I hate my life

"I hate my life!".

This is what we often hear from Lucy.  It normally results from all those thoughts coming together at the same time, and her finding no way to deal with them.  Any time she cannot cope with her situation, or something has gone wrong and it is her fault, and probably she has made someone upset and the balance in her world is wrong - that is when she falls into desperation and decides that her life is rubbish.

It is a terrible thing for a parent to hear of course.  You have given this person life, and you have done your best to make that life as comfortable, loving and enjoyable as you can.  And then you hear that person say, "I hate my life".

It is not difficult to understand where she is coming from though.  Again, I have to imagine myself in her head, and I think of it as being in a loud engine room with lots of contraptions knocking and rocking, steam coming out of some of them, an underlying hum of industrial noise all the while.  All these noises, whilst she is trying to think, trying to figure out what the world means and what she have to do to make it all feel better.  And all the time she is not able to do it.  She cannot figure it out, she is stumped.  Meanwhile there are people, the people close to her and those she doesn't know so well, and they are all demanding things from her, wanting her to do something or act in a certain way.  She doesn't understand most of the time what they are asking for, or what she needs to do.  She just wants to do what they want her to do so they will stop asking.  Leave me alone, in this engine room.  Let me be at peace, in my noisy world.  Yes, I think I would hate that too.

She communicates with me via text messages.  She can talk to me too, but she prefers the texts, and in fact I prefer the texts too, since I can communicate something to her without being misunderstood, and she can read and re-read, and understand things at her own pace.  However the texts can also be a weapon, an emotional knife.  I read them sometimes and feel like a dagger has entered my heart.  Words like "You hate me", or "I hate you", or "You don't care about me, nobody does", or when I don't answer right away "Fine, you hate me".  But they are also messages to tell me how depressed she is about the world.  how else can she express this?  She will not sit with a girl friend and chat, like other 19 year olds might.

So when I received this message the other day:"I'm fed up with life I really am", I no longer worry too much about what implications that may have.  I am pretty sure she will not do anything dramatic.  It is her way of saying that she can't cope with being the way she is.  I have no answer to those messages though.  I cannot tell her "It will all be alright" or "There is nothing to worry about".  The  best I can do is say to her "We love you very much and care for you, and we will always be there for you, whatever happens". 

"Why me? Why me? Why me?" she has often cried to me, whilst I sit with her after some traumatic event (probably consisting of her screaming, swearing, slamming doors, and then regretting it all).  It is all I can do just to sit there and say "It is not your fault, it is bad luck", all the time thinking "Poor child, what have we done to you?  How could we have given you such a rotten life?!".  It is hard not to blame yourself for giving someone the gift of life if it means she is miserable most of the time.