Anybody Feeling Homicidal or Suicidal?
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My name is Hadley-Jane and this is the story that changed my life forever. Wow, what a cliché way to start a story. Let’s try that again…
This story starts in a bathroom; a school bathroom. I’d been in there quite a while. No, I wasn’t shitting. I was hiding. You see bathrooms are sort of a safe haven to me. It’s like the whole world stops when you walk into that one room. It’s best when you’re alone. You can just take a minute to collect yourself. And why did I need collecting? Well I had spent the first half of class trying not to cry before excusing myself to the bathroom. Now I wanted to remain there for the second half of class. I could always just tell Mr. H I was having ‘girl problems’. That always makes male teachers back the fuck off.
Yeah, that’s how bad it got. I was willing to skip my favorite class, to hide out in the bathroom no less.
I remember upon waking up that particular morning I had decided to skip out on makeup for the day. Why not? I mean I’d just ended up crying it off the prior days of the week. I love how I remember the silly little details like makeup. That’s not what this is about. However, I did end up crying that day, much more than any of the other days.
That was the day that I would leave my life as I knew it behind, say goodbye to my parents, friends, loved ones, and wake up the next morning on an unfamiliar foam mattress.
I’d been talking about inpatient psychiatric hospitalization for a few weeks. My mom was not on board, and therefor dad wasn’t either. When mom says no, dad says no. Even though they’re getting divorced…
I made her watch a movie with me about a boy who checked himself into the hospital because he wanted to kill himself. That changed her mind.
I told my therapist I wanted to jump off a building, and that was it. That night I was headed to the Crisis Center.
Oh, the Crisis Center. A Crisis Center is like an emergency room for mental problems. You might not be bleeding to death, cancerous, but the disease is still fatal and requires emergency attention.
The car ride there I cried the whole way. When we got there and the cops searched me, took my phone, ipod, and bra, I cried ever harder. It didn’t make sense to me that I was crying. The whole thing was my idea, right? I’d packed a bag full of my favorite clothes, worn shoes without laces, and readied myself to be away from home. Why was it so hard?
We sat in the waiting room for hours. My parents filled out paper work while I watched an emaciated 40 year old woman wander around looking lost.
The nurse was very sweet, very young, very pretty. I love nurses like that. The old ones just seem grumpy. Mom let me play with my iPod while the staff wasn’t looking. See the cop had given all my unallowable items to my mom. It was cold, scary, grungy, and the chairs were full of holes so the old rotting stuffing seeped out. They were the kind connected at the armrests. Somehow I managed to fall asleep by wiggling myself under the arm rest and setting my head on mom’s lap.
When they woke me, I was to go meet with a psychiatrist. The only psychiatrist for the entire hospital. That’s why he’d taken so long to actually get to me even though we were the only ones in the Crisis Center waiting room.
He asked me the normal questions:
• How long have you been depressed?
• Has there been anything tragic in your life to cause the depression?
• Do you have urges to hurt yourself? Do you act on them?
• Do you feel worthless, hopeless, alone?
• Do you want to kill yourself?
• Do you have a plan?
Every therapist/psychiatrist asks the same questions at an intake. It gets boring after a while. Can’t someone just write my answers down and the rest of them can share notes? Why did I have to become a broken record. The funny thing was each time I answered them was more difficult than the last time.
When he was done with me, he talked to my parents. They probably said the same exact things I’d said, and the same exact things they’d said to all of the other therapists I’d gone through.
I was admitted, but they didn’t have a bed for me on the floor yet. Apparently someone was supposed to be leaving that night and I would take their place. We waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually, around midnight or so, a kind black nurse came in and offered us this room in the back with two beds in it. Mom and I shared the right bed, dad took the left.
I fell asleep almost instantaneously. When I woke again, it was 3 AM and I was informed that I couldn’t be admitted there because of insurance issues. A lot of words were thrown around, : why? Where? Can’t we take her? Ambulance. Ambulance? I’d never ridden in an Ambulance before, suddenly I was slightly excited.
Apparently I was to be moved via ambulance to a different hospital called Fairmont.
This story starts in a bathroom; a school bathroom. I’d been in there quite a while. No, I wasn’t shitting. I was hiding. You see bathrooms are sort of a safe haven to me. It’s like the whole world stops when you walk into that one room. It’s best when you’re alone. You can just take a minute to collect yourself. And why did I need collecting? Well I had spent the first half of class trying not to cry before excusing myself to the bathroom. Now I wanted to remain there for the second half of class. I could always just tell Mr. H I was having ‘girl problems’. That always makes male teachers back the fuck off.
Yeah, that’s how bad it got. I was willing to skip my favorite class, to hide out in the bathroom no less.
I remember upon waking up that particular morning I had decided to skip out on makeup for the day. Why not? I mean I’d just ended up crying it off the prior days of the week. I love how I remember the silly little details like makeup. That’s not what this is about. However, I did end up crying that day, much more than any of the other days.
That was the day that I would leave my life as I knew it behind, say goodbye to my parents, friends, loved ones, and wake up the next morning on an unfamiliar foam mattress.
I’d been talking about inpatient psychiatric hospitalization for a few weeks. My mom was not on board, and therefor dad wasn’t either. When mom says no, dad says no. Even though they’re getting divorced…
I made her watch a movie with me about a boy who checked himself into the hospital because he wanted to kill himself. That changed her mind.
I told my therapist I wanted to jump off a building, and that was it. That night I was headed to the Crisis Center.
Oh, the Crisis Center. A Crisis Center is like an emergency room for mental problems. You might not be bleeding to death, cancerous, but the disease is still fatal and requires emergency attention.
The car ride there I cried the whole way. When we got there and the cops searched me, took my phone, ipod, and bra, I cried ever harder. It didn’t make sense to me that I was crying. The whole thing was my idea, right? I’d packed a bag full of my favorite clothes, worn shoes without laces, and readied myself to be away from home. Why was it so hard?
We sat in the waiting room for hours. My parents filled out paper work while I watched an emaciated 40 year old woman wander around looking lost.
The nurse was very sweet, very young, very pretty. I love nurses like that. The old ones just seem grumpy. Mom let me play with my iPod while the staff wasn’t looking. See the cop had given all my unallowable items to my mom. It was cold, scary, grungy, and the chairs were full of holes so the old rotting stuffing seeped out. They were the kind connected at the armrests. Somehow I managed to fall asleep by wiggling myself under the arm rest and setting my head on mom’s lap.
When they woke me, I was to go meet with a psychiatrist. The only psychiatrist for the entire hospital. That’s why he’d taken so long to actually get to me even though we were the only ones in the Crisis Center waiting room.
He asked me the normal questions:
• How long have you been depressed?
• Has there been anything tragic in your life to cause the depression?
• Do you have urges to hurt yourself? Do you act on them?
• Do you feel worthless, hopeless, alone?
• Do you want to kill yourself?
• Do you have a plan?
Every therapist/psychiatrist asks the same questions at an intake. It gets boring after a while. Can’t someone just write my answers down and the rest of them can share notes? Why did I have to become a broken record. The funny thing was each time I answered them was more difficult than the last time.
When he was done with me, he talked to my parents. They probably said the same exact things I’d said, and the same exact things they’d said to all of the other therapists I’d gone through.
I was admitted, but they didn’t have a bed for me on the floor yet. Apparently someone was supposed to be leaving that night and I would take their place. We waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually, around midnight or so, a kind black nurse came in and offered us this room in the back with two beds in it. Mom and I shared the right bed, dad took the left.
I fell asleep almost instantaneously. When I woke again, it was 3 AM and I was informed that I couldn’t be admitted there because of insurance issues. A lot of words were thrown around, : why? Where? Can’t we take her? Ambulance. Ambulance? I’d never ridden in an Ambulance before, suddenly I was slightly excited.
Apparently I was to be moved via ambulance to a different hospital called Fairmont.