A Non-American on America

I’m going off-topic today for a post that’s been stewing for many months. You can disagree with my point of view, and that’s fine, or you can stop reading now, if you’re a Donald apologist and don’t want to hear what I have to say. This is an outsider’s opinion, and my country has its own issues of race and inequality and homelessness and drugs, and yes, this is my blog, so I’m offering my opinion. Unasked.

First, America, I’m sorry for what you’re going through, be you Democrat or Republican.

I’m sorry for all of your strife, your hatred, your anger, your pain. I suspect that it’s like a personal trauma for many of you, and unfortunately, just like personal trauma, you’ll have to go through it, right through it, and it may take a very long time to feel all of the anguish before you come out the other side and begin to heal.

But you’re not alone. The rest of the world feels it too.

I’ll make it clear from the outset: If I was American, I’d be protesting in the streets and shouting from the corners. His hate, his spewing vile, his corruption, his complete disregard for the law, for decency, for anything that is good in the world, is bringing America to its knees.

(My basis for saying that: Jobs are up, but not in ways he says they are. He hasn’t created thousands of coal mining jobs like he says he has. And no, the world, including the USA, doesn’t need or want coal mines. No, Executive Orders do not count as key pieces of legislation that Donald has passed. And no, the president is not supposed to be golfing every weekend and discussing key national issues in a public dining room. He has not addressed security in any meaningful way that is not a violation of the Constitution. He has alienated most of America’s key allies, allies who would be needed should America be attacked. Meanwhile, Vets are still suffering, consumer protections are being stripped away, Donald wants to make rich people richer, while making it harder for Americans to afford their own homes. People are in danger of losing their health care, and scientific research is being de-funded, as are arts and kids’ programs. Just to start, and not to mention his lies and contempt for the Constitution and the American people.)

For my personal politics, I wouldn’t care if he was Democrat, Republican or from the Loyal Purple Polka-Dots, if his policies made sense and if his heart was in the right place, I’d support him. But he doesn’t have a political ideology, and he’s too incompetent to create one. His is one of convenience, of expediency, of whatever-works-for-Donald’s-bank-account. If he has to divide America to enrich himself, so be it. If he has to let white supremacists be emboldened, great. If he has to act as though the law and the rules don’t apply to him, well, if it makes him rich, fly at it. He hasn’t surrounded himself with people who can make the country work, either. He granted access to American secrets to a man who has been accused of peddling to the Russian government. Knowingly. And then fired the people who tried to warn him that this was a bad thing. His only concern in hiring people is not that they’re good for the country, but that they will fall all over to tell him how wonderful he is. How sickening and loathsome.

Other elected officials are still supporting him, and even using valuable question time in special hearings to pander to a man who “doesn’t recall” being briefed about Russia — in his role as Attorney General! Liar. Other members of Congress and Senate are not facing their constituents, they’re not facing voters, they’re hiding. Staff members are bizarrely putting up with public humiliation and hiding in bushes to support him. WTF?

And so the people who march in the streets against Sharia law (read: Muslims), even though this “law” has zero chance of seriously becoming a thing in the USA, feel legitimized. The people who trash talk women feel legitimized. People who feel like it’s okay to harass and intimidate non-Christians, and to murder people on public transit, are not called out. The people who WANT to see legal institutions crumble, are legitimized. This opens doors for the actual demise of the rule of law. Meanwhile, there’s no movement on the huge divide between police officers and the people they’re supposed to protect, people are dying of drug overdoses in record numbers, and people who have no jobs are still unemployed. The long and often bitter history of the US is not debated and there is no healing, but instead is framed as Republican vs Democrat only, for example, or labelled in trite one-liners that don’t advance any sort of meaningful education or debate.

I cannot pretend to have any idea as to the many, many reasons people voted for him in the first place, except to say that truly, there were likely valid reasons. People very possibly believed, wholeheartedly, and likely with justification, that the current system failed them (or that the alternative was worse). There is a lot wrong with the idea that money controls power, and not always in good ways. And there is a lot wrong with the idea that the only stories that get told are the ones that reflect a narrow centrist politically correct world view.

(I won’t get started on political correctness and what I really see as being a loss of free speech; my idea of free speech means that people need to accept the consequences of their speech, and if it means you go to jail for inciting violence, well, that’s a consequence, and someone having a point of view that is simply not popular is not necessarily inciting violence, and we need to distinguish between those things.)

But this man has set up the country in such a way that now people feel they MUST support opposing viewpoints, at all costs, in order to either support or oppose him. There is no longer rational discussion of policy and politics and programs, the discussion is all about Donald Trump.

That is HUGE.

There is no longer rational discourse. “Liberals” (and “Never-Trumper-Republicans) and “Trumpers” are so bitterly divided that they won’t, they CAN’T, talk.

And so that means that there is a situation in which people are SO attached to their one side or the other, that nothing is really moving anymore. How can a country run that way? Trumpers can’t accept that their president may be destroying the country, because that means admitting they were wrong, admitting defeat. And non-Trumpers can’t admit that there may have been anything valuable in this so-called populist approach, because to do so would mean they would have to accept all the rest of him, and what he stands for, and that is morally and philosophically abhorrent to them. And no one is standing up and saying, “hey, everyone, what if we try this third approach to representing people and sorting out our country’s woes?”

To have a “president” who feels that it’s okay to purposely pit people against each other, is tragic. America really is no longer leading on the world stage. America no longer has moral or even economic authority, and can no longer tell the world what to do and how to do it. That, from a non-American who has at times felt that the USA has overstepped its moral and economic authority, is tragic.

Others are going to step in to fill that void, make no mistake. It may take some time and some practise, but others will step up. Canadians will lead. British and Germans and French will lead.

And NOT because the centrist ideology is the only one from on high that is right and good in the whole world the end. But because there’s decency left. Where we care that people have access to sanitation and birth control and vaccines and health care. Where we care that girls get to go to school. Where we care that disease isn’t going to wipe us all out before civil wars and terrorists do. Where we care about each other.

It isn’t perfect.

Democracy is NOT PERFECT. But for now it’s the best we’ve got, and to see it crash and burn because one selfish, narcissistic, cruel and stupid man feels that “the media” is being unfair to him personally, as if he and that is all that matters ever, is really, really sad. That a great and shining country like America is being brought so. low. is just sad.

I kind of think his voters are maybe still holding out hope that he’s got some decency. Hoping that he actually does care about them and maybe that he actually wants to do good things for them. But seriously, what is it going to take? How far does he have to take the USA down this road before they say they don’t wanna follow? Or, to go in the opposite devil’s advocate approach, what IF the “media” left him alone and let him do his thing? Would he do good? He hasn’t shown me anything that would make me believe he would.

Even if he did have some decency, his other actions have long since shown that ordinary Americans are not his priority. His priority is still making money from his hotels and his golf courses. His priority is spending every weekend on vacation from his hard, hard life. His main concern is firing people who get in his way, giving the Russians free reign, and turning a blind eye to foreign interference in American democracy. His main concern, on the day he took office, was to file his papers and start campaigning for the next election, on the taxpayers’ dime and time. And why?

Because Donald Trump doesn’t care about people other than himself.

To recap, it’s possible that members of Donald’s campaign and / or family colluded with the Russian government to subvert an American election. He has shown zero interest in national security issues except as it relates to his travel ban (which targets the wrong countries). He conducts government by tweet, which would be unconventional, but okay, if he was actually running the country. He has left key government posts unfilled, has tried to legislate hate by executive order, hasn’t managed to pass a single key piece of promised legislation, and conducts intimidation campaigns against others. His attorney general says he doesn’t recall three meetings (though briefly he DID slip and say, “the meeting at the Mayflower,” though I don’t think anyone caught that one), yet can go on and on about others. Invokes Executive Privilege in advance, saying that his president should have the right to decide what he answers and doesn’t, though Trump supposedly never invoked this privilege himself, even knowing what he would be asked at the hearing. Trump’s son-in-law needed money and tried to find a way to get it from banned Russian agencies and banks. He also tried to subvert American security channels. Donald Trump himself invited Russians into the oval office, and cameras, to joke about firing his FBI Director. Then he tries to intimidate said director before and after sworn testimony. By tweet.

There is no justification for whataboutism. None whatsoever. Whatever Hillary did or didn’t do doesn’t excuse Trump from doing what he DID do. Hillary’s emails didn’t make Kushner look to Russia for money. Hillary’s emails never made Sessions meet the Russian ambassador and then lie about it, and Hillary’s emails didn’t make Mike Flynn lobby for the Russian government.

Nothing anyone else did ever, in the history of ever, forced Trump and his associates to act this way.

Donald Trump has brought this on himself.

There is hope, and I see it in the ways that people are still speaking out. Scientists are still conducting research, and somehow, cities and states are still functioning. There are people who refuse to accept that this is the new normal. There are people who care, and who are willing to speak out.

I do believe there is a good America post-Trump. The question is, when? No American president ever will be able to get off with a free ride ever again, and that’s probably a good thing. Checks and balances may be strengthened. And maybe, possibly, there will be a time when Americans start to debate their democracy and start to have those discussions, and maybe there will be three parties, or four, and different ideologies will get fair hearing. And in doing so, the world will step up and *share* the burden, and the US won’t *have* to be the world’s biggest money provider or intellectual and moral strong-arm, and can do good in the world but also focus on its own issues. Others will join in, and this whole idea of democracy will grow and in the end be stronger for it.

Maybe? I sure hope so. But Trump isn’t the man to do it.

 

Just a Parent

“Are you just a parent who is suggesting?”

The words on the screen stopped me cold. I had written to someone fairly well-known in the mental health advocacy community, and wondered if I could get some suggestions about approaching our school district to see about implementing some pre-emptive programs in our schools. (Suicide prevention, that is.)

She asked me a series of questions, and then, that.

Yes.

That was my response. But it wasn’t. Yes, I’m a parent, and yes, I’m suggesting, and no, I’m not “affiliated” with anyone, and no I don’t have a corporate backing or even a degree in mental health. I don’t have a side agenda, I don’t have some major following on social media (I don’t even do social media that often). I don’t have money, I’m not a company, and my life hasn’t been rocked by a high-profile tragedy that would give me “street cred.”

But I’m not “just” a parent. Because parenting isn’t “just” something we do. It’s all-consuming, whether your child is healthy or not. And that little word suggests that being a parent isn’t enough, isn’t powerful enough, isn’t connected enough, isn’t influential enough, and isn’t enough of a reason.

Well, damn.

This person is also a parent, and she has had tragedy in her life, and she is influential. And because she’s a parent who will forever deal with her tragedy, I find it odd that her first choice would be to diminish, discourage, and dismiss someone who is taking a stand and trying to make some positive contributions.

So I spent the evening feeling a little like I had been sent to the corner by the teacher. But by the time I went to bed I realized that her words say more about her than me. She’s got experience, and she knows how hard it is to change conversations, to effect real change in the way we relate to our kids’ mental health as a society. She knows this, and I know she knows this. She maybe didn’t even realize she was being dismissive, and was maybe just trying to get at how influential I could be by myself.

I do know all of this, too. Having tried to talk to the appropriate people for a few years now, I do know that school boards and superintendants generally don’t listen to a lone voice in the wind, no matter the cause. (Which is why I was asking for her advice! Which she didn’t give me, directly, but ultimately, I guess she did.)

I also realize that she probably gets hundreds of emails every day, asking for her time, her knowledge, her voice. And it’s possible she feels as though people will take and take that knowledge, or maybe just want to catch her wave.

I can understand that.

But I won’t be dismissed. Not by her, not by anyone. I might go away and cry for a couple of hours when someone hurts my feelings, but this isn’t something that is going away. Our schools are a perfect place to have the conversation about kids’ mental health, and despite the ever-growing chorus of babble in the media, there is woefully little actually being *done* in schools. There are teachers who can’t cram in another thing in the day, who are stretched beyond their resources. There are school boards who are faced with closing schools because their budgets are being slashed. They’ve got enough to manage.

We talk the talk, and there are articles written about stigma and don’t be afraid to talk, and get help if you need it, and on and on. A lot is just talk, and talk is … well, talk is empty.

Still, there has to be a way to start. Someone has to start somewhere.

I’m a parent, yes. And I am suggesting.

Roll With It

My daughter once called me “chill.” Ha! I am the least chill person I know.

I’m uptight, neurotic, anxious, overbearing and oversensitive. Oh, and have I ever mentioned I worry too much?! 🙂

Still, on some level, I actually am kind of chill. I’m learning to take things one day at a time. This phrase has some weird connotations. It doesn’t always imply “living in the moment.” It does sometimes sound like you’re just slogging through the slush, “getting” through, fighting your way inch by inch through the snowdrifts of life. No, that’s not what I do. By “one day at a time,” I mean I’m learning how to live with surprises, not taking things for granted, and when the unexpected does happen, I go with it.

Because really, how can you do otherwise? I never never know what each day will bring, and while I love order, routine and stability, and while I try to plan a lot of details of my life, I’m learning how to not be surprised when I get the text that says, “Mom, I failed my geometry class.” or, “Mom, I got busted on 4/20 by my gym teacher,” or whatever. (Neither of these scenarios is true, btw.)

I don’t ever enjoy these surprises.

They make my stomach sink into my knees, as I suspect is just the way of parenting. Your kid messes up or gets in trouble or has some sort of calamity befall them, and you feel kind of sick. That’s just the way of it. The same way we celebrate when things go well.

Despite those heart-twisting moments, there’s part of me that, after the initial shock of whatever, is already racing to the logical and the illogical conclusions. It’s amazing how fast my mind can come up with an outcome. (“She’ll get kicked out of school and end up on the street, and how will she support herself?” or “She’ll end up pregnant and we’ll have a bigger family and which room would we convert so she can still go to school while we help?”) Seriously, I get this from, “Mom, I’m dating so and so.” My mind is a weird and twisty thing.

That habit of projecting the most outrageous possible scenario is often unpleasant. I can send myself into some pretty big downward spirals of worry, and that does no one any good whatsoever. At the same time, whatever I fear is usually far more desperate and unpleasant than anything that actually comes to pass. Playing the “what-if” game can sometimes help me relax a little about what is actually going on. She’s just going on a date. She got one bad test result. She fell off the self-harm wagon again. We deal. We move on, and she learns, and she figures out what works in her life and what doesn’t, and she learns.

And I learn, too.

I learn that I still have my kids with me. They’ve got challenges. We all have challenges, and while mine may be different than yours, everyone has them.

You seriously just never, ever know.

And oddly enough, learning to figure things out as I go along helps me to be way less judgmental. Because no matter who I meet, I am learning to be aware that maybe their day has been full of those kinds of surprises, too, and I don’t have a monopoly on “things I wish hadn’t happened.”

I am devoted to finding ways to help prevent and treat anxiety and depression. Those sneaky, lying bastards are debilitating for the people who have them. They destroy. And, like other diseases like cancer or heart disease, they should be eradicated. (**Disclaimer: I am not entirely certain that depression, as a disease, should be treated as purely physical while glossing over the situational, but that is a whole other blog post investigation for another time.**) This is, I hope, going to have a positive outcome, meaning that I hope to do some good for my daughter, and in turn I hope that it translates into doing some good in the world.

Also oddly enough, depression and anxiety have taught me a LOT. There are lessons I wish I hadn’t had to learn, but hey, these lessons may just help me be a better parent. These lessons might possibly just help me figure out My Purpose In Life, whatever that may be. I have no way of knowing or predicting what my future or my children’s future might bring. I’ve said it before: I can’t predict, and so, while my own anxiety wants me to plan for every scenario and outcome, at the same time, in some weird and roundabout way, it helps me to just take it as it comes.

Figure it out.

So when I’m so anxious I can’t breathe right, and when I get that phone call at 2:00 a.m., these are things that can turn a person’s world around. Finding the ways to keep breathing, finding out how to get through the darkness, is just sort of what people do. It’s not extraordinary or unusual. We all do it. So, I’m learning to roll with it.

Blinders

There are lots of days, like today, where I’m pretending. I’m putting on the blinders, making like we have no issues, acting as though, and believing as though, all is well.

That’s not a bad thing. It’s not delusional, it’s not fakery, it’s not neglect or ignorance.

It’s all about letting ourselves have our moments where mental health, anxiety, depression, wellness, illness, don’t even factor into the equation.

Even when I look at her and can see evidence of distress, I can put it aside sometimes, because she’s still here. She’s here, she’s with me, she’s moving forward and doing things that prepare for her future. I’m well aware that there are many families who don’t have their daughters anymore. I have mine, and I’m blessed and counting blessings every minute of every day. We have second chances, we have any chances, we have each other.

So, for today, we’re all about the sunshine. Taking a moment to go window shopping, and an early morning cafe visit, because we can. Doing domestic things and enjoying each other’s company, because we can.

Why is this most ordinary of days worthy of a blog post, you ask? Lots of people get those days every day, so what’s the big deal?

Well, we don’t.

So for today, I pretend that she isn’t wracked with anxiety, and she pretends that she’s a teenager without anything else under the surface. We talk about hair colour and gardening, and cats. And should she start saving for a car? Public transit has its benefits. We talk about other instances and examples of autism in our family, and whether or not she wants to go forward with an assessment, and the subject moves towards our plans for summer camping.

I love this. I love these days, and I love these conversations, where my anxiety is diminished, and I don’t worry about the darkness. These are the days when I know she’s got spark and I know she wants this. So today, we pretend we have it.

Aren’t blinders a piece of protective gear? Could be. They are for me. For today, anyway.

When A Voice Goes

So I found out yesterday that Amy Bleuel died.

You may not have heard her name before, but it’s likely you know what she did. She founded the Semicolon Project. You know, the movement where people who have dealt with suicide, or self-harm, or mental illness of any kind, where a semicolon represents the choice to keep going. Instead of a period, full stop, a semicolon is a pause; it joins two thoughts and keeps on going.

Only Amy full stopped.

This is really hard for me.

My daughter identifies with the rich symbolism of the semicolon. And so, I do, too. For her.

I’m sending my deep condolences to her family and friends, and to the millions of people who have taken comfort in that little punctuation. She did so much, and her project was a lifeline to many.

So what do we do when someone who was a voice of hope, is silenced, and when there are strong suggestions that the voice chose to be silent? If she died by suicide, how do we reconcile that with the message she shared?

I read a beautiful post this afternoon on The Mighty that speaks to this. We keep going. We try harder.

I feel so strongly that we have work to do. When families suffer the loss of someone they loved so deeply, when people feel like breathing another breath is just too much agony, when there is this pain, we have work to do. When someone who convinced others to hang on lets go herself, it shows us that we still have a long road to walk in combatting suicide.

I’ve been playing with some ideas in my mind about how I can do my part. I still don’t know what that part is, I don’t know what role I’m supposed to play, and I don’t know what it’s going to look like. But for a long time, I’ve felt like I just have to, in some way, work on suicide prevention. I’ve been so lucky. No one I love has died by suicide. But, to borrow another line from another article I read recently (that I can’t find the link to), the difference between being touched by suicide and not shouldn’t come down to “luck.”

We need to do more. I need to do more. I will figure out what that “more” is. Amy’s death is one more that shouldn’t have happened, and has left so many people broken-hearted and questioning, left to figure it out.

And I’m left counting my blessings, counting the love around me.

 

This Day

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/luck/

When my daughters were small, I would often ignore or gloss over these minor holidays. It seemed like it was just a lot of extra effort to participate in these things. Finding something green, making sure my girls had something green, getting into the whole spirit of it, all seemed like a lot more organizing than I had time for. I’m not particularly regligious, and Easter has never been especially meaningful for me in that way. Halloween is just too much work.

I save my energy for Christmas and birthdays and the every day energy that goes into loving a family.

The whole concept of luck, though, is near and dear to my heart. I am lucky, and I count my blessings every single day. I have more than my share of amazingness in my life, and don’t take any of it for granted.

Especially because my daughter has an illness that could take her from me at any time.

I work hard at my luck. My job takes long hours, and I enjoy what I do. I work hard to make time and energy for my family. I work at helping my daughter fight her illness, and I work at helping her manage when it gets to be too hard for her to do it on her own.

Some day there will be a cure. I feel that in my bones. There will be a time when something can fix depression, whatever its cause — some new therapy, a different type of medicine, new understanding of how depression messes with the brain.

Until then, we’ll take each day, hour, moment, as it comes, embracing the next day, hour, moment. Breathe deeply, not only to steady ourselves, but to take it all in. We’ll work hard for our luck, appreciate it all, and maybe even today, we’ll wear green.

 

Changing the Course of History

Via Daily Prompt: Massive

For some reason, this phrase has always struck me as odd. Authors boldly proclaim that one person’s actions changed the world, re-wrote history, changed the course — pick your meaningless phrase.

When a course is changed, it means that everything was going solidly in one direction. Everything was pointing in one way, like a freeway without an exit ramp in sight. Suddenly (and it usually is momentous and drastic), someone arrives on the scene and shakes things up, changing the entire trajectory of the world, or whatever portion of the world in which they happened to live.

It doesn’t make sense! History is something you look back on. And trajectories are not changed in hindsight.

Taken as it’s meant, though, it’s as if, had that person never come along, the world would have continued on its merry way, for all time.

That’s an awful lot of responsibility for one person to bear, isn’t it?

When something happens that causes massive upheaval to people and places, it’s natural to look at the event(s) as life-changing, where things can never be the same as they were pre-event. But to say that something “changed the course,” also implies some sort of prescience. It implies that the person, or even the natural disaster, or event, had a clue about the direction in which the world was going.

Third, the phrase also gives a lot of power to the proclaimer. The person uttering the phrase is now assumed to know, with precision, what direction the world would have taken had the event not occurred.

Even the best of us can’t predict tomorrow with that kind of certainty, never mind re-writing how yesterday may have gone if, if, if.

When I look around my home, or my office, or my city, I can be reasonably confident in a couple of things: I’ll very possibly wake up tomorrow, and being in good health and young-ish, I will very possibly continue to have use of my body and brain.

Beyond that, I know nothin’. Even that isn’t guaranteed.

Further, I can’t say with one shred of confidence that had I not had that tea yesterday, I would have gone out for a walk instead, and then who knows what could have happened! I could have happened upon a robbery in progress and saved an entire store full of people. I could have whisked a little old lady out of the way of the speeding bus, averting disaster, whereupon said old lady bequeathed me her fortune, which meant I could quit my job and finance the invention that … changed the course of history!

Right.

Hey, I love “what-ifs.” My whole life is based on what-ifs, which I use to great disadvantage during an anxiety attack. I use them to obsess over what can possibly go wrong having a depressed child. I use them to focus on all of the possibilities, evidence or not, when I consider her future, and that of my other daughter.

Hell, if I could predict the past or the future, there would be no such thing as anxiety, because I would know it all and have no unknown possibilities to fret over.

That might not be such a bad thing, and maybe then I could change the course of history.

Sunrise

via Daily Prompt: Immerse

It’s still dark outside.

I didn’t sleep much last night. I was up every hour, fretting, worrying, anxious, scared. So completely immersed in worry that it infected my dreams, and was the first thing my brain tuned into every time I woke up.

Finally, eventually, I got up, made the coffee, and tried to make sense of it all, tried to write through it. I jumped right in to the very heart of it, hoping that the act of going right to it would help me sort it out.

Not this time.

But today is a new day. How cliche.

So real, though. Today is a day where we have time for new conversations. We have the chance to try again. We can confront the things that are hurting us, hurting her, and try to do things better. Try to work at healing.

Love always.

Lost? Or Still Looking?

We’ll be getting more assessments, more appointments, more questions, and hoping beyond hope that we get answers. So far we have none.

Counsellor suspects Borderline Personality Disorder, which brings up way more questions than it answers. The suspicion is that, regardless of any traits or patterns I may have noticed from the day daughter was born, because she seems to have separation anxiety, and even a fear of abandonment, the suspicion is BPD.

But? But?

Is that something that can be with you from birth?

Is it something that can be a part of your very soul, your make up? Because whatever it is that she has, she’s always had it. She was bullied in elementary school, and things got worse after that, but she’s always had it. She’s always had separation anxiety, and she’s always always always had difficulty with changes in relationships.

Daughter told counsellor that she has trouble in social situations, and doesn’t really “get” girl talk, and doesn’t really even care too much about it. She said that she will often adapt herself to whatever social situation she finds herself in, so that if a group of kids is talking about a subject, she’ll go along with it like she knows, even if she doesn’t.

Counsellor says that that also leads her to suspect BPD.

But these are ASD traits, too, aren’t they?

Daughter told counsellor that she’ll chase after people who are upset with her in order to keep them from leaving her. She also said that when she’s angry at people, or if they do something to hurt her, she will feel like she doesn’t want to continue the relationship.

That does sound like BPD to me.

But? But?

But it also doesn’t. But it does.

I’m so confused, and kind of lost.

It is not news to me that my daughter has mental illnesses. Depression and anxiety have been constant companions for her for a very long time, and we’ve been looking for answers and relief for her for just about as long. But counsellor made it sound as though BPD was literally on the edge of psychopathy.

Is my baby that sick?

So I’m afraid.

Daughter says she just wants to know. She just wants to figure it out so she can get her therapy to start actually helping, so she can start working towards feeling better without spinning her wheels all the time. She just wants to feel better. And that is just not too much to ask.

She’s thin. And she has so. many. scars.

I’m scared.

But. Once more, I will be strong. Hell, if she can manage to confront her demons every day, and not let it take her down, I can stifle a few tears. I will keep my promise to her — we’ll keep looking until we find answers, and we’ll work at it, we’ll do everything we can to help her feel better.