parents were getting full time jobs and without them I knew I'd never be self motivated enough to keep up my homeschooling. So, I decided to go back to public school. But I still wanted special treatment. I really didn't want to have to sit in the classroom to make a grade. Instead my mom helped make an arrangement with a school in the area that I could get the work from the teachers and have it graded.
Back home in Florida, our church was like family, we were always doing stuff together. Here, people were generally very distant. It was really hard for a new comer to feel like they could fit in.
I had expected there to be horses around every corner. Didn't they call the films WESTERNS because they represented a western life style?
It took a while to figure things out...
In the meantime, Heather was getting kicked out of all the public schools. Mom took her to one session of the new therapy and Heather decided she was never going back and Mom knew she couldn't force it. Heather was already bigger than Mom and the therapy was quite intense.
One night we were sitting together watching a movie. It was just us girls, Dad was at work. It was a Disney movie, CHIPS the war dog. Everything was going fine, Heather seemed to be in one of her better moods. At some point in the movie there are soldiers running in tall grass, you can hear gunfire and see men dropping out of sight. No gore, barely even an idea of real death in my mind but Heather was on the edge of her seat... She actually started bouncing and laughing at the scene. Mom and I were shocked. Mom paused the movie and turned to Heather. "What's the matter? What are you laughing at? This is not funny to me."
And will all seriousness Heather replied "I want to kill. I want to know what that is like."
Creepy, like a horror movie, right?
And immediately she went to the kitchen to get a knife.
Mom panicked. She pushed me into my room and told me to lock my door and not to come out until she said so. I heard her go to her room and lock her door down the hall. I listened as Heather kicked and slammed at Moms door, then began begging Mom to come out, saying she was sorry, she didn't mean it, she didn't have the knife anymore, but I could hear the smile as Heather lied through her teeth. I could hear mom talking but I couldn't hear what she was saying. Mom had called the cops on Heather before and they really never did anything...
But soon they showed up and they actually took Heather away with them.
Later it was explained to me that Mom had called the case worker who had been assigned to our family after the adoption. Someone who was supposed to check in occasionally and make sure things were still going okay. The case worker had been trying to help us all along, a great support through all the therapy. But when Mom called her that night Mom said she was through, she couldn't handle it anymore, they needed to take Heather out of the house. The case worker had been expecting it, had even lined up a bed in the mental hospital already.
Thus we entered a new phase of life.
