Last week, I shared what a wonderful actress Chana was. How happy she was at her high school graduation. Eventually she showed me her diary entries which told a very different story.
Before I read these diary entries, she told me how she wanted to go to seminary in Yerushalayim. They had the option for girls to live at home. It seemed perfect. The menahelet was understanding and supportive regarding Chana’s mental health. She was unfazed by having Chana as a student. She told us how happy she was to have her.
Finally, finally, I could believe that things were okay. She was going to be okay. She could be that normal 17-year-old girl who finished high school, went to seminary. She would get a job. And a shidduch. And get married. Have children. And we just move on from this horrible nightmare. Yes, it had been a bump in the road. Yes, it had been a bump in the road – bigger and higher than we expected – but we were past it.
But that was not so true. Reality slapped me in the face so badly that I still feel the remains of the whiplash today.
One day, she asked to speak to me. We sat on her big double bed.
I wasn’t really ready to read what she wrote. However, on one level I can’t say that I was shocked. It was so much more than that. It was more than shock. It was deep sadness. Devastation. Despair.
At that moment all of my dreams of seminary and saying good-bye to the bump in the road were gone.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading when I read how hard it was for her to be with her friends. So, very, very hard. Her anxiety and overthinking made it impossible for her to enjoy anything. She was stuck and confused between wanting to please her friends, let herself believe that she really was feeling better and the pain of the realization that she really wasn’t.
She wrote about the night of her graduation, how much despair she felt running around the Kotel plaza. How disconnected she felt from her friends, and how desperate she was to be alone. How she couldn’t wait to get home and be alone in her room. I was so shocked. And so very, very sad.
We spoke to her psychiatrist. Going back to the hospital wasn’t really a viable option. She would age out of the teenage ward in just two months, so she really doubted they would take her (which I thought was ridiculous – if she was seventeen, she was still young enough), but patients who are there at that age are already starting the process to move “out,” they already start making decisions about where to go next. They wouldn’t take her as they didn’t feel that they could help her.
Chana really didn’t want to go back to the hospital anyway. She wanted to be home. I believe she hoped that she could/would get better. So, we contracted. She would talk to her therapist or psychiatrist if she felt unsafe. I would keep an eye on her. It was kind of ok. We would make it work.
She was committed to working hard in therapy. We revved up her weekly sessions to twice a week. Her meds were tweaked and changed as needed. My husband and I met regularly with her therapist to discuss her progress and what we could do to help her.
There were some small shifts. She started to seem better. She started to tell me that she didn’t need these phone calls during her outings with friends. But I didn’t believe it. Not for a second. I learned to hover in the balance between support from afar and vigilance. Gently questioning when invited out, if she really wanted to go. If she did go out, did she want the phone call? If she did, I called. If she didn’t, I didn’t. I told her I supported her, and that I would believe what she told me.
With the guidance of her therapist, I wanted her to learn how to advocate for herself. Get in touch with her feelings. I told her I trusted her. I told her that I wouldn’t try to read her mind. That wasn’t fair or healthy for either of us. Not only when it came to getting together with friends, but also with us. If she said she was fine, she was fine. If I asked her if she needed anything and she said no, then it was no.
It was really hard for me at first. I had this strong need to rush in and save her. Understand her feelings, just try to make it right again. I believed that if she just told me then I could help me. At times I found myself resentful of her therapists. The ones who got to sit with her and hear about her inner pain and demons, understand what kept her up at night. What caused her to find solace in causing herself physical pain. It didn’t feel fair that I didn’t also know.
Looking back, I see that there were times I unintentionally on a conscious level shared my jealousy with her. I would tell her that I was also there for her. Explaining, as her mother I can also know what is going on. I almost felt like it was right to know.
This made her upset. Wasn’t she talking to her therapists about things she didn’t have to tell me? Didn’t need to tell me. And dare I say, wasn’t supposed to tell me? She felt conflicted, she talked to her therapists, who in turn spoke to me. Independently agreed with my therapist that I was not helping things, perhaps, even making things worse.
Being involved on this level wasn’t for me to know about unless she willingly shared it with me. It wasn’t then; it isn’t now. It never was. It will never be.
At the time I processed all of this with my therapist. I got to understand where this all came from. I wanted to be the mother I never had. The one that was there to hear and hold that was inside of her struggling to find a way to express itself. Prove to myself that I could hear whatever she had to say. Hold it for her.
I needed to reframe for myself what being the mother I never was really was. It didn’t have to be DMC’s about her deepest pain. It wasn’t necessarily asking her over and over and over again what was happening. It wasn’t believing or telling her that I could do just as good of a job, if not even better than what her therapists were doing.
Being the mother I never had was my being open to being with her. Never criticizing her, shaming or telling her that whatever she was struggling with was too much. It was understanding that her pain, even when I couldn’t handle it, wasn’t because she was “too much” but my lack of skills to let her be. That didn’t mean I had to actually talk to her about this, but remain silently supportive and be there in the way she needed me to be there. That was it. No asking, no offering. Just quiet love.
“Stay in your lane. She stays in her lane.” I struggled with whose lane was whose. I think Chana did too. When I changed my interactions with her, it was confusing. Our co-dependence was slowly breaking down. In my mind the lanes were confusing. I erred on the side of caution.
As time went on, I saw that Chana was starting to spend more time in her room. More time sleeping. More time just not engaging with us. When she did come out of her room, she wasn’t always herself. Sometimes she was agitated. The little erev Shabbos help she sometimes did, was inconsistent at best.
Then there was that Friday. Looking back, I remember she was in her room a lot that day. I was worried. I knocked on her door throughout the day. Each time, she told me she was okay. Staying in my lane, I said OK.
As most erev Shabbosim in our house, we were running late. My husband left for shul as I went into the shower hearing my younger boys fighting about something or another. Being little boys, (and their fighting was nothing new) I ran into the shower. When I got out, I was in a hurry to get dressed. This time, instead of fighting, I heard someone calling my name. I assumed it was one of the boys, coming to report what his brother had done. Putting on my mascara, I told myself I’d light candles and deal with it afterward. My son came running into my room.
“Mommy, Chana needs you. She is in her bed, she’s crying for you.” Dropping my mascara on the floor I ran into her room. There were some meds on the floor, a broken glass and she was curled up in a ball in the corner of her bed, crying.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I ruined everything.”
“Chana, tell me what you ruined.”
“I just ruined everything.”
“Tell me right now what you ruined. I won’t be mad, but you must tell me right now”
“I took a lot of pills. I am so sorry. I took too many pills.”
“My heart sank. I ran from the room to find my phone, yelling to my boys to run to shul and get Abba. I fumbled to turn my phone on, frantically trying to remember the number of Hatzalah. By some miracle it was actually already saved on my phone.
“My daughter took too many pills. I need someone to come right now and take us to the hospital.”
They took down my address. And then we waited. I held Chana while I waited the longest five minutes of my life. As I waited, I screamed again to my boys, as they sat frozen on the couch, “Go to shul. Get Abba. NOW!” One of them jumped up and ran out back. He soon returned, breathless, he couldn’t find my husband. He looked everywhere; he wasn’t in his usual seat. I would have to go alone.
Paramedics soon came rushing through the door, we all tried to figure out what pills she took. As we ran out of the building, I told my kids which hospital we were going to, so they could let my husband know. We piled into the ambulance, strapped my now-falling-out-of consciousness daughter onto a stretcher. Then, as the sun was making its final descent into the peace of Shabbos, the sirens of the ambulance cut through the peace of Shabbos as we drove away.
The author has started a website and online support for parents who are going on similar journeys, she can be reached at parentsbyachad@gmail.com.