TL;DR I’ve protected my grand daughter from the world since she was 3. But she’s attacked me twice in the past month. Cops want me to press charges but I’m worried it will destroy her.
I (F64) am chronically ill and severely disabled. Despite this, I have been raising my oldest grand daughter since she was 3. Her mother, my daughter, had borderline personality and bipolar disorders and was also an addict. She was unable to care for my grand daughter because of this and died about 3 years ago.
I’ve sacrificed everything for my grand granddaughter. Everyone else in her life abandoned her so I made sure she had counselling, medication, anything she needed as she was growing up. She ended up having some serious health problems including kidney disease that I also made sure were handled and appropriately medicated.
She’s 18 now. A few weeks ago, she had some sort of prolonged mental breakdown. I kept trying to help her but she kept screaming at me. Finally, her boyfriend showed up and wanted to take her to his place. I was fine with that but she completely freaked out and started screaming at me saying “I will kill you” over and over before attacking me and putting her hands around my throat.
I got her off me and she left for several days. When she came back, she claimed that she didn’t even know who I was when she attacked me. She said she had severe PTSD from her time with her mother. She promised to get mental health help so I left it alone. I told her if it happened again, I would call the cops. That was on July 4th.
Tonight, July 21st, we had a disagreement. As she was leaving to walk the dog (I use crutches and a wheelchair for mobility so it’s her job to walk him) we got into a disagreement about her wanting to smoke weed while she was walking the dog. We texted about it and she eventually came back home. I had already told her I would be taking her phone (that I paid her and pay all fees for) and the bong away when she got home. When I tried to grab them, she tackled me and I ended up pushing her away from me. She started sobbing like she had in the previous episode and went outside to sit with her boyfriend. Her asked me to get her some shoes and they left. I was stunned that it had happened again and was trying to decide what to do when the cops showed up.
When I told them what had happened they tried to get me to press charges against her but I feel like if I do that, I’ll just be one more person who didn’t support her. But at the same time, how can I live with someone who thinks it’s okay to put their hands around my throat or tackle me if they don’t agree with me.
I’ve spent my entire life protecting her from harm, how can I press charges against her?