RealMental

It is not a good thing to get a call from the boys’ school alerting me to an elopement incident, the first in well over a year.

It is not a good thing when a police officer calls to ask how quickly I can be at the school to address the expressions of self-harm that Hoss verbalized when being brought back.

It is not a good thing when the social worker at the pediatric ER recognizes our family on sight.

It is not a good thing when the mobile crisis team is called in.

There are good things. It was a good thing when the staff took Princess (who had to come with me, since she is not safe to be left alone) to a conference room and fed her lunch while I spoke with the principal and the police.

It was a good thing when the counselor agreed to accompany my son when the officer insisted upon taking him to the ER.

It was a good thing when the school psychologist and the principal spoke of my dedication to my children’s safety and mental health, in an effort to make the officer understand that Hoss was not actually a danger to himself.

It is a good thing when I alerted the school that Hoss had been released to come home, and their response to asking if he was allowed back tomorrow was, “Yes! We want him here and expect to see him first thing in the morning.”

It is a good thing that I had already scheduled a family therapy session for 6:00 this evening.

I desperately need more good things.

She has to be right, to be wrong meant too much pain for her in ways I’ll never understand.

If one piece gets out of place, the entire structure may fall into a heap.  Houses made of cards are fragile, meticulously created.  Her queen of heart locked inside, protected.

She doesn’t see the fright, or see the scars that weren’t healing in her own daughter.  She can’t reach me, she can’t try.  Not because she doesn’t love me, but to do so would be to open the lid she’s had slammed shut for 50 years.  Without knowing, she gave me the tools to fight my own battles.

For years I’ve tried to do my part, overlook the sickness, overlook my own needs.  One sided relationships are very difficult to maintain.  When it was just me, it was a lot easier.  Now that I’ve got my own family with my own heartache, there hasn’t been as much room for me to serve her.

I love her, I admire her, I am grateful for her.  I just can’t give any more of myself or I’ll have nothing left for my own life.  You can only tell someone you love them, you appreciate them so many times before you realize that it won’t make a dent and at some point you have to let go.

For years I lived by her definition of good, I followed her advice, her suggestions.  I did what she told me to do and when I wasn’t with her, I’d hear her voice in my head.  She was my internal thermometer to lead me to the right path.  Not realizing it at the time, I was trying to gain her love and acceptance.

She didn’t mean to hurt me; she froze me out because that’s the only defense she had against the things that were too hard for her to see.

As her daughter, I thought it was up to me to try and repair the sins of the past.  To be the strong woman that she aspired to be, the woman that desperately wanted to let herself feel and give love, to live her life.

Nothing was safe for her, everyone and everything had an agenda, and that agenda was to hurt her.

I’d give anything to fix that in her, anything.  I thought for years that was my purpose, to fix her.  My choice, not hers.  She never asked for help, to do so would mean defeat in her eyes.

Before I ever fully understood any of this, I’d absorbed enough of her fears and problems that eventually set me up as a candidate for the same abuse that she experienced.  This was not her goal, I know this now.  The things we try to hide are projected onto others.

I certainly don’t blame her for that.  Not now.  For a while I did, I blamed her for not loving herself enough to get out from under her mountain of abuse and mental illness.   When I became a Mother myself, I grew even angrier that she didn’t think we were worth fighting for.

She fought for us, but in her own way.  It’s good to remember that when people love us, it won’t always look the way we expect it to.  It doesn’t mean they don’t love us.  It means their way of loving just looks differently than the way we love.

When I finally realized she did the very fucking best that she could, with what she was given, I was able to see her outside of the injuries.  To see her for the beautiful, smart, creative, loving and amazing person she is.

My strength is her strength, my compassion is her compassion, my love is her love working through me.  She succeeded in making me stronger than she was, to question, to reach.  I see her more clearly now than I ever did before.  Still unable to convince her how amazing she is, no matter how many times I tell her or write to her.

Maybe she meant to cover more ground, to be more and do more.  I know I’m making mistakes that my children will one day be hate me for.

It doesn’t mean I didn’t try, or that I don’t love them.

No, that doesn’t mean that at all.

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.

P1080767, originally uploaded by Ella_Ormerod.

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