When the Child hasn’t survived

I sit here in the midst of an amount of wash not known to mankind. I look, I think. I ask what more could I have done.
It was before the death of my husband that it was noticed that my oldest needed help. Something was “wrong”. She was then only in the 3rd grade. 3 years later when her Father died, she never really came back to her pre 3rd grade personality. What happened to her is still a mystery, only known to the monster that is eating at her life.
At the age of 21 now, no where near being able to move out and move “on”, no where near being able to reach to ask what it living inside her head making her the self destructive person she is by not caring about her personal belongings, not finding value in anything at all, what do you do?
What do you do when YOU have survived only to live in the eyes of the trauma you child can’t break through, perhaps never break through. How do you deal with the pain today, that was far worse than the pain of yesterday.
You pray….you hope…you cry and then you cry again.
Time is very much synchronated, but not the clock of survival. There we all wear own very own personalized watch.
For your child, it is being there. Promising them that you will never give up on them even if they give up on themselves….and holding that promise sacred. Their time will come. It must.