Princess is back in the ER right now. She ran away from the school building today, shades of her brother from a few years ago. The counselor saw her leave, followed her out, and managed to stop her at the curb, just before she decided to run into traffic. She says she wanted to just run and run and let herself get hit.

Today was not one of her days in group therapy, now that she has dropped down to three days per week. Last night she told the doctor she was mostly feeling better, fewer thoughts of hurting herself and more ability to keep the thoughts in perspective and talk herself down when the thoughts do come. Tonight the doctor insisted that she be evaluated by the ER doctors before being allowed to come to group tomorrow.

She says she feels safe calm and comfortable when she is in the hospital, but she does not want to be away from home and back in an inpatient program. She says she feels calm and comfortable when she is in group. She says she feels calm and comfortable when she speaks with her LCSW on weekends. She says she feels calm and comfortable at home. At school, she usually feels calm and comfortable at the beforecare program, and the aftercare program, and first period religion class, and second period math class and third period social studies and at lunch.  During these times she can handle feeling sad or anxious or confused when those feelings come.

She does not feel this at recess. Her friends with whom she eats lunch like to play ball, which she does not.  She feels that she does not have a place or an activity or a presence that feels calm and comfortable.  She cannot or will not articulate whether her afternoon classes make her feel tense and uncomfortable.

Inpatient programs and intensive group therapy and one-to-one counseling sessions are not helping her navigate her life as it stands right now. I want her to be safe, but I do not know what tools she needs to make this happen. I’ve spent too many hours or days or weeks being the one to figure out the next move and letting everyone else know what needs done, but those solutions are not working and I no longer have the tools to figure out the next move.

When we have weathered this crisis, I am going to speak to my own doctor. I am going to request that he write me a prescription for an SSRI, but not the one I used previously because it made me tired and nauseated and I think that there are others that can help me. I am the mother of two (or maybe three) special needs children, and the wife of a man who forgets that he is not the only person with a stressful job, and the person at our office who takes care of the administrative side of the governance functions as well as taking care of the people who needs to be coddled. I can no longer be all those things without some help.