Sara Teasdale's poem, I Shall Not Care was published when she was 31.  That was 17 years before she committed suicide, although it has been credited as her suicide note.  Like so many depressed people, Teasdale seemed to battle her disease long before taking her life.  There seems to be more of a clarification every year, but there is still a general perception of suicidal people as lacking some kind of intelligence, or as weak minded.   In reality, depression tickles at the cerebral areas, hoping to grip and suffocate the hope living there.  The depression so gripping that there is no escape, no hope left for those so full of promise and ability.  The tightening happening so completely that the bits of hope drip through the vise and leave a trail with the shell of potential crumpled at the end, forever where they are.

   Last week we spent the day together and than I got a text, "Mom, I don't want to talk about it.  But I want to hurt myself so bad."  I ran to her room and she was sobbing, through the tears she said, "I don't know what is so wrong.  Nothing happened."  Through my broken heart I told her it is the disease.  I told  my newly minted teenage daughter that her mind didn't work right.  I told her I was proud of her for resisting the urge to take a razor blade to her baby skin, her young skin with so much life inside it. At the same time as the words left  my lips, my heart broke and bleed my gratitude that she is still with me, my gratitude that she has not let that life seep through her body in a pool of mortal remnants. 

     She feels as though she has already lived all the life she is entitled too.  She feels as though she is robbing time from someone unseen.  She feels as though she cannot steal their time any longer, as though someone is being harmed each time she takes a breathe she does not feel belongs to her.  She feels hopeless, unworthy and out of place.  She does not feel hope anymore, it has been squashed by the endless cycle of wanting a better tomorrow.  Then tomorrow gets here and it is not better, it is another reincarnation of yesterday.  This is the silencer of hope, the silencer that leads to the deadly act when there is no hope left at all.

      She told me that there are days she doesn't want to be here and there always will be.  I know this is a life-long battle and I ache for her.  I ache with the endless stress of not knowing how to stop it.  I feel like the ending is already written, with no way to change it.  I am simply barreling toward it with insignificant actions, trying as hard as I can to get nowhere.  I feel as though I cannot save her, no matter what and it scares the hell out of me and makes me mad at the same time.  Trying to save someone that doesn't want to be saved is a terribly helpless feeling.  Ernest Hemingway pointed out that, "The sun also sets."  I am trying very hard to not let it set on my daughter until her entire day is done.

     Her fourteenth birthday is Wednesday.  If she can make it until then it will be one more year that she lived, that she reached toward what she can be and what she is.  One more year that I kept her on this earth to live her wonderful life, the one with so much to give.  She has the ability to matter.  She can change the world.  Why can't she see how much she matters.  

     I read somewhere that more than 50% of adults with mental health issues were diagnosed at the age of 14.  This is probably a life-long disease and one she must have in order to reach the depths of the human soul that she must see in order to bring things to light, but it is unfair.  I wish she could get some kind of reprieve for even a small amount of time.  "The darkness followed me as I grew up." -Peter Zeller

I Shall Not Care

WHEN I am dead and over me bright April

Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,

Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted,

I shall not care.

I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful

When rain bends down the bough,

And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted

Than you are now.

“Hope” Is The Thing With Feathers

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." -Ernest Hemingway

I have two wonderful children and they are the center of my responsibility, thoughts and life.  They have divinely given talents that make their capabilities unlimited.  I am amazed at the thought of where they can go and what they can do in this life.  They have the potential to leave the world a better place, the very most desire that burns inside all souls.  They can actually make their mortal time matter.  Knowing their potential makes their trials during their sojourn on earth have a point, but they don't make it easier to watch as the person that loves them most, as the person that wants them to suffer the least.

My thirteen-year-old daughter has depression.  It is not just  a down-in-the-dumps, teenage, she'll get over it, sort of thing.  My thirteen-year-old daughter has depression.  It is the I spend nights watching her sleep and hoping that she will still be here in a week, check her arms for self-harm, what does that phone call from her principal mean, kind of depression.  It is a terrible thing to watch because she hurts so bad and I can't do anything about it.  Watching her waste away is watching what I love most leave to be replaced by a shell.  Instead of a bright laughter, her eyes spill tears of frustration and hopelessness.  She doesn't want to be sad.  She doesn't want to be permanently broken beyond repair.  She wants to be normal and cry over boys, not numbness.

The depression also feeds my motherly insecurities.  Every mother knows that feeling not being good enough. All of my children's faults can be traced to my lack of good parenting, or the influence of my bad choices. Their lack of perfection has to be my fault because it could not be theirs.  This is the downfall of all mothers.  We simply are not good enough for our own standards, and therefore carry all responsibility for our loved ones' lives.

It is a difficult disease that robs the victim piece by piece, until they are no longer the same person.  It is also a shameful disease that has always been misunderstood.  I can't tell anyone my daughter is this sick because their contempt will not make it easier for her to heal.  I can only trust those professionals I have hired to try to find her cure, hoping that they do before her will to live completely distinguishes into darkness.  It is very much a race to find her strength and to mend her brokenness, without a known deadline, or a known fix.