The Year that Began With a Phone Call That Broke My Heart

Tomorrow is May 1^st.

May 1^st begins a countdown for me.

It's a countdown towards the end.

It’s about to be the end of the hardest year of my life and the countdown is on.

Saturday May the 12th, 2012 started like any other Saturday of that year. I was at work.  I worked as a Manager of a retail store and I worked every Saturday.  I was with my Assistant Manager who was in the back of the store helping a customer while I was at the cash  running a sale when the phone rang. As I passed the customer the debit machine, I took that opportunity to answer the phone, mostly because the ringing was aggravating a headache that had started just a little while before. It was my Ex.  I heard his voice, the concern in it, and it registered that there was something wrong but for some reason I couldn't quite understand what he was telling me. All I knew, despite my lack of understanding, was that I had to use my "I’m okay” voice in front of the customer I was serving.  I can see now, what I couldn't see then; I was in shock. My youngest, my Fledgling, had been admitted to the local children’s hospital in an emergency Mental Health crisis. 

We had finally hit rock bottom and our daughter had been rushed by ambulance to the hospital where she had been admitted for psychiatric care.

My Ex’s voice nearly broke me. We were both exhausted by a difficult few months with our sick young lady but neither of us were prepared for just how bad the situation was. 

I’ll never forget that phone call. 

I'll never forget going through the motions of “normal” as I somehow managed to finish up the transaction I was going through at the cash register.

I’ll never forget my co-worker's face as I told her I was leaving and what had just happened. 

I’ll never forget walking calmly to the back room, taking a seat in private and shaking uncontrollably for a few minutes before I packed up my belongings and let myself out the back door, walking to the car as if nothing had happened.

I drove myself to the hospital that Saturday afternoon, May the 12th, 2012 and the only thing to give away my racing emotions was my shaking. I couldn’t stop. I was, at this point, exhausted. I had been working through my child’s current mental health crisis for months, watching her become more and more despondent, hating school, going from sad to hateful and abusive.

I remember getting to the hospital.

I remember my Ex's face.

I remember Fledgling's look of terror and, yet, defiance, wanting so much to be a little girl and let Mommy take care of her but so lost to her condition that she couldn’t give in. 

I remember, especially, my oldest daughter, broken and holding my hand to be strong for me when her baby sister was at her sickest moment and being admitted to what would become a month long stay in a Psychiatric Unit. Even thinking abut it now, my stomach turns and I feel nauseous with the overwhelming emotion that was that day.

We sat by our Fledgling for a month watching her fight, and scream, and let it all out. We cried and hoped things would get better, which they did, with time, only to repeatedly unravel. At the end of our month we brought our daughter home but not before we added a beautiful bird house Fledgling made to the hospital’s Butterfly Garden. We had after all, left something  important behind-our innocence as a family. It was necessary,  to all of us, that we leave something positive behind. 

Something tangible. 

Something to say that for a period of time, we were there. 

This happened to us. 

Don’t forget us.

Somehow I thought things would get better when we got home but they didn’t. Oh, we had our good days but mostly we had bad days. It took us months to stabilize that little girl, going from medication to medication, from potential diagnosis to potential diagnosis, working with a psychiatrist on an out-patient basis and even having to bring our daughter back to the hospital months later. Eventually, we hit the right medications at the right doses and our beautiful little lady started to feel like herself again - to come back to the world.

Still, we all have scars.

Since that day, May 12^th, 2012, I’ve been on a countdown.

I don't know how many times I’ve said to myself:

"Let it be over."  "Let it be over."  "Let it be over."

The thing is that, for my child and this family, it will never be over. Never. She will never shake her mental health issues but I can hope that by fighting for her, by getting her medical attention and by showing her my strength, she will survive herself.

But I’m on a countdown. 

I need this year to end.

The year that began with a phone call that broke my heart

Will you countdown with me?

Red Bird