Bullies and Heroes

It’s that time of year again. For one week every fall the Fair comes to town and it is all anyone in town talks about, young and old. Teenagers are usually dropped off and walk around meeting up with friends and riding the rides together for hours and hours having a blast. My daughter is no exception. I told her she could be dropped off this year, it would be the first year I felt comfortable doing that…the only problem is she isn’t stabilized and I know all it would take is one snide remark from a  snarky teenager (do they come in any other variety?) and she would rage. When she’s in rage-mode there’s no stopping her and the teen on the receiving end would most likely be seriously injured and any police that attempted to intervene would be assaulted as well. This was my fear in addition to her getting high, causing serious interactions because she’s on a regular dosing schedule of Ativan and that can’t mix well with other nervous system depressants.

I also worried that I would get a frantic call from her or from police and be unable to get to her for quite a while due to the heavy fair traffic. So, I stayed at the fair and walked around by myself for 8 hours and surprisingly I didn’t run into her one time. I called her every couple of hours to check on her and had her meet up with me 7 hours in so I could lay eyes on her.

Aside from aches and pains from walking around in the cold for 8 hours it was a pretty uneventful night. She had so much fun and got to experience the fair just like the other teenagers do.

On the way home her phone was ringing and text messages coming through in rapid succession. She was visibly distraught reading them and from her side of the conversations when she picked up the phone, she was being harassed.  Cue my sinking heart.

By the time we arrived home she was getting harassing calls, texts, posts all over her Facebook page, and several other kids posted cruel and vicious statuses about her. She was called fat, ugly, a whore, bitch, told nobody likes her and even told to go kill herself! The heartless, cruel little assholes had no idea that that’s exactly what they could cause if they continued the vicious attacks on her!! I just wanted to hurt every vicious little twit for hurting my child! Not rational, but that’s what my heart wanted so badly!

She wound up melting down once we got home. She was angry, crying, throwing things, cussing me, and screaming that she can’t take it anymore. It hurt my heart so much! She was quickly spinning out of control and refusing to take her medication. I told her if she kept refusing her meds I had no choice but to call 911 to take her to the hospital because she needed her medication and I knew the situation would only escalate. I had to call 911.

A couple minutes later she took her medication. Seconds after taking it she was crying and threw something else across the house. In a near-growl she said “I’m sorry. I’m SOOO angry and I don’t know what to do!”  You could see the anger and tension in her balled up fists and rigid body posture but her face only conveyed pain. My poor baby was hurting so bad.

I picked up the phone to call 911 back and let them know they weren’t needed and she took her medication but as I was calling I saw the familiar blue lights of a police car dancing through the window and pulsating on our walls. The paramedics were immediately behind the police.

We have become acquainted with several paramedics and one police officer in particular. They are our heroes. They have been so kind, understanding and patient with me and my daughter and I am so very thankful for that.

A new officer came in that night and I explained the situation and told him she finally did take her Ativan and would calm down shortly.  He stuck around to wait for it to kick in and make sure everything was ok. But what impressed me the most was while he was waiting he asked a lot of questions about her illness and was very empathetic. Our “usual” officer showed up too and walked straight in and addressed me by name and shook my hand, addressed my daughter by name and said hello to her.  The two officers stayed for about fifteen minutes asking questions and listening to what I had to say in regards to my daughters’ illness and that made me feel so good about the people that respond to my frantic calls when we’re in the midst of a crisis.  I have experienced the opposite end of the spectrum where we had officers physically hurt my child and yell at her that there’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just a bad kid and needs to straighten up and left her with a saucer-sized hematoma on her lower back as a reminder of what happens when you don’t do what they tell you to. We are very fortunate to have the paramedics and officers that we do. I plan on making them something as a token of our appreciation.

Oh – it turns out all the harassing was my daughters’ ex-best friend recruiting people to gang up on her because she was mad that my child broke up with the kid she was ‘dating’ and now had a new boyfriend. Really!?! My child suffered because of that petty bullshit!!

I intervened online and by calling the instigators dad. Please pray the torment has stopped.