Swollen eyes, sore head and broken heart

I guess I made it through the night. I cried so much that my eyes make me resemble a frog. I woke up at 4 and spent most of the next hour staring into the darkness wondering about a lot of things. In some ways the medication Amanda is on helps her and in some ways I guess it doesn't. Her violent outbursts have become less frequent but more severe. However they have increased in frequency since Maurice's visit. She really latched onto him in some emotional way and she would become very hard to handle when she was not with him. That part of it has lessened since he went home but she gets very upset if you don't tell her several (and I do mean several) times a day that he will come back next year. I really doubt he will but that is not a bridge we can cross with her just yet. Last night she went into a rage but it was not Maurice related. I told her to take a bath. She began to yell and shout that she wasn't taking a bath. I knew if I pushed it she would come after me so I just walked away from her. Well, I guess just the mention of a bath was enough to do it for her. I had gone to the kitchen table and was sat there filling out papers for her for school. John was in the living room watching tv. Jenny was up in her room. Amanda came wheeling out of her room and came to the kitchen. She started shouting at me that she was not going to take a bath. Just then John came out of the living room to see why she was shouting. He was in the long, narrow part of the kitchen with no way to escape her except to go out the door. She turned on him with a fierce rage. She went at him full speed, grabbed hold of his shirt and started tearing it off his body. She was punching and biting him. She has incredible strength and will bite you hard enough to knock out her own teeth. She did that biting him last year. She has also bitten hard enough to go into muscle. She did that to him before too. When he got lose from her I shouted at him to go out the door. I figured if he went outside she may calm down if I remained calm. So thinking she was calming down I went back to the table. I sat down and continued writing. She must have locked the door when I walked away. She said she hurt her arm. I told her to come show me. So I sat there waiting for her to show me. Instead she grabbed two fists full of my hair and began snapping my head back and forth. I was screaming but John was locked out of the house and Jenny was hiding like she has been told to do when Amanda gets wild. I could not get a hold on her to get free of her grip. Then she grabbed me around the neck and tried to choke me. I was better able to get hold of her that way though and broke free. I then ran out the door. Amanda came out into the darkness after us. She found that she could not keep up with us nor find us outside in the dark. We were afraid that she would get onto the road and be hit by a car. She eventually calmed down enough that we were able to get her in the house. Then she turned on us again. We ran upstairs to our bedroom and called Jenny into our room with us. We locked the door. Amanda then went into the bathroom where she proceeded to destroy anything she could. Fortunately there wasn't much she could destroy in there. We had called my parents to help us and they arrived shortly after we hid in the bedroom. They were able to talk to her and get her calm but not without her taking a few swings at my mother. I don't want to put Amanda away. I don't think I can emotionally handle it. I know it will hurt Amanda terribly. She cried the entire time she was in the hospital when I had her admitted. I don't know what to do. I don't want her locked away or over medicated. And I don't want her to hurt me or kill me. All of this makes me feel so incredibly bad about myself. I don't have any answers. The doctors don't either. Every thing we have tried has failed. And even though she does things like this we know she loves us. When she is good she is a perfect little angel. She is just like night and day. My heart is so broken this morning. My head is very sore. My neck hurts but not as much as it did last night. I just wish I could crawl into a hole, pull a rock over me and lay there until I die.