I’m feeling pretty damn sorry for myself at the moment. Well, that’s not strictly true, and quite a self deprecating statement: I’m feeling desperate, desolate and so afraid. My little girl went back to hospital a day early this weekend. She had self harmed yesterday morning and bravely shared this with me because she feared she may need stitches. So I donned my doctors hat, took one look at her face, and decided she did not need the stress and humiliation of a trip to A & E. So my Saturday morning then consisted of dashing around to buy supplies including butterfly stitches and antiseptic. How has this become our normality? From scraped knees to cuts from blades. Fearful that she couldn’t keep herself safe, and feeling particularly suicidal, she returned to the safety of her hospital. (Turns out I was wrong about the cut and she ended up having six stitches).
Sometimes, it is all just too much. Not the cuts; not the suicidal ideation, not even the twisted reality we now live in, but the fear for my baby’s life.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I crumple under the weight of this awful fear. Let’s not beat around the bush here: I fear my daughter will die. Today, on World Suicide Prevention Day, I have crumpled. I am so afraid for her, so afraid I will loose her to this awful illness. My daughter does not want to die but she does not want to live either. The turmoil she feels is so strong and she battles one against the other on a daily, hourly basis. Suicide attempts occur when the demon that is “not wanting to live”, or even exist, takes over. And as her mum, what can I do but stand by and watch? I can’t help her, not really.
I feel so inept, so utterly helpless. I also feel like I am the only person in this world that truly believes her: nobody else wants to so they look for positives, for tiny signs that she doesn’t mean it when she says she wants to die. I have a degree in Psychology in Practise, I have raised six children and hope is my middle name: I wish I didn’t believe her but I do. So here I sit, just existing, waiting for the day when she is successful. It is no way to live. It must end. I gave myself a good talking to on the way to visit her today: I still left, hours later, with a heavy, shattered heart and drove home in tears.
I want my baby back but I see no end to her pain. She used to tell me that this isn’t about me, but actually it is, in part anyway! I am her one true believer so therefore what she feels, I feel. I don’t claim to understand, I can’t because I’m Mrs Positive and always have been, but I feel it, I see it and it breaks my heart.
Then there are my other beautiful children: when I was 17, my darling auntie, the matriarch of our family, was battling terminal cancer; needing to do something, anything, in between working and looking after us, my mum spent almost every day at the home of her precious sister, taking care of her family and doing what she could. She would come home shattered and heartbroken. 25 years later, I sobbed to my mum that “I needed my mum during that time too” & that I felt “abandoned and lonely”. I meant it: it was an awful time. But this is exactly what I am doing to my own children. My whole life revolves around Lizzie: I am preoccupied and distracted; her appointments take precedence over everything. I can’t even work because I can’t focus. The guilt I keep promising to write about, is crippling.
Today is a bad day. Tomorrow I hope to wake and for the positive outlook to have returned: you can’t have a rainbow without the rain right?
Stay strong x
My Suicidal Daughter 