It’s sunny and 65 degrees outside. The sky bright blue, a slight breeze is gently rushing over the green grass in my backyard. The fact that the grass is actually green throws me for a moment. Usually it’s a nice golden brown, baked like a fresh batch of crescent rolls, but not nearly as delicious to look at. It seems more like October than August. Which means that in October my air-conditioner will be humming loudly while I'm contemplating the logistics of climbing inside my freezer.
Last night, we chatted with her over a video call and told her she was coming home. I’ve hugged my child exactly two times since I signed the papers to transfer her to the inpatient program. Twice in eight days. Finally, she will be home with us. Together with our family. Able to sleep in her own bed, reunited with her beloved pet axolotl, Dipper.
If you aren't sure what an axolotl is, think of a decidedly cuter version of a salamander. She researched, price shopped, and purchased Dipper and all the needed supplies, the tank, the filter, the decorations, the chemical needed to treat the water. The chemical he needs to live, the one she drank to attempt to die.
We’ve done some updates to our home in the past week. Baby proofed the house for a second time. The medications are locked away, as are all household chemicals. The scissors and knife block from the kitchen are gone, the laundry detergent, the fish tank chemical, all of them locked in a new storage unit in the garage. Something we can easily access during the day, but lock at night. Even the car keys and house keys will be inaccessible to her. I will be her new roommate at night, her bedroom door mandated to stay open during the day. We cannot trust her, and she knows she will have to earn that back.
The hardest part of coming home? Knowing she only wants one thing and might not get it. She’s not bothered about the restrictions, she understands about attending group therapy even though she was resistant at first. She knows I’ll be all over her social media accounts and checking her phone and her body and invading her privacy to determine if she’s cutting, to see if she’s hiding things from me again. She may not be thrilled with these conditions, but she is learning to accept them. It’s the part of the deal depression didn’t tell her about. The fine print she wasn’t able to comprehend.
It’s the boy. The friendship. The contact, the relationship, the not knowing if he, after all she put him through, still wants to be her friend. She will not stop until she has an answer. And not simply any answer, a “yes” answer. And she is not interested in waiting for him to go about his life and get back to her on his timeline, the ball in his court filled with a dozen others like going off to college, working a summer job to help afford it, a parent with cancer, his own girlfriend, family, friends, and mental health concerns, but she is wanting that answer now, yesterday, five days ago.
How do you force maturity? How do you get her to realize that she is placing far more importance on their friendship and his status in her life than he is with regard to her? I know this boy through other friends and parents. He is a wonderful young man. And I have every hope that one day he will choose to remain friends with my daughter, chat with her maybe a month or two from now, and send an occasional Instagram message. But will that be enough of a friendship for her? And when she does come to this realization, how will she choose to deal with her feelings?
When she put the bottle to her lips with the intent to end her life, his friendship was her number one priority. Therapy over the past week, and a partial hospitalization program in the coming weeks will help reconfigure those priorities, help her understand she needs to put herself up at the top, her own mental health and wellbeing. And seeking others as an outlet and for guidance in your journey can be healthy if they are professionals, and disastrous if they are kids themselves fighting their own battles you know little about.
Welcome home is something we say to congratulate people as they return from service or from vacation. We welcome new families home from the hospital, tiny babies bundled in car seats they will one day outgrow. After their hard work, long time away, adventurous journey, or their painful experiences, finally they are home to rest and recover, they are home to return to normal and familiar affairs.
And while we celebrate the return of those we love from psychiatric care, we must also realize the celebration is not one of returning to what was, it’s a giant unknown about what will be. That first night home is dangerous. You want to provide familiar comforts, but avoid the agonizing fights and battle lines that get drawn up as defense mechanisms. You want to hug and share and talk and allow a teenager access to their phone, because they have a thousand Instagram messages to review. But we cannot return to normal, because normal no longer exists.
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