Truth Deep Within

I don’t understand why people cut. I truly don’t. I’ve read about release, I’ve read about control, I’ve read the articles that theoretically explain why a person would do this to their bodies. Leave all of that aside for the moment - why would they do this to their family? Why would my beloved daughter to this to me? I know it’s not about me - BUT IT IS. It’s her story, and I’m just a supporting character in her narrative. But when you gut the supporting characters over and over, your reader notices. And this is gutting.  Just when I thought we were past the danger mark... months had passed with no cutting... months with no suicide plans. We had just talked with her therapist about fully reintroducing sharps to the house, stepping up from the 3 small knives and single pair of scissors that had been reintroduced so far.  And then 36 hours of depression and she took a paring knife to her arm. They were shallow cuts, but still... new cuts on what was a com...

I wrote the below over a month ago, late in April, before the events that have rocked our world in the last week - or from a different perspective before those events brought greater visibility to a deep wound in our collective psyche that has been festering for decades on centuries. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but my heart... it hurts. She’s better... and the world is crazy. Everything make sense except my perception/reaction. I can’t relax. My heart hurts. I can’t trust she’s breathing when she’s quiet. My brain... she’s on fire. And if something happens to me, no one I know knows enough about tech to find anything I own. Even the things they need. How can I take care of them? How can I be sure they will be okay? Alright... that seems like a normal parent concern. I can’t. No parent can be sure everything’s okay. All I can do is my best. And so it makes sense that I can’t breathe. But seriously, I can’t breathe.... "I can't breathe." How different that phrase...

There’s a saying about swimming like a duck... something about seeming to glide across the water while in reality underneath a calm surface your paddling like mad. I’m not sure this is that. That implies progress, while I feel like I’m paddling madly but in no direction. Like someone threw the oars overboard... no, like they detached the paddles from my paddleboat. I keep churning my feet on those peddles, but since they’re not connected to anything.... I can think of many things I should be doing. So very many things. How many of them am I going to get done tonight? Roughly none. My heart hurts... and it’s making my brain hurt.  I want my girl to be safe. That shouldn’t be a hope that makes your heart hurt.

If suicidal ideation were a temperature, there would be a number that marked the danger line.  It could have some grey zone on either side, but everyone knows that a temperature of 100 you are sick.  At 99 you may be fighting something but you're probably fine.  At 104 you are probably headed to your doctor or urgent care.  It's clear.  There are lines.  There are treatments.  There are expectations for when schools should send kids home.  It makes sense. Therapy for suicidal ideation can offer numbers, but they are so much fuzzier.  Are you a 2 today or a 3?  How do you tell?  There's no equipment that can measure it.  There's no impartial arbiter that can smack a metaphorical hand to your forehead to tell if you're "warm".  And besides, how much difference is there really between a 2 and a 3, or 2 and a 4 for that matter?  In my family, we tend to describe a 0 as everything is fine and dandy while at 5 the world i...

When my little one was very little, I bought her books on emotions and anger.  We started really really small with an amazing book called My Many Colored Days, by Dr Seuss. Seriously if you have little ones you should check this book out. This one was about all the colors of emotions.  I bought it as a board book, and we carried it everywhere - from across town to see a friend to across the sea to work and see friends in other countries.  We used different voices for different colors/emotions.  We had to replace it, because we wore the book out....  That was okay, though - we knew it so well, we could recite it without the book.  I can still see the pages and hear those voices rising up and lilting off of the pages: Some days are yellow Some are blue On different days I'm different too You'd be surprised how many ways I change on different colored days..... And we'd end every time with "The many colors of you, my boo, the many colors o...

My dreams can be dark these days, and bear hidden dangers.  A seemingly harmless (even boring) cubicle in some no-name office that I was visiting, my laptop, phone, and various personal items for some reason strewn on the desktop surface as I work.  Except suddenly the space under just that cubicle has turned to lava... the desktop sinks into it, the corner of my laptop is sinking... can I save everything fast enough? Bubbling under my feet and then trying to suck down everything I care about..... When I was young I had similar dreams whenever I was facing a major life turning point.  Should I focus on career or starting a family?  Should I take on that new project at work that will suck up all of my time but be good for my career?  The dreams involved water, being in a vehicle that went off of something (a bridge, a dock, a cliff, ...) into water and then the car ever so slowly floated down into the water.  Could I get out in time?  With the w...

Sometimes it's hard to talk even to people that love us. Hard to either pretend that everything is okay or have to talk about how everything isn't.  I know that they are trying to "be there" for us.  I know that they are reaching out in love.  But response takes effort, and right now all of my efforts are turned internally - keeping her together, keeping her whole, working her plan.  I invest time and energy in things that move that forward.  Want to have a friend sleepover? Watch a movie? Just sit close and do completely different things?  I'm in.  But a friend of mine wanting to talk or god forbid go out?  Nope, not on my radar. Unhealthy, yes. But true nonetheless. Because the truth is that I'm a hair's breadth from crying All. The. Time.  There's a knot in the pit of my stomach that just Won't. Go. Away. And leaving to go listen to music or do some other random thing sounds insipid. I don't want to talk about the latest tiny dram...