I choose pictures for my blog that represent what I am writing about, whether directly or through a visual metaphor.  In this case, I chose a night sky more as a metaphor to the nightmare I will be describing.  In the picture above, there is still darkness, it’s still night but there is some light that is peeking out from behind the mountain range, giving a hint of the light that is to come.  I will write this blog in that way…there were dark nights last Fall but I have hope that there will be at least a hint of light soon.

When I awoke that Friday morning last Fall, Halloween was upcoming in 3 days, the following Monday.  My first thoughts of the day were nothing more than of getting through the work day and into the weekend when I could relax a bit.

My husband and second oldest son had left town early that morning, heading for an out of state event, several months in the planning. We had someone coming to our house at 8am that Friday to replace some plumbing fixtures. Lastly, I had to make sure I was at our business by 8:30am as our front desk person was going to be out that day and I was manning the front desk. All in all, a bit hectic that morning. I remember glancing down at my phone and seeing a text message from my younger daughter, 20 and a college sophomore, saying, “I love you”.  I thought, “Oh that’s nice, I will answer later”.

I got the contractor squared away with the plumbing “to do” list then rushed to work and started organizing for the day. Ten minutes later I got a phone call from the father of a friend of my daughter. It turns out the daughter also got a text message that worried her enough that she called her father who in turn called me.

While on the phone, I pulled out my phone and relooked at my text. What I saw this time that I had not noticed previously was that there was a text from my daughter above the “I love you” text that said, “I can’t take it anymore”.  The father relayed a longer text that his daughter had received that sounded like a suicide note.  We agreed I would drive to my daughter’s apartment, about 20 minutes away to check on her.

I called her.  No answer.  I texted her.  No answer.  I drove down to the apartment, praying that all would be well, hoping it was just melodramatic texting.

When I got to the apartment, I saw police at the door.  While I was driving, the father had called the police to check on her, so we arrived at the same time.  The police opened the main apartment door then we went over to the locked room of my daughter’s bedroom.  They unlocked that door and then let me go in first.  There was a few second time period at that point where my body was moving forward towards my daughter’s bed and my brain was in frantic mode, not knowing what I would find.  When I saw her move on the bed, I knew at least she was alive.

I don’t remember who asked the question (probably the police officer who was calmer than I was) about what she took.  When I heard that she had emptied a sleeping pill container, I think my mind went numb.  I turned around to the police office and said, “Call the police!”  Of course, he was already calling in an ambulance.  I immediately realized what I had just said then added with some embarrassment, “Oh, you are the police!”  My neurological circuitry was a bit mixed up.

I know I said through tears to my daughter, “Don’t you know we love you?”  I don’t remember much else.  The ambulance crew arrived quickly, loaded her up and took her away.  One of the policemen handed me my daughter’s phone, charger and the notebook on which she had written suicide notes.  Good thing they stay calm because as a parent, it’s hard to either think or act clearly.

We were blindsided by this event.  My daughter would have been the last person I would expect to have made a suicide attempt.  She has a strong will, even headstrong at times but in a positive way in that she has always seemed to have had a good sense of where she was going in life.  I had been texting back and forth with her about an ex-boyfriend. The two of them fought and made up, fought and split up and I had been trying to encourage her to move on emotionally.

Still, not ever would I have thought my daughter would take a purposeful pill overdose…actually it was two bottles of different kinds of pills.  My daughter went to our family doctor and said she was having trouble sleeping and she got sleeping pills.  It appears that she got prescribed some antidepressants from another source and then decided to take them all.  To this day, more than 4 months later, no one really knows if she 100% wanted to end her life or maybe 50% or 90% of the situation was a convoluted way of getting the ex-boyfriend back (which didn’t work).  I don’t even think she knows.

I called my husband and told him what was going on but to keep going with the trip as I knew how much my son had been looking forward to it.  By then I knew she would be OK and that it would just take time for the pills to work out of her system.

I spent the next 3 days by her bedside in the intensive care unit at the local hospital because suicide attempt patients have to be under 24 hour watch the whole time they are admitted (parents don’t count).  My daughter slept 30-something hours and I sat beside her wracked with grief, worry and guilt, wondering how I could possibly have failed as a parent.  Again.  After all, my older daughter was in jail at that time and since I am the mother and since mothers are supposed to make everything OK, I clearly had missed doing something for both of them.  Besides that, I hadn’t seen the text.  How could I not have seen it?

Following the hospital stay, my daughter was transferred to a mental health facility for a week.  The first evening at this facility my daughter said to us, “I don’t belong here, they are all crazy here!”  We couldn’t help laughing at her remark but pointed out that at the point she made a suicide attempt, she was going to be looked at differently by medical professionals, thus the forcible commitment to a mental health facility.  At the end of a week, the facility gave her a prescription for an antidepressant and discharged her so they were not actually much help.

I would love to say that these last 4 months have been a warm fuzzy time with my daughter and that she has fully embraced all of our advice for getting some of the stress points reduced in her life.  But no.  She has refused all advice and is careening towards a financial train wreck.  The only reason she hasn’t yet is that we have been helping her some with the understanding (we made her sign a contract) that she would be using the next 6 months to bring at least the financial stressors under control as well as see a psychiatrist.  She hasn’t been adhering to the contract and the next step is for us to enforce the consequences of the contract.

Maybe…the light peeking out from behind the mountains in the night sky of this situation will be when we stop enabling her and she finally accepts ownership of the details of her life that are impacting her stress level.  Maybe.  Parenthood is hard.