“That's not true, honey.”
“Yes it is. What do you care. You hate me too. You only love them.” She raised up to stare at me with angry, tear-filled eyes. “Get out of my room! You hate me and I Hate you! get out of my room!” She began to scream again. I sighed and rose, leaving my very troubled daughter to collect herself.
There's nothing quite like feeling powerless in the face of your child. Knowing that something's very wrong and having no understanding of how to fix it. It's scary stuff.
She went to bed when the others did, kissing her father and me, clean after a shower. She crawled into her covers, smiling and content. As happened quite often, I was awakened by her middle-of-the-night cries. I went downstairs knowing there was nothing I could do. She would cry inconsolably for thirty minutes, then she would fall back to sleep and remember nothing in the morning. When she was young the doctor called them “night terrors.” Now there was no fear in her wails like when she was younger. There was just a spine-tingling, nerve-jolting sadness that ripped at a mother's heart.
Once again, feeling powerless in the wake of my child's desperate sadness, wracking my brains and heart to understand what was happening to her. Not knowing, at the time, that I was living with the onset of adolescent bipolar disorder.
Elizabeth was not diagnosed with adolescent bipolar disorder until the was fifteen years old. Before then she was being treated for ADHD, but the medication wasn't doing her any good, I knew that. Her behavior had gone from bad to worse.
At thirteen she became obsessed with boys and I found a notebook filled with detailed descriptions of oral sex and how-tos for condom use that curled my straight hair. I sat her down for a long, detailed discussion about sex and why she was far too young for such activities. I didn't know how much she'd done, but I figured it was mostly talk. Who really knows, though. I quivered on the inside.
Then I was called to the school when she was caught taking caffeine pills with a group of girls. I marched her off to the doctor for an in-depth discussion about substance abuse and what can happen to stupid little girls (my words, not the doctor's) who abuse drugs, even caffeine pills.
She began to cut herself around fourteen. The screaming fits had increased in their frequency and I never let her be around boys after school hours if I wasn't present. There'd been an “issue” at a church when she was found “making out” with a boy, and I was beside myself, wondering what in the world had become of my oldest child. She was considered academically gifted and had a singing voice most would kill to possess. She was personable, friendly, outgoing. But she was alienating people with her hyperactive behavior and unpredictable ways.
I didn't know about the cutting until she was almost fifteen, when she reached over to grab something and her many bracelets-she wore them almost up to her elbow-slipped and I gasped.
Once again we visited her doctor. He was a kindly man who always wore a bow tie and spoke softly, sweetly. Elizabeth loved him. He asked me to leave the room and he questioned her about sex. No, she said, she hadn't done that yet. He asked her about the cutting. She responded that she just got so sad. She didn't know why.
He wanted to prescribe an anti depressant, but I refused for some reason. I wanted a psychiatrist to evaluate her first. I put off contacting the psychiatrist for about a month, getting ridiculously bogged down by nonsense, until I came across another notebook of Elizabeth's. This one detailed about seven plans for how she'd commit suicide. Very, very detailed. With my legs buckling out from under me, I wobbled to the telephone and made the appointment.
They gave me questionnaires to fill out and some to give her teachers to fill out. This gifted child was performing worse and worse in school, by the way. I was always worried about Elizabeth. Every day brought this feeling of weight in my chest. What will I get called about today? Will Elizabeth lower herself to attend classes? Will she get into an altercation with another student? I never knew what each day would bring.
Once I had to pick her up from the mall. She was detained by mall security for stealing a three dollar bracelet. They'd had to drag her screaming and kicking to the office where the security officer sat in fuming silence, nursing a bruised shin. “We've never had anyone react like that,” he spoke to me in a haughty, wounded tone. We simply were going to escort her to this office and call you, but she went berserk and we had to cuff her.” I apologized profusely all the way out the door and commenced yelling at my daughter through gritted teeth all the way to the car.
