A heavy heart

I've always had a heart for kids....especially troubled kids.   I think I first realized this the summer after my freshman year of college when I went to work at a day reporting center for juveniles who were in trouble with the law.  I worked with some pretty bad kids -- they were into drugs and gangs, they were failing school and causing problems and breaking the law and not exactly the kind of kids you'd want your kids hanging out with.  But the more I got to know those kids, I saw something that very few other people saw.  I saw potential.  I saw broken homes and missing dads and poor parenting and hurting kids who were acting out and trying to get attention in all the worst ways.  I was less than 10 years older than most of these kids (and only three or four years older than some!), but we were worlds apart.  These kids had seen more and been through more than I hope I ever go through in my lifetime.   My heart broke for these kids -- they needed a chance, they needed someone to see the good in them, to believe in them....and if nobody else was going to do, then I was!

Fast forward a few ten years....yikes that makes me sound old.  I had the privilege of meeting a particularly special kiddo.   The Court called to see if I would serve as guardian ad litem (a fancy name for an attorney appointed by the court to look out for a child's best interest) for a teenage girl.  She was hospitalized after a nearly successful suicide attempt.  She had already spent nearly two years in residential treatment and had been home only a couple of weeks when she attempted suicide.  Her mom was  at the end of her rope and had turned to the state for help.  And so, I took the appointment and met this precious girl.  She struggled with mental illness, chronic depression, eating disorders, and self-harming.  She pushed people away and continually struggled with believing that no one wanted her (and worked hard to prove herself right with her behaviors).  But I looked at her and saw potential.  I saw a little girl who had been through more than any little girl should ever have to go through.  I saw a little girl so hurt by the people she should have been able to trust that she couldn't trust anyone.  And over the next 3+ years she bounced between foster homes and residential treatment, but I watched her grow to trust me, and figure out that I was going to be there no matter what.  I'd cheer her on when she was successful and when she made a bad choice, she knew she could expect me to call out her but to remind her that she one bad decision (or even twenty bad decisions) didn't define her.  We talked often about the need to pick up and move on and I can't even tell you the number of times I told her, "this decision doesn't define who you are...learn from it, decide you're going to make better decisions next time and move on."   Last year she turned 19 and my work with her ended.  Or at least my "official" work ended, but I couldn't make myself just walk out on her.  After all, that's what nearly every other adult in her life had done and I wasn't going to be just like everyone else.  So she kept my cell phone number and I assured her she could call anytime...and she did.  We'd talk on the phone weekly and it wasn't uncommon to get a text message nearly daily.  Just before Christmas I made a trip to Omaha and we went out for dinner and went shopping.  We had a great time....but I had no idea it would be the last time I would ever see her.  You see, I got a phone call yesterday telling me that she had committed suicide.

I wish I had a coherent thought process about all of this, but I just don't.  I'm heartbroken that yesterday afternoon she was in such a horrible place she didn't see any reason for living.  I'm ticked off that as a system, we failed her.  I wish I had solutions -- I don't know how you deal with severe mental illness but  I do know this....the system we have right now doesn't work.  There's a problem when someone can spend YEARS in residential treatment and outpatient counseling and take every medication known to man and still be stuck in the same chronic depression and desperate situation they started with.  But amidst all this frustration and heart break, I have a renewed passion for the work that I do and the opportunity that I have to make a difference.  May I take my work seriously, continue to see the best in the kids that I work with and give these kids the chance they've never had.