All righty then.

I am not going to take her up on her suggestion. Five months ago I chose to commit myself to a hospital precisely because I was suicidal. The only thing that stopped me from plowing my car into a tree was the knowledge that I would hurt my daughter in ways I couldn’t imagine. So I checked myself in and spent 9 days trying to get my head in one place; the next three months were spent doing the hard work of righting my ship. An intensive outpatient program combined with individual therapy and finding the right medications have gotten me here. To a place where I am still listing a bit, but I am mostly anchored to solid.

So that, hurled into my face, felt a bit like a rogue wave washing over me, pushing me down into the murky, my aft eager to take charge and send the entire vessel underwater.

I think I would have rather been literally slapped in the face, than have had those words pushed into my head. Because she knows why I was in the hospital. She knows that I have lived with clinical depression since I was a teenager: 15, in fact, the age she is now. She knows that she is at a higher risk for developing depression, but it’s just a risk, not a done deal. I have been open and honest about living with depression, since she was much younger; I never wanted her to feel isolated or different or crazy or yes, god forbid, suicidal, if she started feeling down or blue or sad all the time.

When she was younger, I sometimes had to take her to my therapy appointments because her father was working. I was going to the ‘talking doctor,’ I’d tell her, explaining that he helped when my heart hurt, or my mind hurt. If you have a broken arm, you go to the bone doctor, I’d tell her. The talking doc helped me in the same way. I never wanted her to fear depression, or feel that it was something that was shameful or needed to be hidden. I wanted her to know that treating the ache of a heart or a mind was something we do, like treating an ankle sprained playing basketball.

The night that I committed myself last August, her father and I went into her room. It was very late, I was crying, sobbing: I’m going to the hospital, to get some help. Good, she said. I love you, Mom. I love you, too, I told her.

Four days later, her dad brought her to see me. They waited in line at the locked acute wing, providing to staff for examination the slip-on sneakers, and clothes, that they’d brought me. We ate a snack in the kitchen area, and I showed them my private room and bathroom. It was important for her to see that I wasn’t tied to a bed, or walking around in a Johnny with my bumm hanging out. That recovery from a breakdown is a positive.

I’ve been back at work for a couple of months now, and we have for the most part maintained a fairly normal existence. Cracks have appeared though; a few weeks ago, in the middle of a conversation, she asked, in a tone tinged with nastiness: When are you moving out, anyway? I mean, you said you were getting a divorce, so why haven’t you left?

Hmm. Ouch. I told her I thought she was better than that; that she knows words hurt and that that hurt. And I would move out when I had the means to move out.

So this. This complete overreaction to being told to do the dishes and then being told that she was losing her phone, because I was tired of her shitty mouth and attitude?

I can’t do it.

It’s ok, Kitten, to hate me. You are 15 and being 15 sucks. School and friends and obligations and grades and all the stuff that comes with transitioning from little kid to young adult. You need someplace to vent, someone to be the target of your teenage poison. I have been that bullseye for a long time; it is easy for you to point the sharp edge of your dart and throw it at me, because I am willing to take it.

But this, my love, my light, is not ok.

You mean the world to me, Love, you really do. And because of that, I am going to find you a therapist who can help you with the anger you feel towards me, and perhaps, some underlying depression you may have. I don’t know: maybe you are angry that you don’t have a cookie-cutter vanilla mom, but one who struggles. Maybe you look at me and resent me because you know you’re at risk for depression, that my genes are a bit, Uhm, defective that way. Maybe you’re feeling it now and it scares the shit out of you and you hate me for it.

I am sorry, Sweetheart. Truly, I am. I will move out.

But it has nothing to with your words.

I will move out because I cannot live with the knowledge that you hate me so much that you think it is on to tell me to kill myself; that because I am still, even marginally, at risk for that, I can’t stay and be your target right now. I will move out so that you can let some of your anger and disappointment fade; so that I’m not a constant reminder of your disappointment or your worry what might become of you. I will move out so that you can get the help you need — and I do think you need help in processing your stuff.

I truly will kill and die for you, Honey. Moving out so that you have peace of mind? So that you and I don’t irreparably damage our relationship? Yes, my love, Of course I will go.

Ciao for now, my love. Wherever I am? There you are. And here I am. Waiting. Always. Waiting.

Because I love you more than life itself, and I want us to have a long and beautiful life together. Even if it means we have to be apart for a while.

Love always,

Mom