Always HOPE

I remember…
Each New Year approaching, felt like a second chance.
I would pretend I’d actually believe that somehow, magically and beautifully, any or all the struggles she faced the year before would dissipate and melt like the snow in temperate March.

Whatever prayers or wishes I’d saved up for not being trustworthy to a higher power previously, I’d summon up to the sky with pleas and fabricated wishful thinking.

I’d imagine that somehow turning the page of a calendar was going to crinkle the pain as the paper had become.

This will be the year. Please let this be the year. Never really sure exactly what the list entailed… just bargaining with the Gods.

Peace
A quiet mind
Self worth
Self love
Strength to keep going
Less agony
More laughter
Fewer reasons for hospitals
Doctors
Emergencies
Panic attacks
Meltdowns
Intrusive thoughts
More friends
More light
Less darkness
And weight
And burdened psyche

All these things for her…
Wishes floating out from the birthday candles she’d blown out just a few days before.

Let her be okay
She deserves more
She deserves better
She has met her quota

But mental illness doesn’t work in exchanges

It doesn’t fit your agenda or heed your resolutions

So as you anticipate the coming of the ball drop, sparkles and fancy new digits on the calendar,

Know that I am wrapping you in a space of love for I carry the secret we hold together; twisted in this beast mutually loathe.

I will keep praying and making wishes for mine…and yours.

And I will always hope. I hope you can too.
#988

Two years ago this holiday,
we didn’t have our baby with us. She had already left to go find healing at a residential facility three weeks prior. Though I knew it was for the best…. For her safety…. For her well being to have a chance… and for her life, it still haunted me; the decision to be okay with her leaving me. She was gone for 57 days. She missed Halloween. She missed Thanksgiving. It was in the midst of COVID so we couldn’t be with her. We couldn’t visit, we couldn’t hug. We shared the holiday on a zoom call for 30 minutes if that.

I was grateful. Grateful my baby was getting support and services and healing in way she just couldn’t while being home, but had never been more resentful of the universe for taking away one of my most precious gifts and blessings. So I had her, But I didn’t have her. She was in our lives, but not in the way she or we deserved and craved and wanted.

I hated that Thanksgiving. It left with me the many invisible scars, we as parents collect with loving a child who suffers with mental illness. No one else can see them, but the tissue underneath presses and fills our souls and our bodies with deep wounds that will leave behind risks of complications later.

Being grateful isn’t always easy. You’re tasked with thanking your higher power for what? Heartache? Pain? Suffering? Chaos? Uncertainty? The world of others reminds you to see the gifts in front of you and the guilt inside of not feeling blessed can do a number. The costume you must wear to show your other children you’re so very grateful for so much, for them, our home, that she’s alive… is the bitter taste alongside the turkey and stuffing.

You want them here. You want them better. You want them safe. You want them to not be in pain… in suffering… in a hospital… you want them home. There is no gratitude in the unraveling of your child’s spirit.

I see you this holiday season. I hear your cries of despair and fear and the suffocating resentment, and jaded jealousy of the circles of friends and family whose children bless them with their normalcy. It’s a sick season. It’s a sad season.

If tomorrow you can’t find gratitude, know that it’s ok.

Thanks, .positive for this important awareness reminder!