The Forgotten Flower

     Spring.  My fresh flower of spring, Lesha, 10 years old, stepped into my medical classroom as if she were walking on rose petals - a graceful flow to her quiet gait.  Despite the fact that society had rained on her parade.  She had been physically abused, not sexually.  Lesha docilely complied with a calmness that made me shiver.  She was my newest suicidal student, African American.  At least she had a personality characteristic of self that I felt would thrive that spring.
     Lesha lived with her recovering alcoholic mother and stepfather.  Another stepfather stepping in to demonstrate his fatherly abilities of controlling.  He abusively confronts her with abusive and intimidating actions and words (hand raised, in her space, "bad girl".  You get the idea.) Her mother is, also, submissive. (Where would I go?  He cares for us.)
     The parents laughed during the entrance interviews about Lesha's suicide attempts and methods.  Their rudeness was apparently obvious in their therapy sessions.  Lesha's grandparents lived next door, but avoided contact for the last two years.  She had been hoed under by her support group.
     Incivility, abuse, and rudeness had wilted the "rose". Suicide attempted by drug overdose. (Rudeness as defined as "low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm" was contagious.) Lesha clung to her belief that she was responsible for her abuse and well deserving of her stepfather's treatment.
     But, the clinic tried to revive Lesha through:

•  medications for depression
  
•  staff nurturing her by planting food of new concepts
  
•  caregivers supervision (court)
  

to prevent this rose from withering and dying.  "Reining" back-in her "self" to strengthen her original true flower of spirit.  Lesha would take home the budding flower of self; not bored, tired, melancholy and of little faith that we intuited on her entry.
     Spring was in the air. 

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