What’s the saying? “If you love them, let them go“ or something like that …

It doesn’t mention the immense physical pain of heartache and not knowing you’ll ever see them again.

I’m sitting in a broken down car crying harder than it’s raining outside, and still people talk about hope

There's a claw-my-eyes-out pain to sessions with the family therapist when it's been so long since they've spoken to my child that their input is fiction.

"How would you feel having a meeting with your child? I'm not suggesting that they want a meeting, but I think we should think about it."

2 days after the event, we learn that our child has made a 3rd attempt on their life whilst being kept "safe" by professionals.

It took them 2 days to decide to notify us.

Yesterday they were busy holding a review to work out if they might have prevented the 1st attempt.

#nowords

I’ve just been preparing my questions for an ‘local adverse event review’ aka how did my child manage to attempt suicide twice whilst in a secure unit?

The conversation veered pretty quickly into why has the unit downplayed or ignored all our warnings.

In case you’re wondering, the time from Perth to Dundee is 20 Loving Kindness recitations

I misplaced my prayer beads (which isn’t a thing I ever thought I’d say) so am sitting in the waiting room of my child’s unit with no self-calming measures in place. The longer I wait, the tenser I get. With the beads the longer I wait, the calmer I get.

A good night’s sleep is a precious and wonderful thing. Especially when followed up by a cracking good cooked breakfast. C’mon world, I’m at ya!

Today is a hard day to remove my fog. Head is tight. Thoughts are negative. Body feels low. But I’ve been for a walk with the new puppy. A walk that I did so many times with our old dog. Good to get out but tinged with sadness. Now pup’s asleep in my arms on the sofa. It’s nice

The professional needs to build up a relationship with my child to learn what's going on. Then it all collapses, and the youngster is expected to pick it all up again with another professional.

This has happened three times so far within this twelve-month.

Yesterday, at a tribunal to assess my child's mental health status, we discovered that the doctor had completed their placement and left. Without informing us.

For the record, the doctor was excellent – asked more questions of us and gave more time to us than anyone else. But then vanished.

So Sunday means power cut day. Thoughtful, really, as it enforces rest and no screen time.

Looking back to the two ward visits this week, nobody offered to update me in any way on the mental health status of my child. I was there for a total of 8 hours.

Yesterday I left a message asking for the doctor to give me a 5-minute call. No response.

Staff managed to switch alarm off, just before technician arrived. First thing he did was trigger it back on…

In waiting room again, alarm going off constantly. Staff appear to have learned to filter it out of their awareness.

Me? Beep. It’s beep driving beep me fucking beep mad beep

Another day, another day.

When does your offspring's mental health crisis become your mental health crisis? How much vicarious trauma do we have to suffer before it's okay to collapse? When can a parent say 'enough' and refuse to receive the offspring back from hospital discharge?