Hard Day

For whatever reason I have been blessed with a daughter with mental illness. She was born three months early almost 25 years ago. Below the surface of her mostly "normal" childhood was a brain severely compromised by her stress-filled beginnings. As adolescence hit her, so did severe brain chemistry dysfunction. A girl we didn't even know emerged from the light and went down into the darkness of Major Depression. So major that the pscyhiatrists add /severe after depression when they write down her diagnosis. She'd been in a mental world we knew little about.

So much parenting took place with her older brother all throughout his last 6 years at home with us before he went off to college. Those same years with our daughter were spent spent hovering somewhere between life and death. At 14 she started outpatient therapy with a local psychologist. The young woman living in our home with us at that time barely reflected the one we'd watched grow up there. The sessions with the psychologist though helpful at times, were quite grueling with much of the rationale for her dysfunction seen as her family's dysfunction. So we did what good parents do, we tried to learn from it.

As what little light remained was leaving her eyes, we made the tough decision to put her in the an eating disorder program in Omaha. As we sat down after her initial evaluation we go the shock of our lives. We brought her in on the edge of life. The psychiatrist said, she is seriously depressed suicidal. We've come within hours of death with our daughter several times. Many times.

Last month after a couple of years of doing pretty well, we were called and told she had entered the emergency room at a local hospital and were asked to come see her. She gave the doctor permission to speak freely to us and there we were told once more of things under the surface we'd been oblivioius to. Some familiar things, some not so much. No parent ever wants to hear difficult things about their child's struggle no matter how old the child is. In the hearing you also want to hear how to heal the situation because you crave the solutions for her. Instead, what you are usually told is that she needs a more serious intervention and you agree to a plan you barely understand.Numbness begins to take over as she's taken by ambulance to a behavioral health unit in a city hospital.

The next day you get to visit. Your stuff is taken and the door locked behind you. Flashbacks of earlier inpatient times hit and numbness pervades your being so that all you really know how to do is exist while you are there. You try to be strong, to pay attention, to be present, but as you sit among other mentally ill adults and see that the world outside just goes by, it's very difficult. After a short chat, we left her there and went home. Something we've done since she was born, and oddly familiar feeling.

After a couple of days we were asked to participate in a family session. This time, I had to work and couldn't go - last couple of days at school. I'm told and I KNOW that it is essential that I live my own life since Hannah is and adult etc. but it never feels quite right not to participate in something like this. My husband went for both of us and hard things were discussed. As he reports back to me, I just feel this immense hopelessness at the reality that no one can follow the directives but her.

Days later my daughter let me look over the discharge papers. Diagnosis: Major Depression/Severe, ED NOS. At this point numbness returns and I realize the years have gone by and though others have gotten well, WE are still in the battle and this may be something we just have to LIVE WITH rather than conquer. No clue as to how to process that.

As the days go by, I feel the sting of life lived on the blade of a knife. I realize that she is kept there by wonderful advances in psychotropic medications because without them she would have died long ago. I know I should feel grateful and I am, but I also feel the realities of this delicate balance living life on this edge with my adult daughter. It's clear that I cannot control a thing. I can't determine what she does on any level. If I think I can and I try, I become codependent and develop my own mental health issues. Living my own life is somewhat frightening because at any moment everything could change.

She loses her phone, changes her plans, and I can't reach her. Everything slows down and if I'm not careful it stops until I hear from her again. Today was one of those days. I've pictured all sorts of things today. Being home and having unstructured time on my hands, I worried. Then I cried, really sobbed for awhile as if several levels of pain needed to get cried out. Then I slept. I worried some more and went through that cycle several times today. Clearly last month's hospital stay had something to do my inability to cope with not being able to reach her.

All is well now. Well, atleast it's gone back to normal. She sent me a text me at 4:15 telling me where she was and that she just found her phone. It does feel a bit ridiculous that I reacted so catastrophic like today. At the same time it feels like it was really just a way for me to get some bottled up tears out and wake me up to the present moment a bit more. Whatever...this is my life and onward I go.