Brave Enough To Be Bliss

trying to convince myself, I simply shut them down and move on to better things. One step at a time, but I feel healthier and even a bit hopeful. Look forward to seeing you!

Thursday night through Friday morning, October 5, 2018, was one of the two hardest nights of my life. Kylee was not doing well, but I knew I couldn’t keep trying to rescue her or she wouldn’t ever rescue herself. She had to decide to learn to live for herself or we would remain in this cycle of her being depressed and me being fearful and depressed. We were both stuck in a very bad place, and I had to get myself out and hope she would choose to join me. It was all I could do. All I could think about was the fact I might lose her. Sure, I functioned, I did other things at the same time, but the thought was always there. It was all-consuming and had been for over a year. Even though she had been living at home for most of that year, she still didn’t really seem “safe” to me. There was a look in her eyes that I just didn’t trust. I wanted to because I didn’t want to fear anymore, but her eyes weren’t right so I couldn’t look away. I had to keep looking deeply into her eyes and trying to feel a way through to her and figuring out what she needed from me. I had to learn what, if anything, I could do to help. And it always came down to love. All I could do was love her, encourage her, be a physical presence with her just like her best friend was all those years ago after the concussions. Her friend could just sit there with her in her pain. She knew it was Kylee’s pain and she could be there with her day after day for hours on end, feeling “for” Kylee but not actually feeling her pain. W hile it’s always difficult to see your child in pain , with PCS, I could be with Kylee without sinking to where she was. I could remain outside of it enough to maintain some stability for both of us. But this all-consuming, hopeless, deep, dark depression, now that was something I understood all too well. I felt the type of pain she was in, and I couldn’t keep myself from going to where she was. Her pain had forced me to begin to feel my own and it was awful, miserable really. While I fought it very hard, learning to feel was actually the only way through the pain. And for her, I vowed I would do whatever it took, feel whatever I had to feel to give her, and eventually us, a chance to stop the madness of where we were stuck at that time. The first of the two terrifying nights was when she wanted all of her medication bottles that were in my drawer for safe keeping. She wanted control. She needed control. As I recall, she got a week’s supply at a time in a pill box. There were quite a few bottles of various medications at that time. She was being very adamant about it and even though I usually avoided conflict, I pushed back and tried to reason with her. And then I remembered the conversation s with Ginger and something inside me said, you have to give them to her. If you don’t trust her to live, she might never learn to trust herself. It felt like I was giving her a loaded gun and telling her not to use it. Making her promise she wouldn’t use it, but knowing I may have just made a decision that could end both our lives because if she went, I was absolutely, positively right behind her. And yet, I gave her all the bottles anyway. I knew it was the riskiest thing I had ever done, and the problem was it was with her life. How could any mother do such a thing? I remember standing in my bathroom sobbing. I might have even texted her dad because this was parenting and when I wasn’t functioning well, he was. He was coming the next week so I could go to Arizona as planned. I had wanted to cancel the trip, but he said no, he would be there, and I needed to stick with my plan and go. The only issue was he couldn’t get there until the day after I left , so that was going to give her one night at home by herself. And because he had agreed to the risk already, whether I texted him that particular night or not, I knew he would tell me to leave her be and that she would be OK. I so needed him to be there for both of us during this horrifying time and he was, unwaveringly. It was just so much pressure to be the only one with her, day in and day out, with no one else to experience how it felt to be solely responsible for her safety. But the truth was, I wasn’t. I would have liked to have been, but no one was except her. I hated that part sooooooo much. She said she was tired and going to bed. I hugged her and let her go.

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