Naomi gave Mike and me a note a couple of days ago. It's on a sheet of wide-ruled paper, folded into 8ths and addressed on the outside like a letter, complete with a hand-drawn stamp with a heart on it. She gives us notes often, usually with butterflies and hearts, so I was expecting the same thing. Here's what it says: (spelling amd caps are hers)

Dear: mommy & daddy

I realy love you. I'm realy sorry When I do Bad. I am tring to do the right thing but it seems to come out the rong thing. when you want me to do the dishs or some thing els When I am in the middle of doing something by myself and i poute it means I'm trying to be by Myself where nobudy is Because I am trying to controle myself and so I will not run off and hurt a animal or eny body.

love
Naomi

The day before we got this note, Naomi'd had a bad day. She'd scratched herself twice to make herself bleed, thrown herself, screaming, onto the floor of a doctor's office and kicked me, and generally been hard to be with all morning. In the afternoon I was running to the store and took her with me. On the way there she began to cry and I pulled over. She had her head down and her knees drawn up. I asked what was wrong. She said, "Why don't you just dump me on the road and leave me to die? I'm no good for anyone. I'll never go to the Celestial Kingdom because I did too many bad things. Way too many. If I try to be good it turns out bad. I can never know how to do good things."

She cried and ranted for about 30 minutes. I said she *was* good for someone-- she was good for me. She answered, "That's only what *you* think."

She's had such a hard life-- and she only turned 9 this week. Sometimes she cries about how hard her life is and says, "And I have so long to go! A really, really long time, and it's so hard!" I can only cry with her and tell her I'm sorry.

While crying in the car she told me, "I just wish I didn't have a family. Then I could be all alone." But later she said, "It's so scary to be a child, because your parents are old, pretty soon they'll be really old, and die. And then I'll be all alone, and it's so scary."

Huh. Who'd have thought.

She also said she wishes she were an only child so all the things at home would be hers and she wouldn't have to have people around all the time, but later said, "And the other kids (siblings) don't even like to play with me! They just leave me alone!"

So that's how life with Naomi is going lately. Public school starts soon and hopefully the structure and time away from home will help relieve some of her stress-- (not to mention ours.) In the mean time she goes from drawing us butterflies and hearts, to yelling and screaming in public, to sobbing about bad choices, to asking if I'll buy her a pretty purse because she hasn't done anything bad the whole time we've been in the store.

Life is never dull.

Book recomendation of the day: Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children, by Daniel A. Hughes. Describes life with Naomi.