I am brought back to relaying our saga about loss of health and all the circumstances that come with that type of loss. We have a friend right now that is going thru cancer treatment. I feel that what we have gone thru/go thru pales in comparison to that. I feel that it pales in comparison to a lot of things that people are going thru. Consequently, I tend to stuff the emotions. I follow the adage that everyone has situations and circumstances they are dealing with, ours is nothing different. However, I was reminded this week that I should not minimize the pain and loss that we have endured, or suppress the situational anger that sometimes bubbles up within me. By doing so I run the potential of shutting down, of not feeling any emotion. While what we encounter daily is not potential life/end of life scenarios, we have been operating in a sort of crisis mode for over 5 years. When I think of it in those terms, it overwhelms me.
I am not sure what the most difficult part has been. The loss of financial stability has been frustrating. We have often joked that the process of paying our bills each payday might be more palatable if we made it some sort of drinking game....pay a bill, take a drink...transfer funds, take a drink, etc.. I do maintain perspective that there are many who are a lot worse off than we are. I don’t think that is really the point I am trying to make. We have more than most and less than others. For us the point is that we had worked very hard to put ourselves into a favorable financial position, one where a listing of our obligations didn’t require the use of a complicated spreadsheet. Now we feel there is no end in sight to what we owe. The daily unexpected non-budgeted expenses often induce nausea–how will we pay for that??
The loss of confidence that people view us favorably has been another bump on the sidewalk that I consistently stub my toe on. The day the CPS worker was on my porch still haunts me. I don’t know when, or if, I will be able to shake the fact that some felt we were capable of abusing our ill child. I know I should move past it, but when something like that happens, you feel as though everyone knows and has talked about it, or IS talking about it. ‘Well you know the Haans? They are pretty sure that they abused their youngest daughter and they are all in treatment for it now’. I shouldn’t give ourselves such an important place in our community–one where people care enough to gossip about us, but it is how I feel.
We also have encountered a separation from some of our peers. For most, we understand that it’s uncomfortable to talk about mental health issues. It’s easier to ignore anything is going on. It’s easier not to spend time with us because the subject might come up. While we acknowledge and understand it can be an uncomfortable topic, there have still been a lot of lonely days. Again, we have had several that have stood by us, but it only takes that 1 or 2 that seem to fade away to make you feel completely alone and unworthy.
Perhaps the hardest loss has been losing my idea of how raising three healthy, happy children to adulthood would look. The constant readjustment of plans and ideas is unsettling. While I know I am not in control and I need to trust God and his plan for our lives, it is still tough for a control freak like me. It’s hard to see your children suffer the normal day-to-day ups and downs. It’s hard to step back and let them fall on their face as they live thru trials and errors. But, it can be unbearable when your child suffers more than the usual day-to-day and you are powerless to change that for them.
For now, I just pray and hope that her current treatment routine will continue in a favorable direction. Since this past September we have seen huge strides and improvement. Every day is a new challenge, but those challenges seem to get more manageable and less strenuous. Maybe soon a time will come in our lives where I don’t think about her mental health issues in the present, but I think of them as a season of our lives that we have moved out of. Maybe soon I won’t have to ache with the pain that fills her emotional life daily. Maybe soon, she will look at me and say ‘remember when I was SO anxious all the time?’
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