2019 has been fantastically crappy. It started with horrible health issues resulting in my hysterectomy. I had probably the worst birthday of my 45 years. My marriage was falling apart so we started counseling. I was mentally preparing for another separation and maybe another divorce. Post-surgery I was feeling better physically but not emotionally. Four months into marriage counseling, I made a discovery that made everything that I was previously feeling seem insignificant, it was that much worse. My mental health started spiraling and I added individual therapy and 12-step meetings to my new routine. I read everything I could get my hands on, educated myself on things that I never really wanted to know about. Hearing professionals put technical words and definitions to the struggles that I have been having in my life for the past 25 years was a blessing, but also a difficult pill to swallow. Speaking of swallowing, I lost a crown in my burger one day…yeah pretty sure it was swallowed. Dentist couldn’t just get a new one, the tooth underneath needed to be pulled, and I needed an implant. (a 6-9 month-long process, ugh!) A month later, I developed an infection under another old crown…same result, pulled tooth, implant needed. We lost the live-in babysitters to college x3 plus grad school for the Originals. The little girls transitioned to public school. Amy is not adjusting well to full-day kindergarten (she’s fine at school, just a bear when she gets home!) Clayton still won’t pee on the potty. The basement flooded, and 2 weeks later it flooded again. It wasn’t covered by insurance either time. Russ changed jobs (and health insurance) which decreased co-pays for all the counseling yay…but the new dental plan sucks and my implants that were halfway done are not covered and are going to cost a small fortune to complete. And just when I thought things couldn’t get much worse, they did. In one call on the cell phone from an unfamiliar number that I would normally just ignore, I picked it up and one of my babies was hurting and nothing else mattered.

Three days before Halloween, Carmella was calling from a hospital where she had just checked herself in because she was experiencing suicidal thoughts. My happy little fun-loving child was in crisis. I dropped everything and drove out to the Quad Cities to be with her. It was frightening and I felt utterly helpless, nothing can compare to that feeling of not being able to fix whatever is hurting someone you love. (Though as a growing understanding is developing in me, I’m learning that there’s very little that I can control or fix in general…but that’s part of my own problems and another blog post for another day!) With this going down in October, which I had been reading about as National Mental Health Awareness month, I knew I wanted to be able to share this story, but it has taken a while to be able to put my feelings down on paper. While much of this may not be my story to tell, Carmella did approve. (And if she reads this and does not approve, I won’t be posting this anywhere.) I hope she will one day tell her own story, or at least go through the process of writing it down to help understand it better herself.

Russ agreed that I should go to be with Carmella immediately when I hung up the phone. The girls were already home from school and I found it difficult to explain what had just happened on the phone call. I know it worried Maggie when she saw me in tears. I sent her out of the room so I could try to compose myself enough to at least fill Russ in on the details (he had only heard my side of the phone call.) And then we explained to Maggie and Amy that Carmella was sick at the hospital and needed her mom. I packed an overnight bag for myself and one for Carmella with whatever clothes of hers I could find that she had left at home. Russ booked a hotel room for me with his points. I left the house around 4pm on a Monday afternoon. I stopped by the Marco’s Pizza where Jack was working to fill him in on where I was going and why. With his history of depression and the closeness that all my 4 big kids share, I knew this wasn’t going to happen without full disclosure across the board. As I drove I called Nora and Gina to fill them in as well. Nora started making plans to see if she would be able to meet us in the Quad Cities on Tuesday so she could be there for her sister. Gina was in the middle of a band rehearsal and was able to return my call during a break. That might not have been the best idea, but she knew when I left a voicemail for her to call me (instead of a text like I normally would have) that is was something serious. The 2 hour drive seemed even longer.

When I arrived in Rock Island…I actually had put the wrong address in the GPS and was actually not in Rock Island, but in Moline. (Why in the heck is every hospital named the same thing in all 4 of the Quad Cities???) So when I actually arrived at the RIGHT hospital and found my way to where Carmella was, I learned that the overnight bag I had thrown together for her was not allowed. Neither was anything else that I carried with me such as my purse or cell phone. The ward was locked down and I felt like I was entering a prison. And there was my daughter dressed in blue scrubs. She couldn’t even keep her hoodie because there was a drawstring in the hood of it. I couldn’t squeeze her hard enough when we hugged. Visiting hours were held in a common room where the TV was behind protective glass. It was playing a Harry Potter movie. We sat at a round table that had a deck of well-used playing cards and some Uno cards. I knew my girl was alright as another patient called over “Hey, Hufflepuff!” – that’s Carmella, in a matter of hours she had made friends and discussed which Hogwarts house she would belong in. So we played cards and started to talk things out.

When she called the hospital originally, she was looking for an appointment to talk to somebody. They were scheduling appointments something ridiculous like 6-weeks out. She made the appointment but then called right back saying she thought maybe she shouldn’t wait that long to see somebody. The person on the phone recommended she go to the Emergency Room and then she would be seen much sooner. That of course was because they had her sign herself into this crisis unit. The psychologist on call just talked to the people in the ER and recommended she do that, even though he knew he wouldn’t be back to see her until the next morning. That process took about 4-5 hours from her first call to when they told her she would be staying overnight and then she called me. Of course her first words to me were, “Mom, don’t freak out.” Which, as I’m sure if you’re a mom you understand…I was already freaking out. But I did try to keep my cool that first night. We visited as long as I could stay, then I left my baby there and grabbed a late dinner and checked into the hotel.

The next morning I woke up to snow covering the Camaro. The car we never want to drive in the snow. Without a snow brush. I used my hands and a sweatshirt I found in the car to brush it off. I also had left in such a rush that I didn’t even wear a jacket the day before. As I was driving to the hospital again it was just gorgeous. The fall foliage that was still in full-swing was now covered with a beautiful dusting that stuck to the branches of the colorful trees and looked like a blanket that God just laid right over the Quad Cities. I wanted to take pictures to show Carmella, but knew that I wouldn’t be allowed to bring in my phone, so I didn’t stop to take any. Visiting hours didn’t start until 10am, but by then Carmella should have met with the psychiatrist. I was confident that when she got to talk to him that she would explain that she was just being proactive and he would see that she wasn’t a danger to herself and sign her out. He didn’t. When I arrived for visiting hours, Carmella was visibly upset. She said he didn’t say anything about releasing her and he ordered 2 medications. She had sat in on a group session and was following all their rules, but still just didn’t know what was going on. So we started asking questions. Who’s in charge? Where is this doctor? Why can’t we get any straight answers? If she checked herself in, can’t she just check herself out? (The answer to that was sure…in 5 days. “Too bad we’re in IL not Iowa,” the nurse said!) And then we were both starting to freak out. Carmella was worried about all the school she would be missing and band rehearsals and work and she couldn’t even bring in her laptop to do any homework because…prison. Here she is, doing everything right, calling for help when she recognized scary thoughts, but now she was literally being punished for doing the right thing. I’m sure there are good reasons for all the protocols that are in place at a facility like this; however, it didn’t seem like a good fit for my baby. I don’t know how isolation like that is helpful when she was just reaching out for help. The psychiatrist wanted Carmella (and me) to have a family session with a therapist. And luckily with a little Mama Bear determination, we got the nurse to help us track someone down to get that done immediately.

This session was very productive. And eye-opening. My baby wasn’t as strong and invincible as I always thought she was. The sweet, bubbly personality that we had become accustomed to over her lifetime was sometimes just a disguise for inner turmoil that I didn’t know was locked up inside of her. A perfect storm of school-related stress, gender identity issues, and unresolved issues at home had collided and brought my girl to this breaking point. She found herself with a Google search open to “Where can I buy a gun?” which she admits she would never do. She felt homesick but didn’t want to burden me because she knew that I was going through so much already with our marriage troubles. And she wasn’t sure if we (her parents) were OK with her coming out as bisexual…even though we said that we were, she had her doubts. She’s still figuring things out herself. And that’s OK. The doctor prescribed her some medications to take and since she had already started taking them by the time we had our family session, the therapist really didn’t know if she would be able to talk the doctor into signing off on her release. She did agree with us though, that Carmella was not a danger to herself and she set up some appointments for her with a psychiatrist and a therapist right at the hospital going forward so she would have that outpatient care that she had been hoping to establish when she first made that call the day before. After a few more hours of waiting (and a little retail therapy for me after visiting hours ended) the doctor did finally agree and Carmella was allowed to leave the hospital on her own and even made it to a band rehearsal that evening.

Nora had been on her way to visit even before we knew what the result of the doctor’s recommendation would be, so the 3 of us had a nice old-fashioned girls night complete with a carb-loaded Italian dinner and a sleepover at the hotel. We were finally able to see the other kids on a FaceTime video chat so they knew that Carmella was OK. The little ones were a little put out about Mom being gone for 2 nights…but it was all going to be OK. I breathed and slept a little better knowing she wasn’t locked up and isolated from all of her support at home. She shared that her band director and friends at school were also being very supportive, and I felt like she had a handle on what was to come. She was determined to follow-through and do whatever was needed to stay ahead of this depression. Like most people who end up somewhere like this, she had been holding onto a lot of this and keeping it hidden for a long time. She thought she was “too much” for anyone to handle. She didn’t want to burden anyone with her problems. She learned those coping skills (or lack thereof) from me. Putting other people’s needs or feelings above her own and thinking she was strong enough and didn’t need any help was just the example that I set for her from a young age. It’s a fine line between raising independent daughters and modeling codependency.

The ride home didn’t seem nearly as long, and I was able to make it in time to take Clayton to his tumbling class on Wednesday morning. I finished up getting the craft project ready for Maggie’s Halloween party at school the next day. And life went back to “normal” as much as possible. I didn’t want to lose the connection we had just established though. I loved how my family all pulled together in a common goal to help out when one of us was hurting. I loved seeing the siblings relate to one another and show up for each other. I loved that I was able to count on Russ to hold down the fort at home. I decided to start having those more difficult conversations. I instituted a new tradition in our family group chat called Mental Health Mondays. I asked everybody to check in and just let us know how they are doing. We’ve had 3 weeks now and though participation isn’t always 100%, everybody (with a cell phone anyway) has taken part and I hope we are able to keep doing this. There shouldn’t be a stigma around mental health. We all struggle in some ways. It’s new, but it doesn’t have to be scary. Opening up and being vulnerable with people who love us will hopefully become our new normal. And we’ll take things one day at a time.