There are some days when I realize I should never have crawled from my bed.
The past 48 hours have been a living hell, surrounded by madness that threatens to take over all that I am. Granted, the madness has been going on for years but now the possibility of freedom from its deathly grip is slipping away. I am held hostage by my heart which is now broken into a million pieces, scattered about what used to be a home. Now it is a shelter enveloped in insanity.
The rage is beyond anything I have ever witnessed. My 12 year old screams and growls like a wild animal at the slightest movement or sound. The dogs cower in the corner trying their best to hide under the table and away from her rampage. They cling to my every move, frightened that I will leave them in her presence alone. I cannot leave them in the room with her alone. She has already tried to injure them and has threatened to let them out of the house, or worse, kill them. They too are held hostage. She threatens on a regular basis now to kill herself. She rages about how she would be better off dead. I cannot imagine a grief greater than losing my child by her own hand. She has attempted to jump from a moving car and to jump out of a second story window. I have hid all of the knives and other sharp objects in the house. The medication is locked away and hidden. She is at her lowest. My once modest home is now a shattered wreck with holes in the walls, broken furniture, and her ever expanding debris field of items thrown and broken. Even the laptop pc is not immune from her wrath. It was tossed across the room; the insides of it rattle like loose change in a pocket. She was watching a movie, seeking some respite from her racing thoughts. When the laptop no longer cooperated with her, it was met with a flying fast pitch across the living room.
She does not want me around. She does not want me to stay. She is clingy and demanding on her terms. She is pitiful and broken. Her hair is now in stringy tangles and she refuses to bathe or tend to her hygiene. She is in a circle of madness and there is no exit ramp. Medications are not working. The Prozac has been stopped. The psychiatrist says it is causing the latest meltdown. The anti-anxiety drug is not enough. The two anti-psychotic drugs are not enough. The ADHD medication is not enough. Her psychologist cannot see her for two more weeks. We are in insanity limbo and it is dragging us both into a pit of hell. I have taken up smoking again. I can no longer have a drink to soothe my raw edges. I have to be alert and focused to take care of her. Dear Lord, please do not let smoking kill me before she is 18. I refuse to put a helpless guardian through this heartache. The nearest adolescent psychiatric hospital is an hour away. They will not take her because there are no beds available now nor in the foreseeable future.
What do I do? Thoughts have ran through my head that I cannot even fathom putting down into real words. How far will I go before I snap, my mental light switch turned off? God, help me keep the lights on. I am middle-aged, 50 years old. I am trapped for the remainder of my life or hers, whichever ends first. God forgive me for feeling helpless, trapped, lonely, and afraid. Please do not let her madness become mine. We will make it through this roller coaster ride through hell somehow or someway. I love her with an all-consuming passion and I will never give up on her. I want her to have a normal life with friends, boyfriends or girlfriends, school, a career, a partner, a family. I want her to know she is loved to the moon and the stars and back and beyond. I want for her to know what normal is like.
God, do not let me lose my grip on normal.
~Jane
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