I suppose we all have a job. Hers will be the hardest. How do you rewire your brain to actually THINK about yourself differently? How do you find the courage to get up when you want nothing more than to stay down?
Medication isn’t the final solution to the underlying problems. It will constrain anxiety and put lipstick on depression, but it won’t make them leave the house. Medication won’t solve the twisted thinking. Time, maturity, and hindsight aren't home at the moment. Yes, they will eventually arrive and their gifts will be valuable, but they are unavailable to her right now.
We’ve already been given information on partial hospitalization programs. Most are virtual due to COVID, but one in our area is still seeing adolescent patients in person for on site therapy and group sessions. There are other hospitals with other programs, private facilities with therapeutic options, so many things to consider. Like the Great Back-to-School Debate of 2020, what do we choose? What’s the recommendation from her doctors? What does she want? What will help her most? Which choice might do more harm than good?
That’s the ultimate fear, that last one. What if we screw this up? What if we choose wrong and end up making her feel like she’s being punished, making her feel like she’s “sick” or damaged when she isn’t? She is normal. She is beautiful. She is everything we have always wanted, and she has so much to offer the world. She is enough.
It’s her self-portrait that needs repair. The painting that once was proudly on display slowly cracked and crumbled and got moved into the shadows, draped in silence and suffering, so no one would notice. We can teach her skills to remove the cover, unveil the portrait. We can work with her therapists on how to get the painting back into the light. It deserves to be in the light. The goal is to make her recognize, understand, and believe.
The actual repair will take some work on her part. She needs training on how to restore the masterpiece. It will be delicate at times. Some parts, after all, have huge gaping holes. I know it can be done. I refuse to let her stop trying. I’ll hold her hand that holds the paintbrush for as long as it takes. I will not stop, I will not let her stop, until this work is complete. It may never be complete.
It’s not about perfection. None of our self-portraits are perfect, we are all human, we all have doubt, we all have times of low confidence, when cracks appear, when the paint fades slightly. The difference is adults typically have the skills, strategies, self-talking, or coping mechanisms to go back to the painting and, with brush in hand, make an adjustment. Perhaps a new background color is needed, maybe apply a touch-up here or there. Take whatever damage was inflicted, address it, sometimes in consultation with a professional artist, or maybe just a friend with a glass of wine. But listen to that critique, weigh its value. Make the adjustments needed. And then...move on.
But she’s not an adult. She’s a child. Stuck between wanting adult things but behaving in rash, childish ways when she doesn’t get what she wants. It’s one thing to deny the preschooler a candy bar at the grocery store knowing the coming tantrum will earn you Mom of the Year status as strangers watch you manhandle a flailing child and a full load of groceries into the car. Eventually he will move past it, the incident forgotten once Paw Patrol comes on. It’s another to deny the teenage heart and mind what it so desperately believes it needs to survive and have it surrender to actual self harm when it doesn’t get its way.
I know one day I’ll have to let go. I’ll have to pull back and let her finish the work alone. I’ll have to trust she’s doing the work to repair her portrait because there will be times I can’t watch over the process every second. Trust. A simple word with such deep consequences. Built between us over 15 years. Shattered within 15 minutes.