Into the Abyss and Back: Let's talk about Suicide

Aleathia says:

The last month or so has been a whirlwind journey with every possible emotion felt at one time or another. My entire world was turned upside down in the end of February. I got a call from my child as she sat in the guidance office sobbing and telling me she needed me to come to school immediately.

Panic. Shut up mom heart, this is a job for ER nurse. Okay….but it’s my baby. Don’t worry, we got this.

I arrive and sit in a really welcoming office where my child proceeds to tell me that over the last few months, she has overdosed on her Prozac at least 7 times. Every day spent pretending to take this medication, to act like everything is okay while in her room she is trying to find ways to die. I was blindsided. She had seem more sullen, but it was the dead of winter in New York. Everything was grey and cold and unforgiving. Looking back there were neon signs that I didn’t see. She had told no one, not even her best friend and in my healthcare experience it is the ones who have action without words that eventually succeed.

I asked my daughter if I could write about this because struggling with mental health carries a stigma in this world, one that makes it really hard for people to get help. I wanted her permission to share her story because it is personal. I didn’t want whomever might read this to think she was in the dark about it.

The process of getting help for mental health issues is arduous. You go to the ER and very few ER’s are equipped with behavioral health units and the options in New York state are so far and few between anymore with the state cutting back funding many years ago. The mental health problem is a real one. 1 in 5 adults in the US have mental illness...that is over 43 million people with nearly 10 million of them having mental illness so bad that they cannot function properly in everyday living. These are the numbers of the diagnosed. This says nothing for the people who never seek help, yet the services and care for individuals with mental illness dwindles every year.

In New York state between 2009 and 2011 they cut $132 million dollars from the mental health budget, closed major inpatient behavioral hospitals, and local behavioral units in hospitals. In our local area we had to fight to keep our long term center open which housed people who had not been out in the world in years due to the severity of their mental health, because we would have been putting them out in the community to fail with no supportive mental health care.

Numbers aside, as a nurse in my local ER I know all too well the process. The patient comes in with great distress, we strip them of everything that makes them an individual, we take everything out of the room, and they get a sitter at arms length for their entire stay. We have had patients sit over a week in our ER waiting for a mental health bed to open up. In our case, we waited almost three days for a bed. When they finally found one it was over 2 hours away in central Pennsylvania which meant I couldn’t visit every day. We were lucky if we had 5 minutes on the phone each day. It was a nightmare, but I had to hope that I had done the right thing; that we would come out on the other side.

My daughter did not like the place, but it isn’t supposed to be a place you want to return. She and I both feel that if she had stayed there any longer there would have been a serious resentment towards me and her father. But I think she needed the reset. She needed to have someone insist she communicate her feelings. She had therapy everyday so when she came back to us she wasn’t afraid of therapy like she was before.

The discharge process at this facility was poor and no one sat down with us to explain her diagnosis and what we were supposed to do. We signed papers, collected her things, and were out the door. The whole process in general was disheartening and that is coming from very involved parents who care and were there every step of the way. My daughter said there were many kids in there whose parents dumped them off at places like this because they don’t want to deal with them. It was heartbreaking.

This event was one more thing to grieve on top of all the deaths I had not allowed myself to grieve, the failed relationship, and feeling of being utterly alone. It is amazing the strength you find when the thought of losing your only child is dangled in front of your face. Here are all the things I learned:

There is no greater pain in the world than the thought of losing a child. Hands down: worse feeling ever.


This event made me speak to her father...to him, not at him about not only our daughter, but why our marriage failed. It failed because we didn’t talk to each other honestly and openly. There were things that each of us didn’t know about the other that would have changed our actions.


You have to ask the hard questions without fear. Ask them again and again until you understand what the other person is saying. Be honest with your answers. Communicate!


Healing is a journey that has both forward steps and backward steps. It is akin to ugly crying and laughing so hard your stomach hurts.


My daughter doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Her pain is my pain and in all honesty we are going through the same motions at the same time. We are learning to communicate, to open up, to let free the demons that bind us. We are helping each other.


Art is part of the master plan. Art is the only thing that lets me empty my mind. Art is what my daughter is good at and she needs more of it in her life.


Despite all the hard work and effort by her father and I, we could not shield our child from the genetic strains of mental illness in our families. It is long on both sides and even though we gave her the best divorced parents lifestyle we could, she still fell prey to her genetics.


I have undiagnosed mental illness. I’m sure of it.


No one has to do it alone.


Being a teenager in this time is more brutal than my time. The internet and social media make it a tough world to live in where kids can taunt each other without repercussion and without being brave enough to do it to their face and risk their own ridicule for being mean. Even good students and good kids suffer things parents can’t imagine. This suffering is what hurts me the most. It pains me to think my girl suffered like this since the 6th grade until she couldn’t take it anymore. All the while putting on a good face to keep everyone else’s feelings intact. She suffered alone.

Be responsible. Talk to your kids even if they roll their eyes or say they don’t want to talk. They need someone they can trust, someone that loves them. Don’t give up on them. Don’t write their behavior off as teenage angst. Sometimes, it is deeper than you think.


Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255


Thank you for reading.
Aleathia

I Am A Mother of a Teenage Daughter...and I Love It.

Aleathia says:

Holy Hannah!  It has been over a month since I posted, but not without great reason.  Life has been happening people, lots and lots of life.  I have been taking online courses to further my education at work.  They aren't official classes in the sense I get credit for them, but what does that matter anyway if I learn and retain the knowledge?  Does it only count if I have a piece of paper?  Wouldn't it count more if I could actually use the knowledge at work and share it with others?

I am still running, or what I call running, despite a few muscle strains.  I run when I tell myself I can't.  I run when I want to and when I need to.  I don't go more than 2 miles most of the time, but each time I run more of that 2 miles is running rather than walking which I find to be an accomplishment.

We have been having dog problems of the worst kind.  Diarrhea in the house...repeatedly, which leads to anger which leads to the ugliest part of me pushing to the surface.  It really has showed me how easy it is to lose my compassion in the face of samsara.  I can hear myself yelling over things the dog cannot control.  I feel myself have guilt, but still not shut my mouth.  I had to go running the one day to think about things.  Marshall was abandoned and then imprisoned and we saved him.  It took him a long time to really trust that we were going to keep him.  It took a long time to show the physical extent of his separation anxiety which in the beginning was howling and a bit of pacing.  It is now full on loss of bodily functions.  Part of me wanted to take the easy road and take him back to the pound.  The other part of me understands what it is like to be abandoned and yelled at all the time for things you don't understand.  All he knows is that we are his pack and he is lonely when we aren't here.  I get that.  I am lonely when my family isn't around either.  So, we (more me) have come up with a plan: more activity, probiotics, and less vocalization one way or the other about good and bad. Bad attention is still attention as far as he is concerned.  It has been a journey...a messy, stinky journey.

I have been filling my life with work and sewing and reading and crafts.  It seems like there is not enough time in the day to squeeze all this life in.  In addition to that I am still trying to be a great girlfriend and a great mom.  I'm trying to not burn out at work, but feeling less successful at that then all the rest.  I have been doing the same thing for the last 8 years with the only change being it is getting busier and more stressful.  People are leaving and moving on.  I just don't want to get bitter in my job.  I love what I do, it is just overwhelming most of the time.

Which brings me to the topic of conversation....teenage daughter.  I have to tell you that through all the years I have heard mothers bitch about teenagers and how horrible it is to parent them.  I tried my best when I was a teenager to be good.  I am sure I added a few gray hairs to my mother's head, but for the most part I was good.  I worked, got good grades, didn't drink or do drugs, was involved in plays and choirs and sports, and I did volunteer work.  I had a messy room, but I did chores and at one point was a caregiver to my infirmed mother at the age of 14 when no one else would help.  In essence, I didn't have time to be a teenager.  I went from kid to adult, but it suited me for the most part.  I was always older and quieter in my heart.

I have spent all of Chloe's life trying to raise her with respect, honesty, kindness, and individuality. These were things not given to me as a child.  I was given fear, authority, loneliness, and a be like everyone else attitude.  I never had a voice or an opinion.  Chloe is different from the other kids at school.  She knows she is and in the beginning I thought she may have had a social disorder.  She had all the signs on paper, but in the end it was a case of late blooming.  She is turning into this wonderful young lady who is respectful, kind, smart, funny, and sometimes eager to move on to bigger and better things.  Michael has been a great influence on the shaping of my little girl.  He was and always will be the "cool kid" that I never was and has such a way of presenting the world that makes Chloe take notice.  She looks up to him and I love that.

I love this time in her life where she is blooming and growing and discovering what it is she wants out of life when she leaves here.  In history class, she has to pick current event topics and the things she chooses makes me proud...makes me know that she is listening when we have our dinner talks about what is going on in the world.  Most of all I am happy that she loves talking to me and sharing her world with me honestly and openly.  She gives me the opportunity to share my life experiences with her in a way that might influence how she makes decisions for her own future.  I have always been brutally honest with her and in my heart I feel like she respects me for that.

In a time when so many of my friends are having horror stories to share about their teenagers, I feel lucky and blessed and so happy that I made the choices I did when she was younger.  It is always a risk.  You never know if how your captain the ship will end in stormy weather or not.  I hope we stay the course and keep moving forward in positive ways.  Life isn't perfect and she makes mistakes, but I always tell her that it is the mistakes we make that give us the best opportunity to learn if we have the courage to look at it that way.  We are not perfect.  That is such an unattainable idea, but we do have in us the ability to give the best we can do right now.  Life is an ever changing journey.  There is a rotation between ups and downs and we have to not get too lost in either of them so that we see the wonder there is in both.

3/13/2015 When You Least Expect It

Aleathia says:

I woke up this morning sort of dreading it.  I was up at the crack of dawn for the second day in a row. WTF?  My body hurt like hell with the loss of those few extra hours of sleep, but I rolled out into the 20 degree morning to walk the dog.

The blessings started here.

I watched the most amazing sunrise from my yard.  Watched as it bathed the shimmering snow in orange hues.  The dog stood there with me like he understood what it was all about.  When you stop to watch the sunrise you get the opportunity to swim in the insanity that is the universe.  Oh yeah, that giant ball of fire, we rotate around that.  And though it is millions of miles away we see its like and feel its heat.  Doesn't that blow your mind?

I continued walking the dog and was blessed again by the alley not being an ice skating rink.  My back and poor old Marshall's could not handle another day of trying to look graceful and defying the laws of gravity while on slippery surfaces.  Also he didn't stand and stiff another dogs poop all morning or lick pee off the telephone pole.  This was a win-win walk.  I said my morning prayers while we walked and felt strangely lighter than when I started.

Chloe and I had to drive 40 minutes to get her braces checked.  It is a dreadful long time to have someone stick their fingers in her mouth for 5 minutes and send you on your way.  This time it was great news.  Large rubber bands off for a month and if everything stays where it is, then braces off in May!  And as of this morning, her father had paid her braces payments off in full.  I was pretty surprised actually.

We left there and went to lunch at Cracker Barrel and then off to JoAnn's to pick out her fabric for the apron I am going to make her.  We came home and I walked the dog again.  She played computer and I took a much needed afternoon nap with the sun peaking in the windows while lying on the couch.

The best part of the day was not how well all of these things unfurled but the most wonderful day I had with my 13 year old.  If you are a parent or if you remember being a teenager, then you know this is the time when teenager's stop wanting you in their business.  They don't think you are right about anything and they certainly don't want to be seen with you in public.  Chloe is generally not like this but she has been making moves for more independence and as hard as it is for me to let go, I know it is the best thing to do.

Our ride down to the orthodontist, the ride back, the lunch, the fabric store and the ride home were filled with ACTUAL CONVERSATION.  We talked about the present and about finding out her identity in the world.  We talked about the future.  I wanted to impart upon her how important it really is to find a job in life that makes you happy and that you feel good about doing because you will spend a very large part of your precious time on Earth at that job.  I also talked about college being something she should take advantage of when she knows what she wants to do.  I had many failed attempts and periods of adventure in between before I landed on my career at age 27.  I shared stories about my life that I had not been able to share before this time.  We talked about the real reasons her father and I divorced.  We talked about fashion and music and movies.

She shared her perspective on these things and I have learned in these times it is best to keep my judgments to myself and listen.  I think we don't do that enough for teenagers....really listen and let them know that their opinions and ideas matter and are valid, but that they should also not discredit their parents breadth of knowledge and experience when advice is given.  We talked about the importance of failure and not being perfect.  We all must fall to find out how strong we are.  We have to know what it feels like to pull ourselves up to find out what we are made of.

It has been a pretty awesome day.  F**k you Friday the 13th.  Pfffft.