It's okay to not be okay

And I don't really know if I'm okay right now. Have you ever been in a situation where you didn't know whether to praise God to the high heavens or retreat into the shadows and cry yourself to sleep? That's where I'm at currently. I received the news today that my Kayleigh has finally been accepted into residential treatment after almost two years of fighting the good fight. My initial reaction involved tears of sadness welling up in my eyes and a smile of relief spreading across my face simultaneously. Tears because I feel a sense of failure as her mother because it has to come to this, a smile because I truly feel in my heart of hearts that she will find healing from this experience. That will be my prayer every time I stop to bow my head. If you wouldn't mind sending your voices up there with a small request for the same, I'd be forever indebted.

As I sit here at my youngest daughter's soccer practice, I can't help but think of how things might have been different for Kayleigh and her sister, Kelsey, had I been a better mother somehow. I have to be transparent here, I think there are more than a handful of times when decisions I made negatively impacted our family situation. I carry guilt around with me about it. I have always fought for Kayleigh, always; but there were times I laid down in defeat too. I’ve been so heavy most of my life, walking around carrying the weight of my sins I suppose. When you combine that with dealing with a medically and psychologically unpredictable child, it’s a recipe for weariness for sure. I started to just accept the answers the different physicians gave us. The “I don’t knows” and referrals to see some other specialist became a monotonous routine that never produced any sort of enlightening epiphanies. I won’t say I gave up, but the gravity of reality was sinking in daily. No one could help us and we were just going to have to deal with it. I’m ashamed to say I just decided to exist in that space. I started to become numb inside about a lot of different areas of my life. For someone like me who houses a monumental amount of passion and emotion, that’s a real shame. I became complacent, closing myself off and just merely existing. I thought I was okay, but I wasn’t. I was only surviving. I haven’t always been my best for my girls one hundred percent of the time. There, I said it. Glad I released that.

I broke the news to Kayleigh tonight when she called me from the crisis stabilization unit she currently resides in that she would be transferred to residential treatment. That broken, distressed voice on the other end of the line was inconsolable. She feels like I don't want her anymore. That couldn't be farther from the truth. I want you all to know that if there was any possible way I felt I could bring that baby home and that I could put all of the jumbled pieces of her puzzle back together, you have to know that is what I would do. If I could home school her and be with her all day, every day, supplying her with the tools she needs to get better, that would be wonderful. I am a single mom with just one income (when I'm not working other jobs to supplement the ambulance bills and miscellaneous expenses associated with having a kid who needs more than the average) and I just can't do that. At this point, I don't believe any resources I could provide for her would help ease what she faces. When I tell you that we have a collapsed mental health treatment system, that is something I can say with total accuracy. I am compelled to give my best efforts to facilitate a change and give hope to the hopeless. I could have lost my child forever because of the flawed organization that pretends to know what those experiencing severe and overwhelming atrocities of the mind need to get better. She has been in treatment since Tuesday, March 13th, a day after she felt she had become so much of a burden that remaining a functioning part of society just wasn't what was best for her or anyone else anymore. That Monday is burned forever in my memory now. It wasn't her first time attempting or threatening suicide, but it was the first time she meant to carry out her plan. There was nothing about her intentions that were for attention like they had seemed to be in the past.

This is Kayleigh's fourth stay in one of these revolving door facilities. They are meant to be short term, until a clinician deems the patient out of crisis and secure enough to return home. These kids may have psychosocial disabilities, but they aren't unintelligent. They know what to say to get out of those places, the seasoned pros like my daughter do anyway. They come home to you in worse condition than when they went in, on yet another medication with side effects worse than those they experience from whatever psychiatric disorder they are branded with. It's absurd. Do you know how incredibly hard it is to say you can no longer parent your child? I can't put it into words, but I know I can't, at least not right now. I don't know how long she will be away from us and I will miss her presence in my home. We are not a complete trifecta without her, Kelsey and I. I will go into her room and see a bed that is no longer slept in, the same one I found her unresponsive to me in on that fateful Monday. I will inhale her lotions and perfumes in there, gaze at her clothes that hang in the closet unworn. Tonight, I am not okay. The message I want to convey to you here, what this is all about, from the event that I will hold on May 4th celebrating mental health awareness to the mission that I feel God has set out for me, is that it's absolutely NORMAL to not feel all right. It's should be talked about, discussed, strategized over. You see, I know I will get through the way I feel right now, but there are those who cannot process not being okay and can't interpret how to express it. The "it" I spoke about in my last blog swallows them up like a massive tidal wave when they are feeling how we all feel sometimes and it takes them under. Every time they try to come up for air, there is always another wave right there waiting.

I am not really sure how to close tonight. I'm full of mixed emotions and I know I just have to pray about it. I have spent this whole week feeling all sorts of different ways. I've gotten a great deal accomplished in the continuing fight for my firstborn and strides are being made for her particular situation, but I know there are so many others whose stories are becoming more convoluted and confusing as I type these words. Some child like my Kayleigh is sitting in their bedroom right now with a bottle of pills in their hands, contemplating how this world would be better off if they did not exist in it and how the constant agony they feel could be over in minutes if the contents of that bottle were emptied. This should be unacceptable to everyone out their reading this and it should stir something inside to make you want to be part of the solution. I hope it does.

Constant Kindness Can Accomplish Much

Breathe Me - Sia