Canyons of Life

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JLS said:
Disclaimer: very much non hunting, and some incredibly heavy shit. If that isn’t your thing, stop reading. This is truly the anti instagram reel about life.

This is without doubt, the hardest post I’ve ever written. I debated about sharing this, and my natural inclination is to lock it away from the world where no one can see it. However, some of you are close and personal friends. Some of you are parents. Some of you will be parents. Some of you may be walking through something similar, and some of you may be in the future.

I left late morning Friday to meet a couple of friends for a season finale chukar hunt in Oregon. I almost didn’t go. My youngest two daughters had an apocalyptic blow-up Thursday while I was at work. My youngest daughter went to a friend’s house to stay while things cooled down. I thought we had things kind of worked out that we could let emotions cool for a few days, and then revisit things early in the week.

The last hour and half of the drive is completely off grid. As I drove Friday evening, I had an increasingly overwhelming sense of dread something horrible was going to happen while I was gone. I chalked it up to an overactive mind and a lifelong struggle of giving things like these a little time to settle. I prayed for peace of mind. My sense of unease lessened but didn’t go away.

Saturday, while hunting, I had an overwhelming sense of urgency to find some cell coverage. I tried climbing higher but couldn’t find any. When we got back to camp, I borrowed my buddy’s inReach to send a text to my wife. She said come home ASAP.

I called my wife as soon as I got cell coverage on the way. My youngest daughter attempted to overdose Friday night. By the grace of God, she threw up twice during the night, which probably saved her life. My wife went down to talk to her Saturday morning and ended up taking her directly to the ER. When my wife finished telling me the story, she gave the phone to my daughter. I cried so hard I had to pull over. I was almost unable to speak. When I got the hospital that night, I was able to see her. She was exhausted and barely awake. I held her and cried.

My wife stayed in the ER, and I came home to take care of the dog. Saturday night was one of the darkest nights of my life. There is a back story here. Both of my parents committed suicide when I was 25. Mental illness and suicidal tendencies are a genetic reality. I blamed myself for the pain and torment my youngest daughter was living in. All three of my girls have struggled with anxiety and depression. I struggled with the reality they had to bear the burden of my family’s past. I fought an overwhelming urge to burn the house down and disappear.

I cried. I screamed at no one. I asked God why my kids had to suffer. I read the notes she had left and cried more. I screamed until I was hoarse. I slept fitfully.

Sunday was rough. I was a physical, mental, and emotional wreck. My daughter told me I looked like an 80-year-old man. I felt like it. I cried and prayed with her. I told her I was sorry in whatever way I had let her down as a parent. My best friend sent me a text Sunday night. He told me “We don’t get a say in whatever God’s plan is for us, but it’s inevitable.” I read that over and over that night.

On Monday, a psychiatrist interviewed my daughter, and then us. He recommended inpatient treatment. My daughter was scared and wanted to go home. I wanted to take her home. She wanted to see Finn. We all cried. I told her I thought inpatient treatment would be best for her, but in the end, she would not be forced to go.

Segue to the backstory again, my mom attempted to overdose prior to her death. She was held for a 48-hour mandatory stay in the psychiatric ward in the hospital after she was released from the ER. We visited her, and she was pleading and demanding we get her out. As family, we could do so. We refused. I will never forget walking away from her room with her yelling at us to get her out. She needed help but refused it completely.

Fast forward, that memory was haunting me. I was terrified we would experience the same thing here. Finally, at 1:00PM they told her there was a bed available and she could check in at 2:00PM. I sat down by her and asked her what she thought. She closed her eyes and began to cry. My heart stopped. She opened them and said, “I’ll go.” I was completely overwhelmed with emotion. I cried pretty much uncontrollably the whole way home to get her some clothes and take Finn to see her.

The check in process was hard. She can’t have visitors. I can’t even begin to describe how scary it is to leave your baby girl in a situation like this. I am praying continually for God to watch over her, to protect her, to give her the strength to be vulnerable, to heal her heart, and to give her confidence in who she is as a person. We don’t know how long she’ll be there. The uncertainty and fear is nearly crippling at times.

The ripple effect from this is like an emotional tsunami. Where do you start picking up the pieces and sorting through emotions? The mind is an amazing and beautiful thing, but it can also be terrifying in how it works. Hug your family. We get a second chance at being whole, and for that I am forever grateful. The what ifs are incomprehensible. Don’t take anything for granted. Talk to your kids. The signs aren’t always obvious, even to professionals.

Even in the deepest and darkest canyons, there is hope.

I lift my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalms 121:1-2
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I see this is many months old now. I may not have noticed if someone didn’t revive it. I haven’t read through yet, and We may have our differences, @JLS but I hope that your daughter is living life with a smile these days... I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. As a father, I couldn’t imagine the trauma I’d still be living with… 😞 Takes guts to post to the public. Very personal and serious. God bless…….. ✌🏽
 
@JLS I know you know this, but what your girls are going through will require a careful lifetime of management and treatment, just as if they were insulin dependent diabetics. One doesn’t take one syringeful of insulin and find oneself cured. It takes daily evaluations of blood glucose measurements and modulations of treatment based on the lab work.

Daily.

Even when you don’t feel like doing the finger sticks to check the glucose levels.

And the system handicaps parents for privacy considerations. If your children have reached “adulthood“ per the calendar, they can give their caregivers the authorization to keep you informed and better involved. But it must be written, and could be rescinded at any time.

I appreciate your advocacy on behalf of your daughters. I will continue to thank heaven for answered prayer and miracles on their behalf.
 
JLS said:
Truer words have not been spoken. The toll is real right now.

A couple of weeks ago I was all packed to go spend a couple of days with friends who were elk hunting. When I got home I found my youngest sitting on the couch in tears talking to my wife.

She said she felt like she was slipping back to where she was last winter. School has been getting the better of her, friend drama, typical teenage stuff. Plus, she hadn’t been taking all of her meds and hadn’t seen her counselor in weeks/months.

Thankfully she was receptive to our help. Heavy dose of vitamin D, back on meds, for an appointment with our GP, going to the gym. It’s all been helpful to her and she is starting to see the value in taking care of herself. She has an appointment with her counselor next week.

Feeling a little better about things, I left Sunday after work to head to central MT for a week of elk hunting. Tuesday night found me and a good friend eating sockeye salmon and drinking Pendleton. Life is grand. Then the text message from my wife. Middle daughter is in a rough spot. Said she doesn’t want to be alive anymore.

I get up Wednesday and we break camp. It’s a long drive home. My guts are churning. I’m longing for a Copenhagen.

This kid can be too much like me. She’ll lock shit up and not let anyone see it. I finally get her to tell me she has overwhelming senses of dread that bad things are going to happen. That she’ll get in a car wreck. Get kidnapped. Fall off a bridge.

I asked her how long this has been going on and she said years. She told me she is so tired of worrying about what bad thing may happen she just wants to die. She sees no future and no happiness.

She saw a psychiatric PA last summer and she made a preliminary bipolar diagnosis. This was no surprise. However, she hadn’t ever told anyone about the anxiety disorders. We did an online screening and she’s high anxiety in about every anxiety disorder there is.

We’re trying to get her the help she needs. We’ve encouraged her to take a quarter off from school so she can get a handle on things. It’s a bitch getting into a psychiatric eval. Getting mental health help when you have a middle class income and insurance is completely $*)Q!#@$ impossible.

She has an appointment with our GP in a few weeks. She too had quit seeing her counselor and hadn’t told us. Because of privacy laws they can’t tell us.

I haven’t figured out how to not live in fear. I don’t enjoy going hunting nearly as much anymore because I dread what may happen while I’m gone. I don’t want my wife to have to deal with this alone and it consumes me.

I’m tired of watching my kids battle the demons that come with mental illness. It’s simply exhausting.
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Hang in there. We went through a lot of that stuff when our daughter was the same age. We were still dealing with it when my wife and son died. Jessie managed to climb out of that hole pretty much on her own. I was no help. She's doing okay now. There is hope.
 
Curve balls. Impressive parenting to embrace the suck and find means to see/search for the light.

Good on you and your wife. Tough gig! Helps to spew it out - off the chest.

You and your family are in our (wife and I) thoughts and will fit right in with our prayers this evening.

We have to prep to swing at life's curve balls over the plate. Fact of life. Keep y'er eye on the ball. A single is a great hit.
 
JLS said:
Truer words have not been spoken. The toll is real right now.

A couple of weeks ago I was all packed to go spend a couple of days with friends who were elk hunting. When I got home I found my youngest sitting on the couch in tears talking to my wife.

She said she felt like she was slipping back to where she was last winter. School has been getting the better of her, friend drama, typical teenage stuff. Plus, she hadn’t been taking all of her meds and hadn’t seen her counselor in weeks/months.

Thankfully she was receptive to our help. Heavy dose of vitamin D, back on meds, for an appointment with our GP, going to the gym. It’s all been helpful to her and she is starting to see the value in taking care of herself. She has an appointment with her counselor next week.

Feeling a little better about things, I left Sunday after work to head to central MT for a week of elk hunting. Tuesday night found me and a good friend eating sockeye salmon and drinking Pendleton. Life is grand. Then the text message from my wife. Middle daughter is in a rough spot. Said she doesn’t want to be alive anymore.

I get up Wednesday and we break camp. It’s a long drive home. My guts are churning. I’m longing for a Copenhagen.

This kid can be too much like me. She’ll lock shit up and not let anyone see it. I finally get her to tell me she has overwhelming senses of dread that bad things are going to happen. That she’ll get in a car wreck. Get kidnapped. Fall off a bridge.

I asked her how long this has been going on and she said years. She told me she is so tired of worrying about what bad thing may happen she just wants to die. She sees no future and no happiness.

She saw a psychiatric PA last summer and she made a preliminary bipolar diagnosis. This was no surprise. However, she hadn’t ever told anyone about the anxiety disorders. We did an online screening and she’s high anxiety in about every anxiety disorder there is.

We’re trying to get her the help she needs. We’ve encouraged her to take a quarter off from school so she can get a handle on things. It’s a bitch getting into a psychiatric eval. Getting mental health help when you have a middle class income and insurance is completely $*)Q!#@$ impossible.

She has an appointment with our GP in a few weeks. She too had quit seeing her counselor and hadn’t told us. Because of privacy laws they can’t tell us.

I haven’t figured out how to not live in fear. I don’t enjoy going hunting nearly as much anymore because I dread what may happen while I’m gone. I don’t want my wife to have to deal with this alone and it consumes me.

I’m tired of watching my kids battle the demons that come with mental illness. It’s simply exhausting.
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Sounds like a real patch of shit. It’s hard to envision anything better when we’re in the shit. Your words explain to me that you feel as you know a man might in this situation. Hypervigilant, anxious, overreacting and emotionally sensitive. But you’ve been here before. I know you’ve been here and probably tried all the remedies that many of us have tried to get out of that ditch. Substance abuse, new spouse, quit church to do yoga instead. I was already in a ditch influenced by work when my Dad killed himself and I drank my way out. Rough couple years.

Three years later, my first child was born and this year my second. Nowadays I use wholesome activities to engage my mind and body. The dark lifted and has kept away because my paradigm was changed. Time as well as medicine, family, therapy, reconciling why I did things or acted certain ways.

This shit will too pass like other shit in your life history. Please take care of yourself so you can take care of them. Thank you for reaching out and continuing this thread because we’re here for you and you don’t need to go this alone.
 
@JLS You continue to be an inspiration. Your courage to be honest, open, and just f@ckin’ real means a ton to me. Kim and I just watched a pretty great documentary “Stutz” on Netflix. I think you and the crew could draw from it. I know I did. We probably all could. It’s the story of a therapist and his client. I love it because it’s about action. I’m here for you buddy.
 
It blows me away how fast new threads can get pushed down the list… I feel I see much that is posted here. I don’t do the FB or IG or non of that jazz so I like to stay tuned in here. I might have not have said such insensitive things to you if I had read this real time.. I’d $*)Q!#@$ hate me too, dude.
 
@JLS so sorry to hear once again. The dark days are hard to shake but they can be overcome with patience and the solidarity of the family. True that unfortunately on the insurance/HIPPA aspect of mental health, just seeking it drags you to the ragged edge. So important that you get her to stay on a regular regime of her meds. The on again off again is so common and can reek havoc to their systems. Plus it can take an inordinate amount of time to fine tune. When they finally diagnosed my brother (correctly after years of failure) as being bipolar it still took years to get the “just right” amount of a med combo to knock off the peak and valleys to let him live his life down the middle. Too much Prozac, one way trigger, too much lithium, a trigger the opposite direction. Then when the docs finally “got it down” it was still the matter of home taking it. Long and short of it is that it can work but they have to buy into the effort. I wish you well my friend and will keep your family in our thoughts and prayers.
 
This was not the update I was wanting to read. You and your family are in my thoughts and prayers.
 
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Wish there was something I could say or do to help or make things better, man. Fear sometimes creeps in that my kids will one day inherit my own brand of mental illness (alcoholism/addiction) and if that should ever happen, I aim to work hard to be able to approach that struggle with as much grace and dignity as you’ve dealt with your own.

And, not that this sort of stuff is particularly helpful right now, but speaking from my own experience I very much want to echo what @kansasdad wrote. He nailed it. It’s super important to remember once things get better. There’s a saying in the group that I’m a part of that my disease is out there doing push-ups, waiting to get me alone and kill me. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but I believe it to be true because I’ve seen it, so I’ve taken that to heart so that I never forget. Because life gets good and it’s easy to forget. Doesn’t mean that the diseased person has to live in fear, they just have keep a level of self-awareness.

Sending you and your daughter and your whole family nothing but love.
 
I appreciate the support. It’s terrifying to think of some of the possible outcomes. I hope and pray the outcome is some semblance of mental peace and a healthy and productive life.

But, whenever I drive through downtown I have these unimaginable thoughts and questions of if my daughter will end up homeless, living a life of torment. Will she break and turn to drugs? Will she break and attempt suicide? My cousin lived in his car for a couple of decades while he battled schizophrenia, all while my uncle did all he could to try and help him.

It’s very difficult to square hope with reality at times.
 
JLS,
Thanks for the update and the willingness to share life's challenges. Your family is in my prayers. May God provide you and your daughters with a strong support group from both your Church and Medical Communities.
 
JLS, I really have no words that can help solve your daughters' health problems, I truly wish it could be that easily fixed.

My heart goes out to all of you.
 
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