We were all just going about our business when suddenly I was ringing 000 and gathering my things together and stepping into an ambulance. Yes, sure, she had 2 hospital visits in the last week. Yes I had discovered her self harming habit, when the hospital checked her over. But life has to go on, somehow, or a semblance of it. Yes I now realise that my darling innocent girl has been lying to me and I feel like an idiot for not seeing the extent of her pain earlier. Since the 1st hospital visit, a new her is slowly emerging, a cruelty towards me and a slippery, circus wheel of sliding emotions, scaling up and down before I can take a breath. Hospital and mental health staff are my heroes. The concentrated care, taking on her story, digesting it and considering solutions. We swing from one appointment to the next. The multitude of websites and professionals ready to support and set up safety plans, the numbers to ring 24 hours. But the hours and days in between, where we are at home, when I am acting on my wits, battling her newly emerged contemptuous behaviour and trying to level my emotions, trying to stay calm, but firm. Crying out of sight, by myself, gathering all my strength back together for her to hold on to. It's taking nearly all of me. I feel betrayed and I don't trust her like I used to. I know she's growing up and needs to find herself, this is normal, but not normal is the damage she wishes on herself. As parents, we are responsible for our tiny baby's life from their first breath. Nearly 15 years later she can feed and bathe herself, yet again it's up to me to try to keep her alive, in very different circumstances, and I am met with a resistance that defies logic. And these days are the scariest and most confronting. My girl has become self destructive beast, and the glowering look she gets in her eyes is unnerving. I'm scared at how suddenly a suicide attempt can happen, at how I can't keep my eye on her every second and how she could slip away and end up dead, just like that.
