Sitting in the lobby were families from many different backgrounds: black, white, rich, poor and in between.  Families in crisis of one sort or another.  I could see in them what they must have seen if they noticed me - utter exhaustion. To reach this point, to find a seat in this lobby, exhaustion was something you'd've become well acquainted with. 

As was frustration. And a whole of tears.

Sometimes all we have to do is remind her to make her bed, or tell her it's dinner time, or that she needs a shower. Or maybe she can't have something she wants. Sometimes it takes absolutely nothing at all and we’ve lost her to a raging storm of feral anger.  She simply disappears into black clouds of screaming, crying, stomping, and thunder that tosses her onto the floor, the bed, the walls.  There is no predicting this storm, no gauging its duration.  It simply rages. It can go on for minutes, or it can go on for hours; either way, it's too long.

Then - as if a switch has been flipped - the storm passes.  

Clouds part, the sun shines once again, birds sing, and a happy little girl emerges, skipping along as if nothing ever happened.  This little girl is giddy, playful, full of silliness and carefree. This little girl bears no resemblance to the girl in the storm. 

Her name is Raevyn. She’s a fragile, wounded bird lost in the confusing storm of mental illness.

This is what crazy looks like at our house:  A tiny little girl whose entire life has been turned upside down by something she can not control and doesn’t understand – hell, not even the adults in her life can control it or understand it. 

She came to us at nearly seven years old.  She is the child of a young, single, uneducated member of my family (who I didn’t have a relationship with) who abandoned and neglected her and then was sent to prison for selling and using meth. Drugs had been only one of many in a long list of unfortunate life choices she had made.  Raevyn was the oldest of her three children, and she was entering prison pregnant with yet another. 

We knew nothing about Raevyn prior to meeting her, we only knew the circumstances were dire and she needed a home. When she arrived at the airport she had only a small backpack with a few clothes and a couple toys. She wasn’t shy; in fact it took no time at all for her to warm to everyone and start talking and giggling, but we all realized immediately that her vocabulary was very limited for her age, and she used too much ‘baby talk.’  Then we discovered she couldn’t recognize or write letters.  In fact, she didn’t know her ABCs at all – she couldn’t even sing the ABC song. How does a six year not know the ABC song?  She couldn’t count to 10 in sequential order.  She didn’t know her full name much less how to spell it.  

How could this have happened?  We didn’t know what to do. We were unprepared for it but we jumped in and we figured out what to do.  We found new issues to tackle along the way: she hadn’t been to the dentist, had a mouth full of cavities, and even needed a mini-root canal; she needed immunizations caught up; and on and on the list seemed to grow. 

And then we started to see it.

The things we knew that were more than just a little “not right”.  Temper tantrums that were out of control and out of proportion to the circumstances.  A total “shut down” at times – refusal to communicate or move or do anything but breathe and stare – when confronted with a difficult or frustrating situation.  An inability, or outright refusal,  to process simple instructions and directions that were routine and repetitive on a daily or hourly basis (zipping her pants, combing her hair, making her bed) without becoming frustrated and dissolving into screams or tears.  But she'd turn off the tears, the tantrums, or recover from an episode of being completely shut down abruptly and be a giddy, overly happy, uneffected child in an eerily frightening way. 

She'd lie. She'd look you in the eye and lie. About nothing. About everything. When she didn't have to, when the truth was easier, when the truth was simple.  Even if she did something right in front of you and she watched you watch her do it, she'd look at you with a smile and tell you she didn't do it.  We'd give her every opportunity to tell the truth. We'd beg her to tell the truth, She wouldn't do it.  It didn't matter what the punishment was going to be for lying or what the reward would be for  coming clean.  It was like she'd truly convinced herself she was telling the truth. 

She'd steal things. Nothing of consequence - not money or jewlery or anything like that. Just little things - a small toy or a pencil or food, something like that.  Once discovered, of course, she would lie. She'd say she found it. She didn't know where she got it or where it came from, how it came to be in her backpack or pocket.   

Her moods were just "off". Unexplainable.  Without rhyme or reason.  We never knew what to expect from one minute to the next, ever.

All of this was exhausting.  We didn't know what to do. We just didn't know.  We had other children - three boys - and nothing had prepared us for this.  Of course we'd been through plenty of trials with them as teenagers but this didn't compare at all.  We felt inadequate. As a mother, I felt like a failure every day.  As a father, my husband felt the same but had the added bonus of watching his wife slowly lose her mind as well.

At times we questioned our expectations and wondered if we were being too hard on her. How much of this was her age? How much of this was really problematic behavior?  How do we separate the two? But when we looked at everything - academics, socially, emotionally - it just didn't make sense.

Academically she was making great strides.  We were fortunate that she attended a school with an amazing group of educators who poured themselves in Raevyn's progress.  They invested themselves completely in her from her first day at the school.  Whatever she needed, no matter how much time or effort it required, they were there.  They encouraged her and supported her; she was their little rock star.  We couldn't be happier with where she was academically.

But socially she was in a wasteland. She had no friends. None. She was completely unable to connect with any child her age. At 9 years old she should have been giggling and laughing and playing with other little girls, passing notes, going to sleepovers and birthday parties.  She couldn't name any of the children in her class. She's unable to recount the day's events at school and tell who did what only that "a boy" did this and "a girl" did that. 

Her therapist told us she was just “high maintenance”.  We simply needed to be more understanding. She'd been through a lot more than we could imagine. She was going to need a lot of guidence and love.  We had to be patient. Her psychiatrist said she was ADD.  They were wrong. We knew they were wrong. We felt like we were banging our heads against the wall and only getting a headache.  Something was wrong with this child. 

Something.Was.Wrong.

And so there we were. In the lobby of a psychiatric hospital waiting for Visiting Hours to begin on the Childrens' ward. 

This wasn't anyplace I'd ever imagined myself being.  It isn't where I want to be. I wanted to walk out the door, get in my car and drive. I didn't care where. Just drive. And when I couldn't drive anymore get out and walk until my feet bleed, because there couldn't possibly be a place far enough away.  I just didn't want to be there. 

It was heartbreaking to know what had brought us to that point.  To see Raevyn - a beautiful 9-year-old child - so young and yet so broken inside, so downhearted and spiraling within, wanting so badly to break free of the pain and confusion she felt but couldn't name.  How could we not fix this for her? It was mind-numbing and so defeating. We felt as though we'd failed her and allowed this to get out of control somehow, yet even as we said it outloud we knew it wasn't true - that feeling of defeat was just screaming so loudly inside of both of us we were finding it difficult to allow Reason a voice. 

We had taken her to the hospital for an evaluation ourselves. We had been told they had an outstanding program for children:  a day program that would help us put her on the road to the correct diagnosis through interactive evaluation with therapists and doctors.  The initial evaluation turned into more than we anticipated; instead of the day program we had hoped for, she was admitted as an inpatient.  She was too seriously symptomatic for the day program.

Finally.  Someone was listening to us.  Finally.  We weren't being told she was just "high maintenance", or ADD and needed simple medications to concentrate.  Finally.  We felt there was reason to hope.  Finally. 

I cried all the way home.

After a month of inpatient and outpatient observation, evaluation, therapy, and treatment her diagnosis is Bi-polar (with raging) and Reactive Attachment Disorder.  That's just the beginning of her journey.  

Finally.  It's a place to start. 

^{First day of Third Grade}