Desirée would like to keep her children anonymous. That’s why their names have been changed. The photos in this story show the children when they were young.
If you ask a mother what she wants most for her child, it is to be happy. A life free of worries, filled with love. But the reality is that you have no control over that. You can’t make your kids happy, and they can’t make you happy either. You have to do that yourself, Desirée knows all too well now.
Had you told her this a decade earlier, she might have reluctantly said yes, but internally screamed no. Because when her son Sven ended up in a depression in 2014, she only thought one thing: ‘I’ll take care of my son until he becomes happy again’.
‘My child wanted to die’
Sven was 16 years old when he became depressed and suicidal. The divorce of Desirée and her ex-husband was the trigger for the gloomy feelings he had been struggling with for some time. It saddled her with immense guilt. “After all, I chose to leave my husband.”
A 26-year marriage came to an end. Together they had three sons: the twins Sven and Lars, and the one year older Oskar. “Home was always a nice place,” says Desirée. “We didn’t fight much and our marriage was pretty good. But I went to therapy for an unprocessed childhood trauma and that changed me. I had different needs and this marriage didn’t work anymore.”
She dared to choose her own happiness. “Yes, a strong decision,” she says. In retrospect, that decision would turn out to be at odds with what would happen over the next six years. In those years, from 2014 to 2020, she chose anything but herself. “My whole life revolved around one thing: making Sven better. It became my mission.”
A tear follows. “My child wanted to die,” she says, in her home in Halsteren. “As a mother you do everything to prevent your child from doing that.”
Black cloud in the house
Desirée was still hopeful at the beginning of Sven’s depressive period. “At first I thought he just needed a little more time to grieve the divorce. I told my ex-husband to give him some space.” But the situation remained the same, week after week. “He didn’t get out of bed, didn’t eat anymore and only played games at night. His room was dirty and a huge mess. If you weren’t depressed already, you would almost be.”
Her ex-husband often traveled and so Sven came to live with her. ‘Good’, thought Desirée, ‘because action is needed here’.
Every morning she was ready for Sven, who hadn’t been to school for months. Go, then she went upstairs again with a healthy breakfast. ‘Come on, one leg over the edge. Now your other leg,” she would say. “But then he fell over again… It could sometimes take an hour before he sat. And I did this every day.” She calls it “a metaphor” for the process with her son. “Me who kept helping him get up and him who kept falling back.”
Her dear Sven, a boy who used to be so cheerful and had many friends. Desirée knew he could be that boy again. “I saw his potential.” She stops talking for a moment. And then in a faltering voice: “See it then, I thought.” Sob. “See it then!” “More sobs. “I saw what he could be.”
Go beyond your own borders
A few months turned into a year. Desirée grew more tired every day, and the black cloud of depression had drawn into the house. His twin brother Lars, who also lived with her, suffered but kept quiet. “I saw that he was increasingly self-effacing. When Sven was gaming with a lot of noise at night, Lars always wanted to be nice. ‘Would you please not do that while I’m studying for my exams?’, he said then. While he could also just say: can it be a little quieter! He too was looking for the soft way. Just like me.”
She saw it. She knew. Something had to change. But how? Desirée really had no idea. She said yes to everything Sven asked or wanted. “I was afraid of the consequences a ‘no’ would have.” For example, Sven told me one day that he had smoked weed and it made him feel good. Before she knew it, she was standing in line at the coffee shop. “I wanted to make him feel good and make him feel loved.”
“But that made me go beyond my own limits for years. I had completely lost myself. I hardly left the house. I really had to force myself to do something fun. But even then I was always busy with home, afraid that he would or a counselor would call. Although that never happened.” A sigh follows. And another one. “That I also think now: how could I have tried for so long?”
“You can always kick him out of the house”
But a twist sometimes comes from an unexpected angle. Meanwhile, Desirée was dating. She had to get out of that house. After countless dates, during which she learned, among other things, not to mention her depressed son or unprocessed childhood trauma in the first two dates, she met the man with whom she has been together for five years now. Against her own rules, ‘I’m not going to live together’ and ‘latting is the highest attainable’, Erik lived with her after a year.
In the process with Sven, that was perhaps the best thing that could have happened. He brought what she needed: a mirror. When she went to the coffee shop with Sven again for weed, Erik said: ‘You could have said no’. “He made me think.” Just like other people around her. When Sven had stopped therapy for the umpteenth time, a good friend, who herself had a depressed child for years, said: ‘If he refuses help, you can always kick him out of the house.’
“I knew it could be done,” she says, again in tears. “I knew I could do something other than just take care of him.”
It was at that moment that she also remembered another tip: ‘Sometimes people literally have to end up in the gutter before they realize: shit, I have to do it and not everyone around me.’ All the advice made sense. Until the last push came, from Sven’s (new) therapist, who started about a recording.
Desirée realized: “I wasn’t part of the problem, but I was part of the solution. I kept things going. I worked very hard for Sven, so he didn’t have to work. But after six years we were still in the same boat . I couldn’t get him out of that depression at all. He had to do that himself.”
Stop worrying
She stopped taking care of him. Despite the fear that he would take his own life, a thought that still makes her shudder, she did it. “I was no longer going to bring him sandwiches every day, drive to the coffee shop, wake him up, bring his pills. I was terrified, but I didn’t do it anymore.”
It was dead quiet upstairs for two days, until she heard sobbing. She came in and Sven said: ‘I have to get out of here’. “I could not believe my ears.” That same minute she was on the phone with his therapist. He was admitted a few days later. “My mother heart cried, but I persevered. I knew inside that this was the best for him.”
Lightness at home
The darkness in the house gave way to lightness. The sadness about his admission was certainly there, but so was the relief. “Once Sven had left, it seemed like a black cloud had lifted. A blanket had pressed on us the whole time. We didn’t feel it until he was gone. Only then could I really relax. Erik and I immediately booked a weekend away, to get away from it all. It was the first time in six years that I didn’t look at my phone all the time, afraid something had happened to Sven.”
She was given space to get her own life back on track. To pay attention to her son Lars, who she says has had a big blow from the period with Sven. He fell into a burnout, which he overcame by quickly seeking help. And she was given the space to be with Erik, a man with whom she is very happy.
Desirée wrote a book about her experience: End of darkness – When your child has a death wish. “There are many depressed young people in the Netherlands and fortunately there is a lot of attention for that, but you don’t hear anything about the mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. The whole family suffers. This book is for them,” she says about it.
‘Letting go is the greatest lesson in life’
Sven soon said that he was doing well at the clinic. But Desirée had known her son longer than today. “I knew he was very good at playing in fair weather.” She wrote a letter to the psychiatrists at the clinic, hoping they would see through this. “I did it for love.”
Sven just saw it differently; he was furious and cut off all contact with his mother. Through her ex-husband, with whom Sven went to live after his admission of two months, she occasionally received an update. “That hurt every time.” A silence follows. “I was so touched to hear about him. But his father did what was best for him, I’m convinced of that.”
Unexpected visitors
Suddenly, after a year and a half, she saw a tall boy with brown hair standing in front of the kitchen window. If she had time for coffee. “Sure,” she said, holding back her emotions. Together they talked small talk. Sven also asked if she wanted to participate in a new therapy he had started. The six grueling years, during which Desirée had cared for him day and night, were not mentioned. Sven even said that his work as a climbing instructor, which he sometimes did in the summer when he was depressed, helped him recover. “Ouch,” Desiree says. “That felt like a sting. What about me?”
But that feeling faded. Because, she doesn’t blame him. “Sven doesn’t know how hard it has been for us as a family and it doesn’t have to be.” She’s just happy that he’s doing so well now. “He has a nice job, a dear girlfriend and a nice house. He is enjoying life again.”
Desirée learned in those six years that only one person could help him and that was herself. “I’ve become a ‘let it go’ mom,” she laughs. “Letting go is the greatest lesson in life. I learned to accept things as they are. Whether he wanted to die or wanted to live, I would have accepted that.”
Sunday interview
Every Sunday we publish an interview in text and photos of someone who does or has experienced something special. That can be a major event that the person handles admirably. The Sunday interviews have in common that the story has a major influence on the life of the interviewee.
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2023-08-06 06:26:36
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