December 26, 2023
“I don’t need to be here! This won’t help me! THIS WILL JUST MAKE IT WORSE!!”
Emily has given permission for this to be public.
I remember Emily vascillating between confusion and fear and anger and resignation and back and forth and ‘round about when she realized she would be headed to the psych ward once her liver function was stabilized and a psych bed was available. Her anger scared me, and at 15 years old, she knew using her anger to press my hot button might be all the manipulation she would need to keep herself out of psych. Thankfully, Paul was much less influenced by her emotional maneuvers. He was clear and direct and unflinching in reminding her that her suicide attempt could not go unaddressed just because her body was out of danger, and that psych was absolutely where she needed to be.
But her words terrified me. “I don’t need to be here. This won’t help me. This will just make it worse!”
Paul and I believed the psych ward was the best treatment for Emily after her suicide attempt. But every case is different, and what if we were making a mistake. What if these circumstances and this facility was the wrong choice for this child? What if Paul and I were making the wrong choice and screwing Emily up even more? What if we were making it worse?
If this wasn’t the best thing for Emily, how would we know? When would we realize it? How much damage would it cause? If we did the wrong thing, would our hearts always feel guilt over doing the wrong thing? Or could we somehow rest in knowing that at least we did SOMETHING, and something must be better than nothing?
Or… what if she was threatening us saying if we kept her in the ward, she would harden her heart toward us and she would make sure it did in fact get worse. What if this was just her manipulative scheme to control the story, and what if it worked? I desperately hoped that wasn’t true. I hoped that was just another one of Emily’s lies. But that’s a catch 22. If she was threatening to harden her heart, we could be screwed no matter what we did. If we kept her in the psych ward, she might not ever get over her anger toward us, and it would certainly get worse. And if we caved in and gave in by “rescuing” her from the help she needed but didn’t want, well, we really wouldn’t be doing Emily any favors, would we? There wouldn’t be any path to healing, and eventually it would be worse.
Emily’s mental health treatment in psych was hard, harsh, and healing. It gave time and space for a reset, and an opportunity to make a plan for health. Certainly it was more traumatic and more of a blessing for Emily than for the rest of the family, and that’s her experience to tell. But I’m her Mom, and I can speak to the healing and change in Emily, and her renewed appreciation for connection and life. I’m not foolish enough to think that Emily is done making poor choices and mistakes. She’s got years of mistakes to make. Same Em, same. I’m making them all the time. But she is healing.
It’s now been seven months, and one day about half way between then and now, I picked her up after school and we sat in the living room watching tv together. It was her choice and she wanted to watch a few more episodes of Maid on Netflix. Spoiler alert…if you haven’t seen episodes 6-7-8, don’t read this. The main character’s mother was committed to a psych ward against her will. It was absolutely the right place for her, but of course in her mental state, the mother strongly disagreed. She thought everyone else in the ward was crazy, and that being committed to psych wasn’t what she needed. When she realized that her daughter, the maid, wanted to keep her in the ward to get help, she was furious at her daughter’s betrayal. She refused to speak to her daughter who visited her everyday. This poor daughter was trying to do the right thing for her mentally ill mother. As a maid, she didn’t just clean toilets; she had been trying to clean up her mom’s messy life forever. Interestingly, the actresses playing the mother and daughter on screen are actually mother and daughter in real life. So this mother and daughter on the sofa in Pfafftown watched a mother and daughter struggle on the tv. Emily and I held hands through some of it, and she leaned her body against mine as we watched. It was so sad to watch this dynamic between mother and daughter crumble under the harsh lights of an institution. The mom demanded the attendants make her daughter leave. “Get this bitch out of here!” It reminded me of Emily’s last night in the hospital medical room when she got mad at me because she knew she would be sent to the psych ward as soon as a bed became available, which happened to be the next day. She was scared and angry and she kicked me, Lauren, and Gavin out of her room.
When I got the call that Emily had taken an overdose at her school, I screamed in my car the whole drive to her school. Once she was settled in her hospital room, I went home to pack an overnight bag so I could stay with her. At the house, I walked into her bedroom and screamed at her walls, those gray walls, “THIS IS NOT THE WAY EMILY ENDS!” I love open windows, and I’ve wondered if our neighbors heard my screams. God redeems our sadness, and He has since redeemed my screams and cries through song. I remember the tears of sadness in her bedroom on May 23, but now I cling tightly to the memory of my tears running down my face at a Five For Fighting concert on July 1, screaming song lyrics with Paul, Mark, and Jen, and several thousand other people. Yesterday morning, I gave Emily a canvas of the song 100 Years to hang on her walls with the other song lyrics canvases we’ve given her the last few years. This song isn’t on her playlist, but it’s on mine. I gave it to her because I can, because she is still here to give it to, because 15, there’s still time for you.
I’m fifteen for a moment,
Caught in between ten and twenty,
And I’m just dreaming,
Counting the ways to where you are.
Fifteen, there’s still time for you,
Time to buy and time to lose yourself within a morning star.
Fifteen, I’m alright with you.
Fifteen. There’s never a wish better than this,
When you’ve only got 100 years to live, (100 Years by Five For Fighting)
Please understand that I can’t claim the love and support of Emily’s family and friends were enough to keep her alive. The causes of her suicide attempt were multi-factorial, as were the components of her healing. Ultimately her life has been saved by our sovereign God who does not always grant healing this side of Heaven. I don’t have answers for why it is the way it is, why some suicide attempts fail while others do not, and my heart breaks for anyone who faces such a loss as that.
TreasureSeeker 