My daughter had hit very close to rock bottom and ended up in the hospital. Her issues compounded into a frenzy of a downward spiral and there we were. Me standing over her in the hospital and she looked on at me with eyes so cold they pierced through me. Where did my happy little girl go? When did this creature appear that I do not recognize. I knew she was in pain and I thought I had done all there was to do, but that’s the thing with me….there’s always one more thing to try. Always. The in and out of groups, therapy and hospitals went on for what felt like an eternity. I became a stranger to myself. I was held captive by what she would do next and the thought of something really terrible happening to her filled my every thought. My younger daughter unfortunately witnessed this demise and it affected all three of us. There were days I don’t even remember cause all I did was cried. I was a prisoner in my own house, filled with fear of the unknown. Would she run away, would she hurt herself, was she ever going to get better? All of this swirling in my brain all the time. It made going to work, doing every day things almost impossible. We lived in a police state at my house. Trapped by our own emotions and I watched as they became more and more numb. If you have ever watched someone in extreme emotional pain, it is the most helpless feeling of all time. There is little you can do and I was a problem solver. That’s what I did, that’s who I was and I couldn’t fix her. I couldn’t fix my family and I became removed from most of the rest of my life. Every day, it was driving from this doctor to that doctor, to this group to that group from these visiting hours to those visiting hours. I was up most nights just listening to hear that she was still there and ok. That was no longer working for me so I started making her sleep in my room. She slept next to me for the next 6 months. I would lay there in the middle of the night and just watch her, in awe of her, a little scared of her and definitely always loving her. Sometimes in life unexpected things happen. Her being this person I no longer knew was unexpected. It had been coming on for quite a while, but when the shit hit the fan, I wasn’t expecting it to be so gory. It hurt. A lot. To see your child in so much pain, unable to make the boo boo go away. I couldn’t kiss it and make it better, I couldn’t just wish it away. She was suffering and with every passing day it was breaking my already very shattered heart. The range of emotions that came with dealing with someone who is in emotional distress is unimaginable. Her issues were scary to me and all those times I thought I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t feel, I didn’t deal with things came out during this time. I cried. I cried a lot. I cried almost every night. I cried at the drop of a hat. I cried at commercials. I cried at songs on the radio. I was becoming a big fat cry baby. And mostly I cried cause I felt so helpless. I felt so alone. It was the most isolating time of my life. Many people including gingham disagreed with how I was handling her care. “She’s the way she is because of you, you know” was what he used to say to me. You should do this and you should do that, but no one but me was living this nightmare every day. So it’s great to hear from the people who don’t have to live it tell you how it should be done, but you don’t know until you are in it how you will handle things. I certainly didn’t know what the hell I was doing but I knew I wasn’t going to quit on her. I wasn’t going to give up on her. Ever. She was my child and I would save her even if it meant losing myself.