Oh, hello there. Long time no see. What's new?
Oh, you know, the regular stuff. I'm just sitting here waiting for the Relief Society Presidency to show up and in the mean time Duncan decides to mop the kitchen floor with the soapiest bucket of mop water the world has ever seen, because he says he is sick of the sticky mess from the Kool Aid that the girls spilled last week when they dyed their hair. Only the floor isn't sticky because they didn't add any sugar to the Kool Aid. The floor is going to be sticky now though, what with all that soap he isn't going to be able to rinse off.
Hmm, that sounds like quite a night. Where have you been all year?
Oh, we've been around. The ER quite a bit. The maternity ward. The psych ward. The home improvement store. Chicago. It's been a busy year.
Wow, sounds busy, I hear the kids have missed hearing from you. We should catch up sometime.
Yeah, there's a lot to catch up on. I wouldn't even know where to start. And a lot of it would be boring.
Well, you could start where you left off, on the worst day of the year, January 2.
Yeah, only it turns out that January 2 was not the worst day of the year. Not by a long shot. I'm not sure I could even pick a worst day of the year this year. But I guess January 8 would be in the top 10. So I'll start there. Pour a coke and pull up a chair if you want to hear all this.
January 8 was a Monday and it was the day Audrey's car wouldn't start, so I gave her a ride to school. January 8 was the day we were both completely silent on the drive there. January 8 was the day that we sat in the car in front of the school, and instead of jumping out and running into her classes like she always did, she just sat there. She just sat there until she somehow summoned up the energy and courage to tell me that she couldn't do it any more, she just couldn't stand to live for one more day, and that she could no longer trust herself to not do something drastic.
January 8 was the day I did what I would have considered unthinkable a week earlier. I drove my brilliant, kind, talented, hard working daughter to the ER at Primary Children's hospital for a psychiatric evaluation because I couldn't trust her to not kill herself that day. And after that, I drove her to McKay Dee hospital and admitted her to the Behavioral Health Unit, and left her there. Then I drove home and had to tell her brother and sister that she was terribly ill and I didn't know when they would see her again or what would happen, and we all cried a lot of hot painful tears that night.
January 8 was also the night that I guiltily breathed a sigh of relief when I climbed into bed that night. It was the first night in several weeks that I could sleep soundly, knowing that someone else was watching my daughter through the night to make sure she was safe. It was the first night I didn't have to wonder what I would wake up to in the morning, the first night I didn't have to dread going into her room and hoping that she was still okay, and that nothing unimaginable had happened in the dark night while I was sleeping.
We were all pretty innocent that night. I could never imagine that night that it would be four long months before she would sleep in her own bed again, or what she would endure in the coming days and weeks. I could never have imagined the world of treatment centers, isolation, therapists, self harm, seizures, loneliness, sleeplessness and fear that was waiting for us.
Knowing what I know now, I still often agonize over whether I made the right call, taking her to the hospital that day. It's a hard thing to turn your child over to strangers and admit that you aren't equipped to help her and I will never know if it was the right decision. Would things have turned out better or worse if we had brought her home? There were terrible days in treatment, and terrible things happened to her while she was away. But in the end she is still here, alive and breathing. Someday I might could forgive myself for sending her away and for the mistreatment she experienced. But I could never forgive myself if something had happened to her here at home while she was in my care.
January 8 was only the first of many worst days.
