Held in the hands of another

Today—of all days—she wouldn’t get up and go to school. There is nothing particularly special about today, except that my tank is empty, and my day is full. I have no space for her, and yet, here she is.

To say that I want to give up is an understatement of such grandiose proportions; it feels like a whisper into the wind. I don’t want to give up on everything. Just her. Just now.

As I grasp my warm cup of tea, I hear her laugh behind the closed door. I sigh. It is good to know she can still laugh, still be cared for, by someone who is not me. But even that moment of goodness is tainted with bitter sadness—why not me? With back-to-back-to-back indescribably tough days, I was at a loss. I didn’t know what to try next. She refused to talk to us, her parents—God-given—not hers by birth. The part that feels crazy is the situation: we have either asked her to do something benign, like clear the table, or she has witnessed an interaction between us and our other daughter. In the brief moment that it takes to switch from one slide to the next, she ricochets “madly off in [another] direction”.

Earlier today, I sat picking through my salmon salad, my body defeated by an exercise class and my emotions weighty after days of emotional battle—with her, and with my own gremlins. Anxiety coursed through my body with a current that made me quiver. With brain vessels clogged by confusion, and the skin of my living stretched so tight I felt paralyzed; I chose the unthinkable. I picked up my non-school-going defiant daughter, the one who had been calling me names for days, and took her with me to my massage. I needed her to be with me, so that she couldn’t refuse to come to the appointment we had at her school, with the principal and her teachers later in the day. I gave up my much needed and highly anticipated massage.

Maybe, I rationalized, she needed it more than me. Maybe, I needed to do this for her. Maybe…I was crazy.

I allowed, even encouraged, her to climb onto the massage table. The table that had been prepared for me. The one with the mock-sheep-skin heated mattress pad that was draped with supremely soft flannel sheets. The table with the form-fitting pillows that I could sink into as if I were embraced by a cloud. The table that perched at the hip of Linda—my caring and attentive massage therapist—a deep and wise friend, mentor and healer. I watched her undress, until she got down to her skivvies, and then she asked me to turn around, modest, as if we had become strangers overnight.

Now, I am cradled in the waiting room chair, like a mound of clay, eyes closed, listening to the calming chimes in the water bath, as they are pushed toward and away from each other rhythmically. I hear again, her laugh pulsing through the door, as she relaxes in the embrace of my Linda. She, who had yelled and screamed and pitched things through space and time at me, and my husband. We, who had adopted her, were left to answer to the sins of others. Sins we could only imagine or suppose as she had locked the events and circumstances of the past, in a trunk called “forgotten” or perhaps “forbidden”.

She suffers from past ghosts and traumas in indescribable ways. How could I ever make right what had been done wrong? How could I show up for her when she pushed and shoved me away, if not with arms and legs, then with words: “I hate you”—“Leave me alone!”—“You’re not my mother.” How could I pick myself up, after being knocked down? How could I stop the internal bleeding from so many emotional jabs? Where did her feelings end, and mine begin?

When she snaps back to that unseen place, I am surreptitiously cast as a villain. She rails and fights me as if her life depends upon it. At first, unaware that I had been recast from mother to villain, I watched, with horror as she transformed. Once started, I have no influence or ability to thwart an episode. I am unable to comfort, soothe or communicate with her at all. There, we circle each other, like two wrestlers on a mat; we warily dance, with muscles tense and sculpted in perfect symmetry. Her, with eyes glazed and shrouded in fear, in a state of fight or flight, and me—with fear and compassion and bewilderment—arms open, hoping to scoop her up and protect her.

The failure I feel is pervasive, the anguish pulling at my insides like cords tightly woven…and then sliced and frayed. At times, giving up seems like a good option. But, I will gain strength from author Krissi Dallas’ words, “There is no easy way out of our circumstances…Sometimes you stick it out even when you want to give up because you know that on the other side is either a better situation or a better you”.

So, as she relaxed enough to laugh on the massage table, I would not allow myself to think about the meeting that lay ahead, or her inability to handle her emotions. Or the basketball game that she would not be allowed to go and watch, or the fact that she would rail against me again when I said “No”, and try and jump out of the moving van. Right now, I would take this opportunity to rest my soul, knowing that she was being held in the hands of another.