When Mark finally called, his words were few. He said it had been long, Teale was angry when "they"took her suitcase. "They" saw a lesser version of the Teale we had been experiencing. That had been one of the toughest things about this crisis. Doctors and her school had not seen what we had. The rages we were seeing, the anger, the frustration, the uncomfortable in her own skin, no one outside our little family had seen it. Describing our home life to the doctors and to her school professions was surreal, they would look at us with questioning eyes, like we were making it up, like we were exaggerating the truth or looking for attention. When Teale started having short seizures, day seizures at school, that's when I finally felt like they started to get it, like they started to believe us. Short seizures were Gods way of helping Mark and I be heard. Day seizures were concrete, they were evidence of what we were saying and they gave us leverage toward the need for more help. My sanity was being challenged too, I was fried, I hurt more than I could describe adequately to anyone. My Mark knew because I had taken the brunt of the long nights up with Teale. He's not as tolerant of sleep deprivation, he suffers more than me when sleep is taken from him. I can handle it, but even I had hit my limit, it had been too long and too severe. We had been going to bed as fast as we could after putting Teale down, knowing she would be up in just a couple or if we were lucky, a few short hours. She was too young and too unpredictable to be up alone. It was taking everything out of us, we were challenged to a point I thought I would never get to again. (Read my Blog, My Secret, to understand this
http://wearegodsentertainment.blogspot.com/2013/02/my-secret.html ) I remember the moment well, I said to Mark, "I know I won't do it, but I'm as close to suicide as I've ever been. I feel like driving into a Mack truck with Teale in the car, to save you, Beau and Gwenn from living this." Mark understood, he had had similar feelings, he had just not voiced them. I was scared, the most scared I had ever been in my adult life. The sleep deprivation was truly making me crazy. My mind was fogged and the solutions to stop the pain seemed valid and logical at the time. So to hear Mark on the phone tell me she had raged at the hospital, not as severely as she had at home, but at least they were seeing a taste of what we were living, somehow that helped me. That is sad for me to write, my daughter was hurting, her body was suffering and we couldn't regulate her, we couldn't get her moods stable. Mark told me that the people at the hospital seemed caring, he knew I needed to hear that. He probably made it up, but I needed it, so I don't blame him. To this day I don't know what Mark really felt that night. He was dropping our six year old at the psychiatric ward, our six year old. Even today, with her now fourteen and pretty stable, much because of that hospitalization, I still have a tough time imagining our trusting them to care for her. I imagine Mark cried when he left her there, but got himself together before he called me and came home to my barrage of questions. I imagine it hurt his heart like no other time in his life and I bet he carries secrets of that night that he never shared with me. He's protective of me, he knows I am strong to a point but in this situation I was fragile. I needed Mark to be the strong one. Teale was admitted into the children's psychiatric ward and Mark came home. I'm sure he held me tightly as I cried myself to sleep, worrying if my daughter was safe, if she was scared, if she felt abandoned and if we had done the right thing.... (to be continued)
