ECHO, I'm so sorry. That is a bad day. Those feelings erupt out of nowhere in this crazy journey we're on with our troubled kids.
Visiting them in jail is pretty indescribable, none of us ever, ever thought this would be a part of our child's future, so add that to the way visitors are often treated in jails and there is your recipe for a painful, emotional breakdown.
When I visited my daughter in jail, I was treated like I was the criminal. A room full of distraught, scared, grief stricken parents, relatives and friends and we're treated with disdain and a lack of common courtesy that I had not encountered before. I never went back, for me it was the stuff of bad T.V.
Your story reminded me of being called in for Jury duty during the dark days with my daughter. I was okay, until I saw the alleged perpetrator....it was pretty obvious he was mentally ill. (It was not a violent crime.) When the attorney's began asking us questions, I started to cry and I couldn't stop. The judge actually asked me what was wrong and I told him my daughter had mental issues and had been incarcerated and that the justice system often was not equipped to handle the mentally ill and they suffered as a result. He agreed with me. Of course, during the recess, I was excused........perhaps for life! I sat in that courtroom and cried for a long time.......I never do that kind of thing, I am someone who has enormous propriety and crying in public is not something I do......but I just could not pull it together........I was just falling apart right there in the courtroom.
As Sherril2000 said, "sometimes this is WAY too much." And we breakdown. We're human. We break. And, then we pull it together and do what needs to be done.
I will be thinking about you tomorrow ECHO. Sending you a big hug from one 'crier' to another........
