The Dead of the Night
Written by Georgina
“Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness - an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can’t control it, or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the true place of belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.” Brene Brown
Picture this: Fifteen teenaged kids belting out lyrics in our living room. Dancing, squealing, and drinking. There’s cask wine, red bull mixed with vodka – as if they need any more energy. And a disclaimer: they all had permission from their parents.
The birthday girl, my daughter, labelled the bucket ‘vomit here.’
Forward planning, I’ll give her that.
A mate messaged me, put some paper towel in the bottom to stop the splashback. Bloody good life hack. But they’re young and these are the lessons of life.
No helicopter mother here.
I listen to them sing. My daughter’s voice the loudest. My eyes fill with tears. My heart full.
This night far away from three years ago. Admitted into the adolescent eating disorder unit. Medically unsound, her heart under so much strain.
Skin and bones. Walking dead.
My love hate relationship for the heart monitoring team and their trolley. The call of the alarm each time her heartbeat became too erratic. Mine felt like it broke right alongside her.
Dark times of the human experience but when it’s your child, it’s a different kind of gloom. The dead of the night. Maybe even hell.
Harrowing. Lonely. Desperate. Terrifying.
Many dismissive health professionals before she reached near collapse.
She was thirteen. I was furious. And shocked.
The re-feeding, the extraordinary time it took to coach and love my daughter back into life was nothing short of an ultra-marathon. Three months off work. One more barely part time.
A tight rope. Food is life. And yet, the psychological carnage of an eating disorder is merciless. A few months to take hold. All my energy. And hers. For days, weeks, months, and a couple of years.
She recovered.
Research, the good stuff, reports diagnosing anorexia early enough, intervening within 12 months of inception and getting the weight back on pronto, creates an 80 percent chance of full recovery. Tick, tick and tick.
And the true gold, with all these ticks it can be a once in a lifetime episode.
Timing is everything. And so is time. That is hope.
And who knows. A once off? Maybe the door is ajar?
But that is not where hope lives.
Our first wealth is health. Wellbeing is everything. Not money, prestige, material stuff. In this house. In this life.
Now she is sixteen, I’d say an addled sixteen as I tap this out, and if I asked for her words for this blog, she’d type “rolling my eyes at you mother.”
Divine and sassy, smart and kind. The kid who recently started her dream job at KFC…ironically. Yeah, anorexia we won.
Tonight, relegated to the front room, sitting in my favourite chair, candles lit, the party music pumping, reading a text reply from one of my closest friends. I messaged her to say we’ve come a long way, my daughter and I.
She responds, “Beautiful G. You can’t see the dawn at night. I love this reminder of hope. Big love.”
My friends. Spanning years, possibly lifetimes. Trudging, loafing, running, treading water, grasping for answers, drumming, laughing, dancing, bawling, dreaming, celebrating, ticking off small wins, tiny steps, and monumental moments. Rallying for each other in this adventure of life.
As another daughter struggles with mental health, learning difficulties and potentially ADHD, I find myself adrift. Losing count of being woken up by sobbing in my sleep. The dead of the night at 3am, facing the parental torrential storm of self-doubt and powerlessness. I remember her words.
You can’t see the dawn at night. This leaves me clinging to hope.
At some point of our lives, this is all there is.
Desperately I tell my friend even though I’d reached rock bottom as a mother, I’ve hit a lower one. Quick as a snap she messages back,” there is no bottom.”
I roar with laughter. My friends, their timing synced to the tune of a heartbeat.
Wiping cheap red wine off the kitchen bench as the teenagers sleep it off upstairs, I smile. Ms sixteen has unearthed her own power, in her own way. I watch her own it more and more. Quietly and loudly I applaud.
And there is no reason her sister will not do the same. She tops the sass in our family.
These years have been brittle. At times stuck on repeat. Indelibly hard. Stubborn. And yet, I have chosen to soften in the raw moments where you get to decide.
Laying upon the tiles under the shower, inconsolable. Broken open. And apart. Cracking. Drowning. Retracted. Cursing the universe. Begging for relief. Sweeping aloneness. Gasping for air. The pressure in my head. Broken capillaries around my eyes. Heaviness within my chest.
Being human. Loving with a heart wide open. Turning up to sometimes the brutality of life.
The messy yet graceful emergence of hope as I recoil from the edge.
They never left. Grace. And Hope.
It just got dark, just like my friend said.
She will always arrive for you, the dawn.
With astounding resonance.
Where no words are required. Just trust and breath.