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Have you ever squeezed out every last possible drop of your entire heart and soul, to help someone you love?
The type of help that requires your life to come to a complete and immediate halt?
Where you sacrifice your own already compromised physical health, stretch the limits of your relatively healthy mental state to its absolute breaking point and are forced to push aside the needs of your children, husband and other loved ones?
It is something I knew I had to do. There was never any doubt in my mind that I had to try to help this someone, who would have otherwise lost her life. It was my idea. My plan. My insistence that we try one more thing in order to give her a chance for a better life – or just simply, a life.
For six months while she lived with us, I used up all of my God-given love I had to give, on her. Not unlike what you do for an infant, I was there at her beck and call to answer to and meet all her possible needs including the ones I frantically anticipated she might have. She did not ask or demand this of me. I just did it.
We had become one person, joined at the hip, thinking, speaking and acting as one. A beautifully synchronized and choreographed dance where you glide through the steps and take turns leading the other when needed. This, among the many other dances prompted by anger, confusion and betrayal. Like on a see-saw where you teeter along trying to stay balanced, we tried avoiding the sudden and abrupt highs and lows.
Days and weeks passed, each and every one carrying with it an intensity and stress level beyond comprehension and human ability. I awoke every morning exhausted from the previous day’s events and from the lack of sleep I experienced, as I lay awake in bed at nights consumed with anxiety, worry and fear.
Was I doing the right thing? Was it working? Was she listening to me? Was I getting through? Did I show her enough love? Should I had said things differently? Was she happy? Sad? Angry? Were my kids angry at me? Was this unfair to them?
Not only was she awarded with my undivided and unconditional love, I had also arranged for her to receive every possible outside support from doctors, clinics, therapists and schools. World renowned experts in the field of, Mental Illness. Top of the line facilities and assistance. She truly had it all at her young finger tips. All, for her.
I will admit that she did try. She went willingly to all the appointments and vowed to get better. She did not like what she had become and wanted desperately to change.
Then, it all went down. Down to the lowest, filthiest most miserable basement of hell. Pure organic hell.
She decided she had enough. Turned 18 and never looked back. Just like that. Went back to her old ways, back to damaging relationships with the people who love and care about her the most. Back to a life of lies, manipulation and danger. Back to the self-destructive risky behavior she had vowed months before, she would try to stop.
I was left a broken person. With a broken heart and soul. A sense of betrayal, of being used and snowed. As if someone had taken my heart and thrown it on the ground, kicked it with all the strength in the world and beat it to pieces – and then spit it back at me.
It left me bitter, cynical, hardened and lacking faith in humanity. I could feel the ugliness and anger swelling up inside of me. I know I gave it my all – and beyond. But the pain, remains.
I have not yet recovered and can only hope that in time, my old caring, compassionate, positive and loving self, will resurface and take control of my life again.
I can help her, no more.
