THE AUTHENTIC ECLECTIC
Her Black Eyes Promised My Bloody Death After The Cop Didn’t Charge Me
I slept with both eyes open to survive
911, what is the nature of your emergency?
Holy crap, 911?
My daughter has cajones, that’s for sure.
My heart raced.
“Let Me Go!”
Possessed with hatred, she seethed and sputtered.
“Get Out of My Way or I’ll Kill You!”
Each word held firm to its own space. She spat them out one by one and emphasized them through clenched teeth. My daughter was shrouded in the raging anger of a caged animal.
All of my twisted organs danced on high alert. I learned a few years prior that the energy I give to my daughter is the energy I will get back. My inner turmoil cannot reflect on my face or in my voice. It was up to me to diffuse her painful outburst.
It’s your choice to go or not. If you decide to go, your packed bags will be outside the door when you return.
The soft cadence in which I spoke belied the hell within my mind.
A piece of me was pleased that I stood firm with no discernable tremble. My clear voice sounded controlled and took us both by surprise. My refusal to have my buttons pushed, infuriated her.
Irate at the perceived injustices, and my convincing cool exterior, she slammed her way out the back door slider. The tracking heaved, bent, and the door never completely and properly closed again.
She paced on the balcony of the small apartment. Her arms flailed and the sliding glass door did little to mute her screams to 911.
Rapid-fire pleas for assistance filtered through the walls. She feared for her life because I kidnapped her and held her hostage.
Really, she called 911?
My heart raced.
This meltdown ensued because I told her we had things to do to set up her new living arrangement. A party with strangers was not on the agenda. We had unlocked the front door and barely started moving things in when the Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook, hotlines caught fire. Word was out; The new Queen arrived in town with her very own castle.
Damn social media.
Her whispers drifted into my ‘mom’ hawk-like ears. The words, “I have my own place now, swear,” and, “Yeah, I’m coming. I’ll be there as soon as my mom leaves,” would not elicit a reaction from me.
Some cards need to be held close to the chest.
In her excitement to have a roof over her head, she neglected to absorb the specifics we had gone over. The plan involved my temporary guidance to teach her transitional living skills. Freshly ousted from a structured program, filled with resources that had failed miserably, left me with few options. It was my turn to try. Whether I stayed for two weeks or two months would be determined based on her responsibility level.
Aside from basic hygiene, house care, trash schedule, and looking for employment, the focus would be on psychiatric appointments and consistent medicine compliance. Knowing her dual diagnoses would cause gridlock under the weight of too many tasks, I planned to stay until a reliable routine took hold.
I banked on a mom’s magic touch.
I would be her roommate until… an undetermined time frame for her autopilot to kick in, and she earned trust.
Yeah, she forgot all that.
Visions of sugar plums danced in her head. They looked like freedom. She would host parties and share her ‘crib.’ Information, already broadcasted to numerous Facebook friends in the area, spread like wildfire. Her desire to hang with these online strangers who she hadn’t met yet, of course, overshadowed our reason for being there.
Her autism presented as people-pleasing regardless of her safety. The idea was to super-infuse her with social coping skills, living skills, and survival skills. In theory, her mental health was manageable with proper therapy combined with medicine.
Her manufactured world collided with reality and the combustion was lethal.
My daughter’s agitation grew in direct proportion to her realization that I was not going anywhere. Her eyes turned black. Foreboding. I knew those eyes well and they were hard to navigate safely at times.
I contemplated my position.
She was a legal adult at 18 years old. Am I toying with boundaries I have no right to enforce? Is she right? Screw it, let the cops come. I needed help and resigned myself to the idea that I might be the one carted away.
Day One of our plan (mine?) was sabotaged by her mental illness, though, and not just her PDD, aka Asperger Syndrome NOS. Her personality disorder ignited, and she flew off the handle at the prospect of a ruined night.
She believed the police would help her by removing me for my suffocating and nefarious ways.
My daughter wanted her street cred. She had priorities.
When the police officer responded to her emergency call and entered our unit, his eyes darted about to make a quick assessment. My daughter flew in from the balcony like a wild banshee. Her screams of kidnapping and being held hostage against her will escalated rapidly. She glared, pointed at me, and turned to give the officer her best deer-in-headlights look with eyes that screamed, Save me, please, save me!
She spat nails and breathed fire each time she uttered, “My Mom” followed by her string of accusations against me.
You need to arrest her. She can’t do this. My mom won’t let me leave!
Kidnapping and holding me hostage ARE AGAINST THE LAW. Arrest her!
He asked a few quiet questions about her options. A roof, clean and stable surroundings that she was lucky to have, versus the streets? The soothing words from a third party took hold. I stood to the side and remained still until needed. I was shell-shocked at the mayhem so it wasn’t a stretch for me to wait patiently.
My brain struggled to process that she called 911 at all.
And that our first company, night one, is a police officer.
Nice.
Obviously skilled at negotiations and resolving volatile situations, the cop worked his magic and calmed her. My daughter’s swollen face, streaked with tears, and her unwashed, unruly hair, made for a desperate image. Her breathing normalized during his ad hoc counseling session.
In a bizarre turnaround, yet expected fashion for her, she waved to Officer Mike with a cheery goodbye.
She would not leave to hang out with strangers. My daughter would be thankful for all I was doing to guide her and help her navigate adulthood.
Officer Mike was confident.
I was not.
We finished setting up her room with sheets and bedding in silence. The apartment only had one bedroom, so I tucked in a sheet and readied a blanket on the couch.
I dozed off from sheer exhaustion.
Moms of mentally ill children, regardless of age, never sleep deeper than the surface. I caught sounds, and murmurs, of her talking on her phone in her room.
Her door creaked open, and I felt her studying me, though my eyes stayed closed. As she passed me in the darkness, her animated discussion became braver. Emboldened by her delusions that I may be asleep, she plodded out to the balcony.
The hobbled sliding door, unable to securely catch after the rough and tumble greeting it suffered earlier, allowed me full access to eavesdrop.
I peered through just one partially opened eye and spied the glow of her cigarette against the blackness of the night.
“Hell no, I can’t take her Jeep. Bitch sleeps with the keys in her bra.”
Truth. My keys nestled in my sad excuse for cleavage. And, my purse lodged nicely under the couch pillow below my head. My fingers stretched a bit to confirm my wallet’s secure position. This was not my first rodeo.
As she neared the end of her cigarette, she stood for one final long drag. Smoke billowed above her head and hung suspended in the still air.
My daughter’s fingers wrapped around the outer frame of the sliding door.
She hesitated and made one last declaration before heading back to her room.
“They’ll never find her body after I cut her into a million little pieces and scatter them at the beach.”
There would be no sleep that night or many following nights, either.
My heart raced again as her bedroom door clicked closed.
I would sleep with both eyes open.
Officer Mike knows where we live now.
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