Tough-Love Letters to a Troubled Teen - III

Dear Maisie, 

I haven’t heard from anybody down there since you got invited to spend a long weekend with the local authorities, so I find myself piecing together a mental image of what your days might be like during this separation from home. It grieves me to picture you in that unfamiliar, institutional place, but perhaps you have been granted some precious time to think through your past and your present and your future. 

I feel helpless right now. Sort of like when Uncle J. has a severe insulin reaction and all I can do is flutter about and offer orange juice and stroke his neck and provide a cool, damp cloth for his brow. Except I can’t even do that much for you.  And at least with his temporary hypoglycemia, I can watch as he slowly returns to me and that glazed, distant stare begins to refocus, his words gradually starting to come together in full sentences and his mind re-engaging with the world around him. 

With you, I have no idea whether anything I do or say helps – or hurts; no gauge for whether my caring and worrying mean anything in the midst of the turmoil that swirls around you in the form of legal repercussions and family estrangement; no direct contact to allow me a sense of the disorientation you must feel, being wrenched from your daily routine and the cozy nest of your own neighborhood and circle of friends. 

I can only keep writing these weekly letters, as I have for the past few years, since long before you misstepped your way onto the “Down” escalator of self-defeating behaviors, and pray that something will click, and you’ll soon find your way back to us. 

For I believe with all of my heart that you are not a lost soul who has chosen doom for yourself. What nonsense! When all the possibilities of a sunny and contented future lie within such a short reach, why would you? Nothing can be so overwhelming that you and God and your many loving supporters together can’t handle it. 

My prayer and my urgent yearning is that you will release yourself from the drama and the heartache now, rather than later, and choose without delay for tomorrow to be your next bright day.  

                          Love you and miss you always, 

                                             Aunt Suz