Letting Go

"It breaks my heart to see you this way. You're getting even sicker, look at your face it's so pale that it looks white. You need to get help." I plead with my daughter Molly. She sits across from me at the kitchen table, but it doesn't look like she's looking at me. It looks more like she's looking through me. Her mind is completely consumed by demons. It seems as though all she is capable of thinking about lately is food and weight. She is playing a dangerous game of Limbo with her weight, "how low can the number on the scale go?".1

"Mom, I'm okay. You worry too much. I'm just on a diet. Lots of my friends are on diets and their parents don't harrass them about it. As soon as I lose five more pounds I'll start eating more normally again."
Molly promises me.2

I stare at Molly a long time before responding. It's almost May but she's dressed in layers of clothes and shivering. Even through the layers though I can see her twig like wrists that look as though they could snap if you even just touched them. Her once rounded rosy cheeks are sunken in and she has dark circles under her pale blue eyes, her skin is as white as the porcelain of the toilet that she's been vominting into every time she eats something besides veggies, coffee, or fat free yogurt. Her shoulder blades poke sharply through her multiple sweatshirts and I can see every single vertibrae in her neck. My once beautiful teenage daughter has been reduced to a skeleton. 3

It takes me a while to speak, all the words I want to say are caught up in a scrambled knot in my throat. Finally I open my mouth.4

"This is not just a normal diet Molly, this is part of a sickness. when your school called me they said you passed out in the shower. Girls who are just on normal diets don't make themselves so sick that they pass out. Have you seen yourself lately, you're just skin and bones."5

Molly smiles slightly at me when I say that. For a second I feel a flash of anger burst through me and then it melts away into just sadness. Where did I go wrong, why does my daughter think starving herself to skin and bones is something to be happy about?6

"I've still got a lot of baby fat on me." Molly whispers more to herself then to me, but I catch her words they hit me right in the chest.7

"Molly, if you lose anymore weight you could kill yourself. You need help. You heard what the college said. You can't go back until you get some treatment for your eating disorder and get healthier." My voice is strong but I can feel tears heating the corners of my eyes.8

"I don't have an eating disorder." Molly screams at me. "I don't have anything wrong with me."9

The tears start meandering down my cheeks. When Molly left for college she was a sweet, agreeable, beautiful eighteen year old girl. Somehow that girl had gotten lost and now I had an angry, argumentative, and emaciated teenager with the body of a ten-year-old cancer patient.10

"We're not discussing this anymore, pack a bag of stuff you'll need and come to the car with me. We're going to the hospital." My voice was firm.11

"No." 12

"Molly you need help and if you won't help yourself then I will have to step in and do it for you." I told her.13

"Mom, I'm eighteen now. I'm legally an adult. You can't make me do anything. I'm not going to the hospital."14

A feeling of fear and desperation filled me. She had a point. I was too exhausted to argue anymore. I was terrified that she was too far gone to have any reason left in her anorexic brain. When I had called a couple times a week to check in with her, Molly had told me she was doing fine, she'd been wrong.15

Molly turned and walked off to her room. I could see she was wavering back and forth as she walked. I wanted to go over and hold her waist to steady her, but I stayed frozen in place. She was a young adult now. Sadly I watched her go in the room and make a feeble attempt at slamming the door. There was beeping sound and then the whirring of her exercise bike. Cringing I went into my own room and said nothing.16

It was an hour later that I heard a child crying. I had fallen into a hopeless slumber of depression but the crying noise woke me up. I was confused. Molly was my only daughter, I didn't have any young children in the house. The crying was weak but riddled with pain. Sitting up I rubbed my eyes and then got up. The crying was coming from Molly's room. Wondering what Molly was doing with a little girl in her room I went over and knocked on her door.17

"Come in," said a small voice that sounded like a younger version of Molly. I opened the door. Molly was curled up on the floor near the exercise bike. She was the one crying. Her hands were clutching her chest and her breathing was too rapid for comfort. I knelt down on the floor and gathered Molly in my arms like she was the small child she looked and sounded like. I felt her bones poking into me, I was gentle with her as I held her. She felt delicate like a baby bird and I was scared I would break her. Everyone of her ribs were clearly visible through her shirt now.18

"Shh, what's wrong baby?" I asked her.19

"My chest hurts." She whispered and buried her head in my shoulder in a childlike fashion.20

"I'm calling 911," I told her. This time she didn't protest.21

When the ambulance arrived Molly grew silent.22

"What's wrong here?" asked one of the paramedics.23

I turned to Molly. Molly was still silent.24

"She has an eating disorder and now her chest hurts." I explained.25

The paramedics were gentle, it only took one of them to lift her small body onto the stretcher. They took her blood pressure with a child sized cuff and listened to her heartbeat. Then they put sticky pads onto her chest and watched wavy lines dance across the small screen of their portable monitor.26

"It looks like she's had a minor heart attack." The male paramedic told me. "We need to get her to the hospital right away." I just nodded to scared and concerned to even speak.27

"Mommy," Molly called out, don't leave me."28

"I won't," I promised and looked at the child my eighteen year old daughter had been reduced to. "I'm following the ambulance in my car. I'll see you at the emergency room."29

The ambulance drove away with full lights and sirens bathing the street in red and blue. I cried the entire way to the hospital. Guilt swept through me like a violent tornado. What else could I have done. Should I have known this would happen? Could I have seen it coming? Should I have kept her home from college. Should I have forced her to go to the ER earlier in the day? Could I have force her? 30

What do you do when your child turns into a young adult? How much do you let go?31

Questions flooded through my mind as I drove to the hospital. When I got there and saw Molly lying there on the gurney surrounded by doctors and nurses and medical equipment and medical words, I wanted to scream at her and hug her at the same time. I realized I didn't know the answer to any of those questions, all I knew was that I was Molly's mom and I loved her.32

I squeezed her ice cold clammy hand the whole time we were in the ER. Right before they were took her up to the ICU for observation, Molly leaned over and whispered to me in a weak and tired voice.33

"I don't think I know what I need at this point. Tell me what you think I should do."34