Children and Beautiful Memories

This is a post I wrote in June of last year on Tiffany's Facebook page.  I was feeling so nostalgic that I just wanted to capture all those memories that were bubbling up inside me from when the children were young.  It's a sort of timeline for me to remember as I take this journey, travel this path of loss.  There are so many wonderful, joyful memories to hold in my heart!

I've been thinking about you a lot today. I really should be outside working on your "Serenity Garden" and the other areas around the front yard where I've planted trees and shrubs in your remembrance but I can't seem to get in the right frame of mind. Maybe I just need to write my thoughts down and then I can get on with the day.

So much to remember...the early years with you and Troy. Going to day care while I worked, picking both of you up and spending the evening home. Trying to find something you would eat because you were so picky while Troy would eat anything. Watching TV, playing video games, reading books and bedtime.

Going to camp every weekend...leaving on Friday and coming home on Sunday. Laying on the beach, playing in the water, making sure the dogs didn't wander too far, going to Sand Island, Troy driving his 4-wheeler off the bank and surviving (LOL), campfires, mosquito bites (which you would itch until they bled and still did even after you were grown), hot dogs and hamburgs...I could keep going. How much you loved the lake and camp, and how much you missed it when you didn't go there much anymore!

Even after all this time, I miss the frantic pace of bringing you and Troy to all your activities. Dancing, soccer, football, cheerleading and the list goes on. Elementary school, Middle school, High school...friends, parties, overnights, school band, games, competitions...where did the time go?

Then college...early HS graduation, Marist College, picking you up every weekend in Poughkeepsie, exploring Hyde Park and Route 9 for things to do, SUNY Albany, dorm living, meeting at the gym in the early morning at Crossgates, finding Duke on the wheel of your Jeep in the parking lot of Crossgates, early college graduation, grad school, living home with mom again (oh no) and job interviews in NJ, CT and NYC!

Finally, you moved to Stamford. You hired a moving truck and moved into a nice little apartment. You started your new job, met new people and things seemed to be going well. The nest was truly empty here. Troy was married to Kelly and soon Hunter was born. But you would call me just about every day...mostly during critical conference calls (of course). You would come home every so often, watch some TV, we'd do some shopping together and you would go back. And every once in a while, I would visit you in Stamford and we'd check out Woodbury Outlets, the Westchester Mall, Stamford Town Center Mall and other places. We'd get our nails done together and shop at the Home Goods store next door. So much to remember!

Now all I have are memories and your legacy. I loved how you were always making plans and goals, and changing them. How you always seemed to know what was just the right thing for someone and had just the right piece of advice for someone in need. And yet you couldn't seem to take your own advice...couldn't see the forest for the trees, I guess. I miss your kind heart, your beautiful smile, your gorgeous blue but hurting eyes. I remember how so very private you were, and how very, very sensitive you were and easily hurt. And at the same time, you had no qualms about telling me (and I'm sure those close to you) exactly how things were but to others, you were a mystery sometimes.

Music and poetry are what help me to express my loss. Just a song can bring me to tears and a meaningful line of poetry can touch my heart. So I close with something I found in a Hallmark store. It was a candle which describes you oh so perfectly:

"Tiffany - She is a woman of vibrant personality. She is an enigma."

With all my love, Mom 

An Angel from God

A Mother's Loving Task

I need to promise myself that there are happy stories to come...that it wasn't all doom and gloom...

In October of 2010, five days after Tiffany moved into her apartment, while she was in Stamford Hospital, I unpacked the rest of her belongings that lay around her new apartment and began to make it a place for her to come home to and relax.

It was probably sometime in the late summer of 2010, maybe even September, when Tiffany began to look at one-bedroom apartments for herself.  She contacted the woman who had helped her find the apartment she was currently in since the woman had been so helpful in the summer of 2009.  The woman came up with a list of places to look at, as well as set up appointments to view the locations.  I drove down to Stamford and we spent a weekend looking at apartments.  It was exhausting work but fun.  I always loved seeing the places and imagining Tiffany living in them, setting up the apartment and putting her little finishing touches on it.

At the same time that it was fun, apartment hunting with Tiffany was draining .  She was always second-guessing and doubting herself and I know she was worried about venturing out on her own.  We had talked off and on for several weeks about her getting a roommate but it seemed that no matter what I suggested, she didn't like any idea.  I recall that she signed up for a roommate website but I don't think she liked the idea of trying to live with a total stranger and I can't say that I blamed her.  I really wanted her to stay where she was and I was frustrated that she was letting her roommate drive her out.  I suggested that she ask her roommate if she could stay in the apartment after all but Tiffany said that she had someone lined up already and she wasn't going to interfere with that arrangement.  Tiffany was a sad, lonely sensitive soul, trying to be respectful of plans already made and not be a burden to others.

We finally narrowed it down to two locations.  One was in the center of Stamford and was pretty generic but had some lovely amenities and a fantastic walk-in closet which was one of Tiffany's requirements...for all her clothes, of course.  The other was a Yale Lock factory that had been refurbished into apartments that sat on the outskirts of the business district.  The apartments were beautiful; 9-foot windows with soaring ceilings that gave you the feeling of sheer white space, original brickwork along the bottom of the windows, a granite-topped island that separated the kitchen from the living room area and shiny, new wooden laminate floors.  Not only that, but it was less expensive to boot.  The only problem was that bedroom closet...much too small to contain all that Tiffany had accumulated.

That closet was a deal-breaker...so Tiffany was going to go with the apartment in town.  However, I think the Yale Lock factory staff knew how much she liked that apartment so they told her they had a one-bedroom apartment coming available right at the time she needed on the 6th floor.  This floor had 11-foot windows and was the only floor with walk-in closets in some of the apartments.  Tiffany took the place sight unseen.  It was worth it because it had an amazingly huge closet and those windows that let in all that light.

So there I was, five days after she had moved in, faced with a daughter in the hospital and an apartment filled with unpacked boxes.  She had bedroom furniture but nothing in the living room except a TV and a wireless router.  But she had a sectional unit that was going to be delivered any day.  Well, I got busy.  I would start work and then go to the hospital for the early afternoon visiting hours.  I would finish up work for the day, do a little unpacking, go to the hospital for the evening visiting hours, unpack until I was too tired to do anything else and then go to bed.

Meanwhile, at the hospital, Tiffany had time to think and as her interest in getting better grew, she began to direct some of my activities.  She described what kind of TV stand she wanted...I think she must have seen it at Target.  So off I went to Target (as if going to Target were a chore), armed with a picture that she drew, or that I drew from her description.  I wandered around the store, looking through the furniture section, taking pictures of what they had so that I could show them to Tiffany.  When I returned to the hospital, she looked at the pictures I had snapped, chose the TV stand she liked (after much deliberation) and then I went back to buy it.  I brought it home, putting it together with tools from her pink tool box (yes, truly it was pink) and set up the TV so it was all ready for her when she got home.  When it was all prepared, she drew, among all the instructions she gave me that I put in my pocket-size composition notebook, a layout of how she wanted the living room to look, complete with stick figure people. :-)

I gradually put everything away in the best place that I knew.  I even had to hang up the clothes she hadn't gotten to, per her instructions, on specific hangers in a specific direction...everything had to be done just so.  In between all this activity, I had to drive back home to return the Jeep she had had in college, and that I was driving when I got the call, because the lease was up and it had to go in for repairs.  Not only that but I had to go get Riley and Duke; Riley because he was only a puppy, just 3 months old and Duke because Tiffany was going to keep him with her.  They were so good on the ride back to Stamford and such a joy to have with me, keeping me company while Tiffany was in the hospital. 

It was two weeks before Tiffany left the hospital but I lovingly and willingly made her apartment into a home.  And I think before we even got to the car after we walked out of the hospital for the last time, Tiffany was already planning more purchases for her apartment.

Over the next 8 months, Tiffany really made that apartment a lovely place.  I wish now that I had taken more pictures of the finished "product".  And it's something that one doesn't think of when completely overwhelmed with grief.  As we all gathered, shocked, in her apartment after she died, no one thought to document and honor her life there.  So unfortunately, before it occurred to us, the dismantling had begun, to our everlasting regret.  Now the only thing I have left to pull from is the video Troy and I took of her apartment when we realized the finality of what had happened.  One can see brief flashes of the painstaking effort she took to put her singular touch into making this space more than just a place to live but what she did now truly only exists in my memory.

As I stood in her apartment before turning over the keys, I knew there was no way that I could give up what she had so proudly made her home so I brought everything from her apartment back to my house.  I used her sectional piece in the living room for a while but eventually it made its way to the family room where it seemed to fit as if it were made to be there.  It joined the lamp from her bedroom in this perfect space, lit, not by 11-foot windows, but by 2 brand-new windows that let in the sun shining from the south...

First Attempt

Someone asked me the other day if I was still searching for answers to the reason why my daughter decided to take her life.  I'm sure I'll always be looking for the answer to that question "why" but for now, what I'm really trying to do to is fill in the gaps.  The gaps in my knowledge of who she was.  I'm trying to find out who the girl was who decided one day when she was 12 that purging was some kind of coping mechanism or solution to whatever emotional pain she was experiencing.

For some reason tonight, I was looking through her email which I still have access to.  I hadn't looked at her email in months but I had logged on about a month ago because I have this fear every once in a while that I'm going to lose access to it.  I had kept promising myself that I would write to the person she had gotten Riley from, her Pomeranian-Chihuahua, just to send pictures of him all grown-up (which I did).  In the course of this casual search, I decided to look at one of her folders that I hadn't looked at in a long while.  In it was a text exchange she had with someone.  It was enlightening yet disturbing.  A look into her state of mind at the same time as a couple of the last entries that I've been writing...August of 2010.

She talked about her eating struggles of the last 11 years, getting her body to work normally again, how exhausting it was and how it wasn't easy to give up that way of life and be "normal".  Yet at the same time, at the start of the text conversation, there seemed to be a thread of strength and determination running through her words to get better...until I got to the part of her talking about being alone.  Spending so much time alone.  How she had to listen to her roommate and a friend talk about her through closed doors for two days in a row.  How they spread rumors at work that she had cancer or "something" while she was actually in treatment.  At that point, my blood froze and my heart stopped.  Although I had heard these stories before, this was Tiffany telling it in her own words...as if from beyond the grave!  This wasn't just a made-up story; it was really true!!

And I thought...someone like Tiffany, suffering from the disease that she did, would never share her struggles willingly and especially not with someone who was talking about her behind her back, spreading rumors, making her life miserable.  Would this reticence on Tiffany's part make that person dislike her so much as to drive Tiffany to despair?  It certainly drove her out of the apartment they shared.  I wonder if that could be considered a form of bullying; at the very least, the worst kind of gossip, criticism or persecution, I guess.  But we're talking adults here; we're not talking about high school students, for crying out loud.  But interestingly enough, it was 5 days after Tiffany moved into an apartment by herself that she attempted suicide for the first time.

It was about 4:00 pm on an overcast fall day.  It was October 22, 2010 and I was in Poughkeepsie having my laptop repaired.  I had been in Stamford shortly after the text conversation I mention above took place (end of August) at the request of Ryan.  Tiffany had threatened to drink herself to death so Ryan had called me and "Mom" drove to the rescue.  Tiffany was beyond angry and drunk like I'd never known her to be but I let it roll off my back.  I stayed with her that night, telling her I had come to "save" her (silly me) which she scoffed at but she assured me that she would never kill herself, that she didn't have the guts to do it and so I left the next day.

Who could believe that only 2 short months later that I would be sitting in my car at the Poughkeepsie Mall on a conference call and see a CT phone number pop up on my cell phone?  I wanted to tell the person on the conference call that I had an incoming call but sometimes you get someone you can't get a word in edge-wise so I had to wait until I could end the call.  I think I called the number back and Stamford Hospital answered.  Stamford Hospital?  How could that be?  The person I spoke to said that my daughter had been brought to the Emergency Room and that she had taken an overdose of pills.  Overdose?  Pills?  Oh my God!  Was she alive, I asked?  Yes, she was but I needed to come to Stamford.  Thank God she was alive, was all I could think.

Fortunately, Poughkeepsie was an hour and a half closer to Stamford than Schenectady so after I made some calls and pulled myself together, I got there probably by 6:00 pm.  What I wasn't to know was that the person in that hospital bed was not really my daughter. That was some angry, belligerent, incoherent facsimile of her who lashed out at me as if I were the devil incarnate who had put her there.  I felt completely helpless and utterly guilty...a poor excuse for a mother whose daughter obviously didn't want her there.  At one point she came unglued and had to be sedated while I sat useless in another room.

They finally admitted her to the medical wing of the hospital after several hours for observation and further testing while a watcher sat by her bedside...suicide watch.  She was admitted to the psychiatric ward the next day...I am still not sure if they ever ruled out BPD.  But that's a story for another day...

Two-Minute Run

Borderline personality disorder is…

•A serious mental illness characterized by powerful and unstable emotional states, tumultuous interpersonal relationships, and impulsive behaviors

•More common than both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia

•Highly and unfairly stigmatized

People with BPD…

•Suffer from extreme and constantly shifting emotions

•Experience intense anger and despair

•Struggle to maintain close interpersonal relationships

•Are plagued by fears of abandonment

•Engage in what is known as “all or nothing” and “black and white” thinking

•Cope with painful emotions by engaging in self-damaging behaviors such as cutting, substance abuse, and binging and purging

Recent advances in research have…

•Uncovered a significant genetic predisposition for the disorder

•Led to the development of treatments specifically designed for patients with BPD such as dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and mentalization based therapy (MBT)

BPD by the numbers*

•Studies have estimated that almost 6% of the population suffers from BPD.

•In the US, at least 14 million adults may have this disorder.

•Up to 10% of people with BPD will commit suicide and as many as 70% of borderline patients will attempt suicide.

•BPD patients account for 20% of inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations.

•At the conclusion of a 10-year study of a population of BPD patients, 85% of participants saw a remission of symptoms such that they no longer fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for the disorder. 

http://projectborderline.org/Official_Site/Two_Minute_Run.html

The Dream and the Welcomer

They say that those who attempt suicide are not trying to end their lives but are trying to end their pain.  If the darkness that I have been through and experienced after Tiffany's death is just a fraction of the darkness of my daughter's pain, then I can truly believe this.

Those who have survived suicide attempts have said that in the grips of their pain that they cannot imagine that their loved ones would not be better off without them.  While this is obviously not true, it is what they believe...I have spoken with those who have survived suicide.  They are not thinking of the aftermath of their death.

The devastation of a successful suicide attempt is far-reaching, long-lasting and life-changing. Those left behind have shattered lives that will never be the same and can never be put back to the way it was before their loved one left this world.  The pieces never fit back the way they were before the loved one left.

For our family, there is no recovery, only survival.  My daughter-in-law, Kelly, who loved Tiffany like the sister she never had, found moving on almost impossible.  I often wondered if she would make it through the jungle of grief intact.  And then one day, one of her dearest wishes came true - the wish that Tiffany would appear to her in a dream...

"I remember walking into this strange place that didn't have a lot of detail to it - like I wouldn't say it was outside or inside.  It was strange.  Then all the sudden I saw Tiffany in this beautiful black dress.  She looked so happy and I ran to her and hugged her and she hugged me back so tight that I could swear when I woke up that I could still feel it.  I said "Where have you been?" and her only response was "All my relatives keep asking me that."

Then she was in a hurry and ran to get these trophies.  I remember there were a few trophies on this table and she grabbed one and said that she had to go welcome someone new.  I didn't know if this could possibly mean like a new baby on the way or if someone had passed on and she was welcoming them.

She came back with the trophy in a new beautiful dress that was blue (similar to the color at Troy's and my wedding).  Then she was off again and in a hurry but the thing I remember the most is how happy she seemed and content.  After that I immediately woke up which was weird because a lot of times you dream things and can't remember them or have so many dreams that makes it a little hard to recall them but I woke up right afterwards and remembered it all.  It wasn't a long dream but it was perfect."

8 Characteristics of True Visitations Dreams:

1. The most important characteristic of a true visitation dream is that it feels “real.”  It will also be very vivid.
2. If you have to ask whether the visitation dream was really a visitation dream, then it probably was NOT a visitation dream.  They are so real and vivid that you won’t have to ask this question.  When you do have a visitation dream, you may wonder if it was truly real; but in your heart or gut, you will “know” it was real.
3. Because they are so real and so vivid, you will remember visitation dreams very clearly for days, months, years . . . probably for your entire lifetime!
4. The person will almost always appear in the dream to be completely healthy and behaving in a loving manner.  They will rarely appear sick or injured.  They will never be angry, disappointed, depressed, or punishing.  They will be “whole, complete, and perfect” because they are now reconnected with God/Source energy.
5. Whether or not they speak to you verbally in the dream, they will communicate very clearly.
6. When they do communicate (either verbally or non-verbally), it isn’t because they want to engage in idle “chit-chat.”  It isn’t easy for deceased loves ones to enter a dream.  They come with a purpose, and they will convey the message and then be gone.
7. Most often, their messages fall into the category of “reassurance.”  They come to let you know that they are fine and that they want you to be happy.  Occasionally, they will come with a warning; however, when giving a warning, they will give you loving support and you will feel reassured by their presence.
8. After a visitation dream, when you wake up, you will often be filled with a sense of peace and love.

http://www.annereith.com/8-characteristics-of-visitation-dreams/

Fallout

For so long I felt that because my daughter did not overtly exhibit the extremes of this illness, that maybe it wasn't so bad.  But then I realized that I had no absolutely no idea what she was going through or even who she really was but I could see how much she had changed since moving away (and even more so after May 2010) and I mourned for the person who left in Oct 2009.  She seemed so strong and on the road to recovery but perhaps that was just a facade.

I knew I couldn't make her better - that she had to do on her own.  But suddenly, I felt like I couldn't even communicate with her on any level but a surface level and it was beginning to affect me to the point where I needed to search for some answers, or at least understanding.  So I reached out to NEDA again...

"I'm sorry to write again so soon but my son and daughter-in-law called and spoke with me last evening.  They are my only vehicle to learning what is really going on with my daughter, Tiffany, since she only tells me half-truths or lies.  And now I've learned that part of the Day Treatment program included family therapy yet I was never contacted.  How can I possibly provide meaningful support and understanding if I'm not included?

What I've since discovered is that while she did end the program, it may not have been successful (although it was 6 weeks).  From what I understand, it was possibly determined that she was not making the expected progress in the day program and her insurance did not want to pay for something that was not working.  Apparently it was suggested that she move into the residential program (which her insurance may have been willing to pay) but her fear of losing her job was too great so she returned to work yesterday.  This was a bit upsetting because it is unlikely that she would lose her job while out on disability although I have no idea how long the residential program would be.  It is also possible that she was reluctant to enter the residential program because it was only offered in Philadelphia and Florida.

Her job is all she has right now...literally.  She has no family living nearby - I am almost 3 hours away and her brother lives in Charlotte, NC which is 12 hrs away.  She lives with another girl she met through job interviews and who was with her in college at the same time.  However, the relationship has not proven to be successful as her roommate is not willing to be a friend to Tiffany.  I believe that Tiffany may have made one friend at work whom she spends some time with but she has a history of driving friends away or losing them for some reason.  However, my daughter-in-law did mention that she may have connected with some people at the center but that they lived a distance away.  Also, shortly before her move to CT, Tiffany broke up with her boyfriend of nearly 4 years even though it seemed to be a good strong relationship but I guess only Tiffany knows what is right for herself.

After her move to CT, I encouraged her to try become independent, live on her own completely for a while and refrain from getting into another romantic relationship.  However, that was not the case.  In January, she began dating someone new and she seemed to be quickly involved emotionally.  Unfortunately, that relationship ended just days before she started the day program.  In addition to that, she was considering moving to NC to be close to her brother but he told her they did not think that was a good idea.  I think that was a bit of a blow to her and I was upset with my son for not being more supportive of his sister.  I don't know if he's right or not but at that exact time, he was dealing with a new baby.

It seems pretty obvious that Tiffany is in a fragile emotional state.  She is clearly depressed and my fear is that she may be drifting towards anorexia (but I may be unduly worried).  She told my son that while she ate the meals at the center, when she got back to her apartment, she didn't feel like eating.  She said it wasn't due to the illness (supposedly she has the bulimia under control) but that she was simply too depressed to eat.  She has also said that she doesn't want to do anything other than stay in her room and read.

A lot of the other things that Kelly told me seem to follow the typical thought processes of an eating-disordered person.  The feelings of unworthiness, of being a failure and undeserving, always screwing things up, etc.  This is so sad to hear coming from a woman who is sweet, beautiful, smart and talented.  What was most interesting, to me at least, is that it seems Tiffany may be searching for someone who accepts and loves her for who she is with all her faults and weaknesses and will not abandon her when things don't go quite perfectly.  Someone other than her family, who, in her eyes, will always love her no matter what..."

It was shortly after writing this letter that Tiffany started lashing out at her brother and sister-in-law because they didn't support her moving to NC.  She told them she hated them even though she asked for the truth.  This was very upsetting but there was nothing I could do.  At this point, she began calling me about what she should do about a roommate after her lease was up and texting me that she no longer liked her job.  At this point, I could only listen and offer suggestions as best I could.  Her thinking started to become black and white while her binge drinking and impulsive behavior such as spending and shopping escalated.

As I review what I knew back in August of 2010, compare it to what the DSM-IV-TR details as the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder and think about it in terms of Tiffany's behavior, it seems abundantly clear to me that this is what she could possibly have had.  If I, a lay person, can see this, how could the mental health professionals treating her have so completely missed it??  How could she not have been treated for this disorder is all I can wonder in disbelief.  My heart is broken all over again at the senselessness of her death.

First Warning

I had many moments of deep guilt and despair after learning that Tiffany suffered from an eating disorder.  Of course, none were as horrible as what was to come but in August of 2010, I was beginning to get a glimpse of just how much this disease had taken hold of Tiffany and her life and I truly began to fear for her.

This was written to someone at the National Eating Disorder Association in the hopes of finding a person I could talk to, someone who could give me advice on how to deal with this monster who had come into my family and changed my daughter so drastically.  Here is what I wrote...

I'm not sure where to start but I have a daughter who has been suffering from bulimia since she was 12 years old.  She is now 23 and has just finished an intensive outpatient day program at a center in Connecticut, taking a medical leave of absence from her job as a tax accountant.  This is the first time she has entered a formal program but has sought various types of assistance, counseling and medical/nutritional help over the past 8 years or so.

The reason I am writing is because she was able to keep her disorder secret and hidden until she was 18.  By this time, she was an adult and she was completely unwilling to discuss any aspect of her disease.  During the time while she was a minor and sought help, while I knew that she had emotional problems, suffered from depression and mood swings, and suspected that food was a preoccupation, I only thought that she was possibly at risk for an eating disorder.  And none of her counselors (if they actually knew) ever informed me.  I found out about the bulimia in 2005 (when she was a college freshman) because her older brother, whom she had confided in for a year, could no longer keep it secret or provide support.  The fallout was brutal, resulting in her not speaking to her brother (for telling me) and her refusing to have anything to do with me because she had never wanted me to know (something I have never understood).  I also suspect that one of the reasons she was able to keep it secret was because she had always had a job, even several at one time, from a young age, earning her own money.  At one time she had $12,000 saved but by the time she entered college, all but about $2,000 was left and I could never understand where all the money went.  I am making an assumption here because while food frequently disappeared in the household, it was never excessive to the degree that I have since read some bulimics go to.  Also, I never found laxatives or any other drugs that bulimics use, the bathroom was never a mess (despite her describing purging up to 7 times per day) and she displayed no observable side-effects other than weight loss.

Eventually, she began speaking to me again and one day agreed to discuss her problem, allowing me to ask questions.  After that, we were never to talk about it again nor was I ever to bring it up.  Not knowing much about the disorder, I probably didn't ask any of the right questions so have never really been able to understand the underlying problem driving her.  Of course, the guilt I have suffered from not only not seeing that there was a problem, but thinking that I contributed to it in some way has been overwhelming at times and has necessitated getting counseling myself.

Since 2005, I have tried to be supportive in every way while keeping my own counsel and ensuring her that I loved her no matter what.  In 2008, she moved back home for her graduate year of college.  During this time she did seek some medical attention from center for Eating Disorders here locally but assured me that she was no longer binging and purging.  In Oct of 2009, she moved to Stamford, CT, to start her career with a top accounting firm.  After 6 months, she told me that she had started back up with the binge/purge cycle and ask me to help her find a physician in CT in whom she was going to confide completely.  This physician referred her to a center and the center recommended their day program.  At the time, with her job, that was not an option so it was suggested that she attend the evening program.  Due to a rotation in NYC, she put this off until finally, in May, when her problem had escalated to such a degree, she approached her HR department about taking a medical leave of absence so that she could attend the day program which she was approved for in June.

The start of the program was fraught with much emotional turmoil and personal trauma but she finished the program on Friday, July 30.  During this time, I rarely spoke with her and what few conversations (most of our communication was via text messages) we did have were very superficial.  She came home this past Friday and we had plans to do things and spend some time together.  She had told me that the program had helped with her eating disorder but that she was an "emotional wreck".  While she was home, I tried to get some information but as always, she was unwilling to discuss anything with me, using her favorite response of "I don't want to talk about it".  By Saturday morning, she told me she needed to leave, that she couldn't be there.  Needless to say I was distraught and upset but told her if that was what she needed to do, then she should do it.

I felt so lost and helpless after she left that day and I sometimes wonder if it was the first warning sign...

My Forever Beauty

This is a brief story of my sweet, lost daughter, Tiffany.  I originally posted this on her Facebook page on November 23, 2013, which was International Survivors of Suicide Day. I've expanded a little more here today.

Tiffany Gallo - In Memoriam

 This is the link to Tiffany's memorial video.  I couldn't paste the video here.

Tiffany was born 5 weeks prematurely in 1987...on a beautiful hot spring day in March.  She suffered no lasting trauma from this early arrival into the world although she did have a brief hospital stay for week when she was a year old.  As a result of being in the hospital, she seemed to develop a fear of men in white coats and needles which she dealt with for many years.

But for the most part, she was a happy, social child who had lots of friends and loved her older brother dearly.  She participated in sports and dance, enjoyed parties and sleepovers, and other than an early preoccupation with food and problems with reading, seemed like any other normal child.  She loved Barbies, Disney movies and the "Wizard of Oz" (of course!) and later on "Sex and the City" and "Harry Potter".

But then things changed drastically at age 12.  Somehow she discovered purging and from then until 24, she suffered from bulimia. Despite this struggle, she grew into a beautiful young lady. Never one to be without life goals, Tiffany received her masters, got a job as a tax accountant at a major accounting firm and earned her CPA license, all in a 2-year period. But all the while, underneath this facade of beauty and success, despair started to set in. Or maybe the despair had been there for a while.  Perhaps as early as age 15.

First Day of Work

CPA License

In 2010, she sought treatment for her eating disorder with little success and later that same year, attempted suicide for the first time. She was ordered back into treatment for her eating disorder but found it hard to stick with it.  She soon started back up with the cycle of binging, purging and overuse of alcohol along with the discovery of cutting; despair grew while hope that she would get better lessened.  Tiffany was told by one mental health practitioner that she had already tried all the drugs possible for her problem and the practitioner had none to recommend.  So she was basically told to go home, dance and smell the roses.  Who can blame her if she thought she was never going to get better?

I tried to help and support her but it was very difficult, if not impossible, for her to accept. I really thought she might be getting better from the reports I received from her doctors and the events of the night she died were no worse than many other times in her life as I've said. Although I think there were some people in her life at that time, as there had been along the way, who didn't understand the demons she fought and who made her life miserable and impossible in Stamford. Maybe there were things that happened during that Friday, an action or an event that I will never know about or that other people know about but have never mentioned or come forward with.  But to this day, I will never know why she had to go, why she did what she did. 

However, based on all I know now and what I now realize that I knew for a few years before she died, I am convinced that she had Borderline Personality Disorder. It would explain so much of her later life, the symptoms she experienced, the problems she faced.  I knew she wasn't Bi-Polar because she didn't have manic highs...she was mostly low...really low.  I'm just not sure why there was never a definitive diagnosis, at least none that I am aware of or that I was privvy to, other than that she had an eating disorder.

It is now 2 years, 9 months since Tiffany took her life. So often it has been hell on earth since her departure from this world. A life made surreal by her absence. I miss her with every fiber of my being. The pain does soften slightly with time then sometime comes back with a vengeance, but never, not ever, goes away...

Notables

 • People with eating disorders are at increased risk of deliberate self-harm
• Depression, anxiety, alcohol and substance problems often accompany eating disorders
• Binging and purging are associated with higher risk of deliberate self-injury
• A comprehensive mental health evaluation is an essential component of evaluating and treating people with eating disorders

Not All Eating Disorders Are the Same (When It Comes to Deliberate Self-Harm)

From the American Association for Suicide Prevention