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Try and Stop Me!: A Daughter's Challenge, A Father's Poetry
The moment you have a child your world changes. What a gift!
The pure joy of welcoming a new life into yours puts everything else in perspective. Priorities are immediately shuffled, downgraded, and things we always thought were important items on our daily agenda are completely forgotten (and never missed).
The teenage years are fraught with the agonies of puberty and peer pressure. We watch our kids struggle to be accepted for who and what they think they are, or feel they want to be. It seems like a time for loosening the parental reins. We must surely be forgiven for sighing with relief when this exciting but challenging journey of ten or fifteen years begins to get easier. Until one completely normal day we’re ambushed by news. A short, sharp telephone call from a stranger kicks me in the stomach. “Your daughter’s taken an overdose and she’s being rushed to hospital by ambulance…”
My daughter, barely fifteen years old and apparently coping with life, was not coping at all. Lesser acting than she’d been doing around home and school has won Oscars. That’s how well she’d hidden her inner torment and depression, and kept that ugly monster in a secret cave. But suddenly it was all out in the open, in desperate need of medical help and serious parenting, and more. She had tried to kill herself seven times, and she was getting better at it with each attempt.
These poems are an attempt to share a few of my thoughts and feelings about the hardest parenting period of my life. I offer here a few insights and scenes from the long and harrowing journey I made with her throughout two years. Although it was often disguised, sometimes hidden completely from view, hope, I thought, was always there. It had to be.
The title of this book, Try and Stop Me, was the terrifying message I read daily in her face, in her actions, and in the loud and angry silence that fiercely grew between us. It was a deadly challenge, and one I had absolutely no choice but to accept. Is there a happy ending? We’ll see.
The pure joy of welcoming a new life into yours puts everything else in perspective. Priorities are immediately shuffled, downgraded, and things we always thought were important items on our daily agenda are completely forgotten (and never missed).
The teenage years are fraught with the agonies of puberty and peer pressure. We watch our kids struggle to be accepted for who and what they think they are, or feel they want to be. It seems like a time for loosening the parental reins. We must surely be forgiven for sighing with relief when this exciting but challenging journey of ten or fifteen years begins to get easier. Until one completely normal day we’re ambushed by news. A short, sharp telephone call from a stranger kicks me in the stomach. “Your daughter’s taken an overdose and she’s being rushed to hospital by ambulance…”
My daughter, barely fifteen years old and apparently coping with life, was not coping at all. Lesser acting than she’d been doing around home and school has won Oscars. That’s how well she’d hidden her inner torment and depression, and kept that ugly monster in a secret cave. But suddenly it was all out in the open, in desperate need of medical help and serious parenting, and more. She had tried to kill herself seven times, and she was getting better at it with each attempt.
These poems are an attempt to share a few of my thoughts and feelings about the hardest parenting period of my life. I offer here a few insights and scenes from the long and harrowing journey I made with her throughout two years. Although it was often disguised, sometimes hidden completely from view, hope, I thought, was always there. It had to be.
The title of this book, Try and Stop Me, was the terrifying message I read daily in her face, in her actions, and in the loud and angry silence that fiercely grew between us. It was a deadly challenge, and one I had absolutely no choice but to accept. Is there a happy ending? We’ll see.
58 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 19, 2016
About the author
Dave Preston
8 books8 followersDave Preston is a writer and musician, born in North Yorkshire where he lived on a farm and was raised by a mother who worries too much. After studying agriculture, engineering, and computer science he leapt across the ocean to live and work in Canada.
He is the author of four books (and contributor to several others) and four plays, as well as hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and columns. He's a seasoned travel and food writer, as well as an award-winning brewer and winemaker. He also admits to writing poetry.
Weekends often find him playing guitar and singing in a rock and roll band (though his mother worries that he's getting too old for all this, and his knees often agree).
He lives on Vancouver Island, BC, with his wife, too much garden, and almost too many dogs.
He is the author of four books (and contributor to several others) and four plays, as well as hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and columns. He's a seasoned travel and food writer, as well as an award-winning brewer and winemaker. He also admits to writing poetry.
Weekends often find him playing guitar and singing in a rock and roll band (though his mother worries that he's getting too old for all this, and his knees often agree).
He lives on Vancouver Island, BC, with his wife, too much garden, and almost too many dogs.
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