The day the earth stood still - part 1

I'm not sure if this is going to make sense to any of you but I'm going to try.

Y'all remember me talking about Shimmy? She is SM's oldest daughter. 17 years of complete and total awesomeness despite having been through much too much for her tender years. Shimmy is smart although she will deny it. She is gorgeous, more so because she doesn't know it. She has such an amazing future ahead of her even though she can't see it. She is also impulsive and sometimes doesn't make the best choices.

One night I was at SM's house hanging out with him and the kids when Shimmy pulls me into her room and says she has to tell me something but I can't tell her Dad. Did shivers just run up your spine? Yeah me too. Those words are never good. Ever. So, I gave her my typical question run down. Are you hurt? Are you in danger? Are you pregnant? No, no and no? OK, hit me. --- She got a $100+ ticket for theft at summer school. She found an iPod on the ground, thought "sweet" and picked it up. The long and the short of it was that it belonged to the janitor and despite the fact that as soon as she found that out she tried to return it, he still pressed charges. Shimmy didn't want to burden her dad with this. I told her that I wouldn't tell him... but was working on getting her to agree to tell him herself.

Monday morning Shimmy and I are texting and I finally get her to agree to tell him when I'm back over there that weekend. Whew! I don't mind keeping some of her secrets, harmless ones that would only make his eyeballs roll back in his head but not really cause too big of a ruffle. I don't mind listening to her talk about stories of things she used to do, mostly because I think he knows and also because she doesn't do them anymore. However, this was a biggie and I was much relieved to hear that she was ready to tell him. Then, the texting stopped for a while. She's a busy girl with friends and such. I didn't think much of it until...

I got a text saying something along the lines of I hate myself and I just want to die. OMG! So, to be fair, this was not the first time she has gone all mellow dramatic on me so I wasn't going to panic, yet. I got her to talk about what was wrong. It was the age old heartbreak thing. Why oh why must we have our first love and our first broken heart when we are teenagers and so hormone laden that it always always always seems like the end of the world? God, when you planned that one, you surely were not thinking clearly.

Realizing that she really was upset I ditched the keypad and called her. I talked her out of her ragged tears. I told her how much I loved her and how my entire world would never be the same if she weren't in it. I told her it would destroy her dad if she ever hurt herself. Finally, after getting her to calm down we talked about the weekend and exciting things that were coming up. We made plans she seemed so much better.

After hanging up with her I took several long deep breaths and had a crying jag of my own. Then I emailed SM saying that Shimmy was really sad and maybe he should just call her to tell her that he loves her. No big deal. I've done this before. By the time he checks on her he's usually says "Eh, she seems find now."

About 3 minutes after hitting send I got a text from Shimmy saying "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. I'm going to the emergency room."

And then my heart stopped beating and the world seemed to slow down and go really fast all at once. I called SM only to get his voicemail. Unfortunately I probably left a really screechy message saying something like ARE YOU WITH HER OMG PLEASE TELL ME YOU ARE WITH HER!!!!! As I'm pacing and trying to decide whether to jump in my car and break every law known to man in order to get to her my phone rang. It was Shimmy. Her dad was taking her to the hospital.

At the end of the day and several glasses of charcoal later, Shimmy was sent home with an appointment to meet with her counselor the next night.