When you try to concentrate in a meeting about your child's future but she is screaming your name so loudly the whole two hours a few rooms away that you can't hold it together. And when people in the meeting don't look at you anymore because they've tried so hard and it hasn't helped and they feel inadequate and a little angry. And when everyone at the meeting realizes she is not going anywhere anytime soon because she has been in an acute state for five months now and besides there is absolutely nowhere to send her, nowhere, not here, not someplace else in North Carolina, not out of state, except this state hospital, because no place that wants to make money is going to take her. And when the Medicaid care coordinator has nothing to offer but his prayers even though he's really not allowed to say that but does anyhow because he's a nice guy.
When the doctor you loved, the one that spent hours talking to you, asking questions and thinking about options, that doctor gets transferred to another unit and you get a new doctor who is a nice guy but he talks at you not to you and never asks one question except will you give your consent to this new medication. And you're not allowed in the unit and they rotate nurses and so you've never seen her room and you don't know any of the nursing staff that work with your kid and the only thing you know is that she cries for them when she's with you on a pass from the hospital.
When you see her holding a friend's three-year-old in church, looking like a normal fifteen year old, and you have a moment of feeling like everyone else. And then she almost breaks the psych ward window and you remember other people's kids don't do this. And they don't have door jambs torn out of the wall and they can have company who don't already know their story.
When you hold your baby's hand and see initials carved into her arm, marring the smooth brown skin you've always loved. And when her hair is wild and unkempt and she can't sit still long enough for anyone to do it and there's no point in it anyhow because it will get messed up during the next restraint but you still remember the soft powdery scent of it when she burrowed into you as a baby. And when she says mean things to you and to other people that you know aren't in her but yet they are because she says them. And you find it hard to believe that this is the same kid who is a rock star to the little kids in church and who buys them presents with her own money just because she loves them so much, who has such depths of kindness and compassion inside her and you wonder where that goes during these times.
When you read the news about a teenager shot by the police because "they didn't have time for this" and you realize that you've called the police to your house dozens of times and this is how your child's story could end too and that there are people who think this would be the best solution because she is too expensive and too hard and there's nowhere for her to be, to exist, much less get better. And you hold like a talisman the picture of her swimming with dolphins that was taken two weeks before this hospitalization and know that is her just as much if not more than the girl the meeting is about. And knowing that doesn't help.
When you are so grateful to have a job you love to go to each day, and you hope you can save some other mama's baby because you sure as hell can't save your own. And when you sit holding a child together after he just hit you because, even though he's really smart, 9 take away 2 is just more than he can handle, but you keep showing him and suddenly he gets it and shouts, "It's 7! It's 7!" and you know that a thousand or maybe ten thousand more moments like that might allow him to not spend years in a state mental hospital and so you do it again and again because it's where redemption lies and you hope maybe someone else will do it for your kid.
You know, that.
