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“I was a very young mother, he was 19 and I was 15 years old. We are still together but, at that time, we still had a lot to learn ”. Andrea is 42 years old and has had to learn to live with her daughter’s death wish. This is his story.
Laura was born and raised in the midst of arguments and outbursts of separation from her parents who were not yet in their new role.
They were a couple of young people learning to be parents. “At two years of age, the girl began to suffer from a very strong acute otitis media.”
It was an involution because although he already knew how to walk, he began to crawl again; however, the little girl grew up until she finished her primary school. “That’s when I decided to enroll her in a recognized school in Suba to finish her high school.”
(You may be interested in: 75 suicides reported in schools in three years set off alarms)
At that time, Andrea lived with her mother, her sister and her grandmother and the girl’s father with her parents. The couple rose and fell in a sea of emotions without ever thinking that this could be affecting Laura.
Being in the seventh grade, the girl begins to have problems in her school. “When I was called, I remember that they argued things that seemed silly to me. For example: that Laura was looking at herself in the mirror and we had to take her out of the room ”.
The girl had entered with great expectations thanks to a friend of hers who ended up isolating her while she, alone, faced a new environment. “Laura has always been very hard on changes and when she realized that nothing she imagined was going to come true, the blow was too hard.”
At that time, Andrea was faced with her daughter’s suicidal ideation for the first time. “I was 11 when I started to find letters written by her.” They said: “I am tired, exhausted, I want to close my eyes.”
At the findings, this mother cried. He did not know the origin of his daughter’s wishes, he had no idea what depression was. “I was just thinking, exhausted from what, if she just had to study.”
The parents, distraught, took the girl to the psychologist. “But all they told me was that I was a very spoiled girl.” Despite the superficiality of the opinion, there was something that was recorded, Laura was a very sad girl. “They told me: their daughter is very lonely, she has everything, but she doesn’t know what a couple is, a home, nothing.” That day they also suggested that the couple not fight in front of their children.
But the sadness had already taken its toll. At that time, Andrea was in training at a bank, she had a new job. “While in that activity, my new boss called me and told me that they were calling me from my daughter’s school.”
At that moment, he remembered the times his daughter had told him to remove her from that school. They nicknamed her like the gafufa and sometimes her resistance was such that she told her mother that she had a headache just to avoid going to class. “I told him that she was the one who had chosen him and that we had spent a lot of money on that, to hold on. I thought that his ailments were pure invention ”. One day Andrea told her that she had no money to take her to the doctor as a way to end what she considered a tantrum and the girl told her that if she wanted to, she would break her piggy bank, but that she needed help. That did not happen, not at that time.
And while those memories were haunting her head, Laura’s father had already picked her up on campus and they were both at the hospital. “They told her that a friend from school had seen her taking pills in the bathroom. I felt that the world was falling, I felt that my body did not react ”.
My girl was full of cables everywhere, she just opened her eyes and saw me, I collapsed. I could only cry
When he got to the hospital, the situation was more difficult than expected. Laura had been in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). “My girl was full of cables everywhere, she just opened her eyes and saw me, I collapsed. I could only cry ”.
After the girl’s departure, things did not improve, in the psychological treatments they judged the parents and at school they simply “left the matter alone.” Today Andrea says that schools have a long way to go to face these types of cases with responsibility and love.
When this mother of a family tried to talk to her daughter about what had happened, she told her that they did bullying in the classroom, but also that she had felt sad since she was a child, that it was like a shadow that accompanied her day and night.
Andrea and her husband had worked to make their daughter perfect, never with bad intentions. “I would put her in all kinds of courses, swimming, English, but I never played with her or asked her how she felt.”
It took me a while to believe that when she said she was sad, she was sad
Laura remained in the same school until the tenth grade by choice, but she couldn’t take it any longer and had to be transferred. “It took me a while to believe that when she said she was sad, she was sad“. She grew up invaded by that feeling.
Over time, Laura began a relationship that lasted three years, but was unsuccessful, then she traveled to the United States with the intention of staying, but since her family wanted her to go with the papers in order, she returned to Colombia. “But then they canceled his visa and that caused a terrible depression,” said Andrea.
In 2020 everything was worse. At 23, his depression was exacerbated. He did not even feel like bathing, he was not interested in his personal appearance, his room was in chaos, as was his mind. “Sometimes I couldn’t bear that situation and I scold her, I told her that there were more countries to live in. I had a lot to learn ”.
(To continue reading: ‘One day I suffered an attack at school, I sweated, the world came to me’)
Laura insisted, said that she did not want to live, that she did not find meaning in anything, that she no longer even enjoyed singing. “One day I told her that life was not hers but God’s, but she told me that she was going to prove to me that life was not his.”
You had to call the emergency room. All possible medical diagnoses made at that time resulted in major depression and a recommendation for hospitalization. “They told us to take her to Monserrat, they hospitalized her that same day and she agreed. There they told us that she also had anxiety and body dysmorphia ”.
For the family, that clinic was like opening a curtain. There were the genius of the Andes, the sisters, the philosopher, the writer, the housewife, the businessman. “A lady asked me what was given to my daughter, I told her what liquids, she told me it was the truth serum, to believe everything about my daughter, and to get ready because it would not be the last time to enter that place.
Laura wanted to die, she cut her hands, in total there were 26 days in a totally different world, it is not known how she got things to hurt herself. All of this allowed the family to understand that Laura was ill and that the situation should be dealt with in this way. Also that depression can kill like diabetes or cancer.
After this episode, Laura had other crises. One of them was due to labor pressure and also due to the arrival of the pandemic. “My daughter works on technology, she is very intelligent, that is very common in these cases ”.
Andrea recently found a letter again between the pages of a book. Every time this happens, your heart is reduced. “You are never going to want your child to go first. One of those days I had a hunch and indeed, we went to see her and she had cut her veins ”.
Andrea is grateful for the pandemic because she was able to work from home and see her daughter on the days when she gets up and doesn’t want to talk or go out; try to understand it a little more. “It is so important to be by their side.”
Laura has returned to Monserrat, sometimes with the desire to escape reality, to be ill in a world that does not understand them. Then, he stabilizes, and returns home. The family is also in treatment, it is not easy to live in such a stressful situation.
Andrea learned to contemplate her, to look at her beauty, to say ‘I love you’, that she is proud of her; to sleep with her when she allows it. “Life taught me that with her I can only live one day at a time.”
75 suicides reported in schools in three years set off alarms
The mental health of students is a subject recently explored and treated in schools, both public and private. However, it is necessary to rescue the District’s effort to focus its attention on this issue, not only in light of the suicide cases known to educational institutions, but also due to the advent of the pandemic, which made a dent in the health of the students. “There is a prevailing need to work together to build spaces for dialogue in the face of the effects that confinement has brought,” said the Secretary of Education, Edna Patricia Bonilla.
Only during three years, 2018, 2019 and 2020, a total of 75 completed suicides were reported in the ‘Alert system disaggregated by type of school’. But, according to figures from Forensic Medicine, in those same three years there are reports of 102 cases of suicide in different localities among children under 18 years of age. It should be taken into account that many cases end up being reported as accidents because sometimes there is no one to investigate thoroughly.
For this reason, the District has created the ‘Comprehensive program of socio-emotional education, citizenship and schools as territories of peace’ to strengthen school guidance, within which is the ‘Alert System’ so that students can report: abuse and violence, early motherhood and fatherhood, accidents, learning disorders, use of psychoactive substances, and finally, suicidal behavior. In other words, the data presented by the SED is about the presumed occurrence of events to activate alerts and provide support. The verification, in any case, is the competence of the judicial authorities.
This system has also elucidated that it is children between 12 and 14 years of age who have been most affected by mental health. It has also been possible to show which are the symptoms identified in the ‘2020 Alert System’. 27.86% speak of death or suicide or even declare the desire to hurt themselves among colleagues, 26.20% show sudden difficulty in homework, 11.05% speak of feeling desperate or guilty, 10 , 55% present self-destructive behaviors such as consuming alcohol in excess, illicit drugs or cuts in the body, 9.58% suddenly changed their behavior, 5.51% showed depression, crying, sadness, loneliness, and others lower percentages show attitudes such as loss of interest in activities they previously enjoyed, talking about leaving, changing eating or sleeping habits, difficulty concentrating or thinking clearly, staying away from friends or not wanting to go out and even give away their belongings.
CAROL MALAVER
SUB-EDITOR BOGOTÁ SECTION
Write to him at [email protected]
