Visible Hurt

After DHS took Athena, I spent three months in bed, waking up only to scream. Not anything in particular, just 'throw your head back could a sister get a shot of haldol' kind of screams. The screaming didn't accomplish much, for the first time in my life, but I think it kept me from blowing my brains out. So I would scream, sleep, wake up in the same nightmare I'd fallen asleep in, scream some more, then go back to sleep. I don't recomend this technique for losing baby weight, but it was pretty successful nonetheless. I can't begin to express the amount of self-control it took to have the weekly supervised visits with Athena, and not scream during them. I believe it was in part because my daughter was doing it for me. Screaming in the same uncontrolable fashion as I during every single visit for the first year of her life.
The case worker was at a loss, saying she'd never experienced this in 20 years with the department. (20 yrs! Jesus H.) Athena's screaming promped the visits relocation on multiple occasions, in an effort to "Stop the screaming baby". Once, after we had moved them from our house, to DHS, back to our house, back to DHS, and then to a counseling service providers office, the neighboring businesses filed formal complaints with the Department, because of the "Noise from the screaming baby".
I remember knowing my daughter was trying to tell me something, tell me, tell them, this was wrong. She needed her mother, needed these people to go away and leave us alone together, everyone to go away and let her be in my arms alone. No case worker, no foster mother, no father who didn't believe in either of us, no scared little brother who at the hands of his father was subjected to this insanity every week for two and a half years. Everyone go please, and leave me alone to hold my daughter. They never did.
Eventually Athena did stop screaming, I don't recall exactly when, sometime around her first birthday. What was left in it's place was far worse than the screams, what was left was a little girl with a flat affect, who, until the day I signed away my parental rights...I'd never heard laugh.