my life in a psychiatric ward pt. 2

I woke up in my room in Orange 8, panicked without knowing why. The blankets tangled around me as I bolted up. I was damp with sweat again and shivering. My roommate’s bed was empty. I stood up, blinking past my dry contacts for the second morning in a row, and went into our little bathroom.

The door was like the bathroom in the Emergency Room, one that didn’t reach the floor or the ceiling. I felt awkward about everyone being able to see my feet. Then I realized that the door not only didn’t lock, it didn’t even latch. It barely stayed shut, stubbornly staying open a tiny crack. Again there were no toilet roll holders, no sink faucet, no toilet handle. Everything was made of green plastic. The water in the sink came out of a hole like a drinking faucet. There were buttons to turn the water on and to flush.

Our toilet was slightly quieter than the Emergency Room toilet, but only slightly.

I could not stop shivering. My damp scrubs stuck to me. I had no idea what time it was. I could hear the tv in the lounge. What day was it? Wednesday? I’d been wearing these scrubs since Monday afternoon. I exited the bathroom, collected my tiny towel, generic bottle of “Hair and Body Wash,” and slunk over to the nurse’s station where I found out it was 7:00 am.

“Hi Kay! I’m Amy! I’m your nurse!” A girl about my age said cheerfully. I tried not to wince.

“Um, hi.” I said, low, my voice hoarse from sleep and last night's emotion. “Can I use the shower?”

Turns out my roommate was in the shower. I retreated to my bed, where I sat shivering, waiting for her to get out so I could get in. When she finally walked back in our room, her shoulder length hair sticking in every direction, she jumped when she saw me sitting on my bed.

“Good morning!” She chirped in her frail little voice. Her eyes were wide, giving her the impression of a gangly, startled bird. “Did I wake you up?”

“No.” I reassured her, although I wasn’t sure if that was the truth or not. Then I darted out to find my nurse.

I had three shower stalls to choose from, big open, tiled rooms with a shower head sticking out of the wall. Another button to turn the water on. It would run for about five minutes and then shut off.

“You’re going to want to let it run for a while.” My nurse warned me. “It takes a while to heat up.”

She finally left after informing me that they would knock on the door during rounds, and that I would have to yell that I was ok. Otherwise, they would come in and check on me. I accepted all this with a dull sort of numbness. By this time I was pretty used to not being trusted with myself.

As soon as the door latched behind her, I stripped out of my scrubs and stepped under the water. It was already hot, thanks to my roommate, and it felt like heaven. I stood there for a long time, my eyes closed, slowly starting to feel human again. The water shut off, and I pushed the button again. I examined the two arm bands I was wearing, one white and one orange with my information printed on it, wondering if they were waterproof. They seemed to hold up alright.

The cuts on wrist were looking better. The swelling had gone down, leaving angry red lines. The cuts on my legs were deeper and sported thicker scabs.

The knock came as I was washing my hair. “I’m all right!” I obediently yelled.

They had given me back my clothes, but I felt weird about wearing shorts. So I dressed in clean scrubs and socks and put my zip up hoodie on over top. I blow dried my hair under a hand dryer conveniently mounted high up on the wall. I didn’t even bother brushing my long hair. It dried half wavy and half bushy. I didn’t really care.

Did I mention the socks? They had rubber grippy things on the bottom, like the socks you used to wear when you were a kid. They were also completely square. I’m not sure if their creator had ever actually seen a human foot.

By the time I left the bathroom, most of the patients were sitting at the tables behind the lounge chairs, waiting for breakfast to arrive. I slunk past them back to my room to put my toiletries away. My roommate was back on her bed, curled up, facing the wall. I took a couple deep breaths, and then ventured out again in search of coffee.

I kept my head down, my long hair acting as an effective shield. I slipped into the snack room and grabbed a styrofoam cup, added one Sweet Life packet, and two powdered creamer packets. As I was pouring coffee in, two young girls approached me. They had badges on, but they looked nervous. I didn’t look at them.

“Hi.” Said the closest one, smiling brightly at me.

I glanced at them. Yep. They were talking to me. I mumbled something that sort of passed for a greeting.

They introduced themselves. They were medical students. They would be here observing and working with the patients for a couple days.

Great.

I let my hair fall over my face again and stirred my coffee methodically for way too long. I did not want to talk to chipper med students who were definitely younger than I was about how I am a sad depressed failure of a human being.

They tried to make small talk for a little while. I answered like a robot. They finally left me alone. I hid in my room again.

Way to look like a crazy person. I thought wryly as I curled up in my nook with my coffee and fought a mad desire to laugh. Or maybe cry. 

Because I am a crazy person.

Breakfast rolled in, a big metal box full of trays. My roommate rose from her bed and moved like a sleepwalker out of the room. I sat for a second, the thought of food making my stomach twist. Then I followed.

I wasn’t sure what to do. It looked like people were just grabbing trays and sitting down. So that’s what I did. I sort of numbly grabbed a tray and sat down. I opened the hot plate to discover two strips of bacon. I closed it again. There was a strawberry yogurt. I opened that and tried a bite. That’s when I noticed the receipt on the tray.

The receipt that had a name on it that wasn’t mine.

Shit. I just took someone else’s breakfast.

I wished the floor would swallow me whole. This was like middle school all over again, and I was the kid who wet her pants in gym class.

I stood up and walked over to a nurse, any nurse. “I’m sorry.” I said, my voice strangely detached. “I just took someone else’s breakfast. I didn’t know how it worked.”

The nurse was very nice about it. He found my tray, gave the patient the tray I had stolen, minus her yogurt. My actual breakfast was scrambled eggs and hashbrowns, a banana, orange juice, and milk. I drank some of the milk, and then put the tray back on the cart, hoping no one had noticed I hadn’t eaten any of it.

I got a second cup of coffee, and tried to retreat to my room again, but my nurse caught me first. She took my vitals and gave me my morning medication. Birth control and something for acid reflux. I vaguely remembered telling the doctor last night that I took those two medications every day. I swallowed them obediently down, and shook my head when she asked if I was hearing any voices or seeing anything no one else could see.

That was now the fourth or fifth time I’d been asked that question since coming into the hospital, but it was still weird. What if I was? How would I know? What if I was hallucinating this nurse asking me if I was seeing or hearing anything no one else could? And did anyone ever answer that question with yes?

She told me that I would meet with my doctor later that day, and that I should try to go to as many groups as possible. She showed me where the group schedule was. She left me there, trying to read it. I suddenly couldn’t remember what day it was, and the words were swimming all around in my head, making no sense. I gave up and wandered over one of the vinyl chairs. The tv was still talking about Syria. The white haired patient was still glued to the screen.

Someone plopped down in the chair next to me. I looked up, startled, to see the young guy with two black eyes.

“Hey.” He said, one eyebrow raised, a cocky smile playing across his face. “I’m Trey.”

“Hey.” I whispered back, watching him warily. “I’m Kay.”

“So what are you in here for?” He asked curiously, his swollen and bruised eyes never leaving my face.

I swallowed, but I was a little more prepared for that question this time. “I tried to kill myself.” I said, low.

“What?” He yelped, surprise and alarm crossing his face. I blinked at him, startled again. “But you’re so pretty!”

I blinked again.

Then I burst out laughing.

I’m so pretty? Seriously? Shit, if only I had realized I was pretty! All my problems would be over! I wouldn’t be depressed! I could live happily ever after!

He grinned at me, good naturedly, unaware that I was borderline hysterical.

“No seriously, dude.” He said when I finally managed to calm down to wild giggles. “You can’t kill yourself! Here’s what you need to do. Every morning, you need to get up and go look in the mirror and tell yourself, ‘I am beautiful. I am a genius. I am a sexy brunette.’ And then you won’t be depressed anymore.”

He flashed another arrogant, yet somehow perfectly genuine smile, like he was certain he’d just personally saved my life.

“I’ll work on that.” I said dryly.

“I bet you have a highschool diploma don’t you?” He said. I nodded. I have a college diploma too, but I kept that to myself.

He held out his right pointer finger. “I would cut off my finger for that.”

I blinked.

“I bet you have a job too don’t you?” He barrelled on. I nodded again.

He held his whole hand out. “I would cut off all my fingers for a job. I bet you have a car too, huh?”

I shrank down in my seat a little, nodding a third time.

He balled up his fist. “I would cut off my whole hand for a car. Do you have a house too?”

I nodded a fourth time.

He stared at me. “I would cut off my whole arm for all of that. I dropped out of highschool. I don’t got a job or a car. I’m living on the streets, homeless. Why are you depressed?”

I shrugged, tears pricking at my eyes, cause I really didn’t know. I knew I had everything. And yet it wasn’t enough. Why wasn’t it enough?

He chuckled suddenly. “Hey, you wanna play foosball?”

I hate foosball. But what else was I going to do? So I played foosball. I played like six fucking games of foosball. And, hey, I got some good shots in. As we played, we talked. According to him, Trey didn’t know why he was in here. He just got jumped, man. Why the hell would he need to be in here cause he got jumped? They were trying to commit him, but there was no way in hell he was gonna let that happen. His movements were jittery. He was twenty-one. He’d done just about every drug ever. This was his fifth or sixth time in a psych ward. He thought I was “eighteen or something.” That set me off laughing again. He was slightly shocked when I finally managed to tell him that I was in fact twenty-six.

It did not deter him, though. He was perhaps the most forward flirt I’d ever met. I told him I was happily married. He told me he was gonna flirt with me anyways. He told me several times I was beautiful, which was slightly obnoxious, but I will admit sort of flattering. Considering I had wild hair and no makeup. He stopped flirting with me though to flirt with any pretty young nurse who happened to walk by, so I didn’t mind him too much. He was a good distraction.

An elderly woman wandered over to watch us play. When two women in white lab coats showed up and called Trey away (who rolled his eyes and huffed an angry sigh), she took over his place without really asking me if I wanted to play more. (I didn’t). She hit the ball into her own goal. Then she continually got it stuck in a corner where neither of us could reach it. I patiently blew it out of the corner over and over. She stared unnervingly at me over her glasses.

“My name is Marie.” She told me.

“I'm Kay. Marie is my middle name.” I told her.

“Oh.” She gave me a particularly long stare. “That’s nice.”

Eventually she wandered away, mumbling that I had won. I sighed in relief, and retreated to my room again.

A nurse announced that the first group was starting a few minutes later. Something called Jump Start. It proved to be simple enough. Those of us who came sat at the tables, went around the circle and introduced ourselves, stated how we were feeling, what our plan was for the day, and answered a random question.

“Susan, do you want to come up with a question?” The nurse asked the patient with the shockingly white hair.

She furrowed her brow. “How about, what day is it?” She finally said decisively.

I stared at her. What day is it? Really? But then again, could I even answer that question?

The nurse politely asked for a new question, which someone else offered. I forget what it was. When it was my turn, I said my name, that I felt kind of anxious, and that my plan was to meet my doctor.

Simple. And honest. Ok. That’s a good start.

After Jump Start was a more serious group called IMR, which stood for Illness Management and Recovery. Trey followed me into the room, surprising the nurse leading the group. I got the feeling he didn’t typically attend many groups. I sat next to my roommate and we talked about stress and anxiety and how to manage it. We checked off the symptoms we had on a worksheet. I had most of them. It was mostly simple things I knew, but it was sort of nice. Trey talked a lot about how he couldn’t focus on anything. Which was pretty obvious.

After IMR, I apologized to the girl who’s breakfast I had accidentally stolen. Her name was Mia. She told me not to worry about it, and I knew right then we would be friends.

Grooming Group was next. Set up on tables was makeup and fingernail polish and razors and shaving cream. My eyes lit up.

“Can I shave my legs?” I asked the nurse.

She said I could, so I sat in the corner and shaved with a disposable razor that I had to “check out” and use under the supervision of the nurse.

Because I can’t have sharps. Unsupervised.

With freshly shaved legs, I felt even better. So I painted my nails bright pink. The man shaving his face next to me grinned a toothy smile. He was short and balding and spoke hardly any English.

“Call me Angel Gabriel, Bonita.” He told me in a thick Mexican accent, and I couldn’t help but smile.

They had a whole selection of shampoo and conditioners that we could take little sample cups of for our next showers. I was browsing the selection when a man in a white lab coat came to fetch me.

Turns out he was the resident intern to my doctor. He was about my age, and he was a part of my team. He brought me out to the lounge and introduced me to them next. There was a female resident intern, and I immediately liked both of them. Then there was a social worker who typed furiously away a laptop and didn’t really look at me. I liked her less.

We sat at a table in the middle of the lounge. None of them seemed to care that everyone was milling around within earshot. I guess it made sense that privacy didn’t really matter, since we were all crazy. I curled up on the chair, as small as possible, and answered their questions from behind my hair. It came out slowly, jumbled, but I was honest. Well, mostly.

I told them that I knew I’d been struggling with depression for most of my life. I was always sad, so I fixated on the saddest things I could think of, to try to give it a reason. In the last couple years, the anxiety had shown up. I felt like I was on a roller coaster. When I was happy, I was really happy. When I was sad, I could hardly function.

I told them the vague details about my mother.

I glossed over my use of calorie counting and restricting as a way of coping.

Then they asked me to tell them what had happened on Monday.

I pulled my knees tight against my chest and told them, my voice expressionless. I told them about how Sunday night, I’d suddenly swung way down. I’d had a panic attack, over nothing. But I’d managed to go to sleep. Monday morning, I got up, I got all ready for work, and then I put my hand on the door knob. And I couldn’t turn it.

I couldn’t make my hand turn the damn door knob.

So I’d turned around, dumped all my stuff on the floor, texted my boss that I was sick, and that’s when I started hyperventilating.

I called a hotline, trying to calm down. Several hotlines, actually. I hung up on a few of them. I paced around. That feeling was in my chest, the feeling that’s similar to when your feet are suddenly tangled in the sheets and you panic, trying to get them free. Overwhelming. Tightening. I couldn’t breathe right. I’d had it before, but this time was so much worse. And I had to do something, anything to make it stop.

So I’d picked up those sharp haircutting scissors. And I’d started on my legs. And it had helped. The pain. In a weird, twisted, sick sort of way. Cutting helped. But it wasn’t enough. So I started on my wrist. And I started pushing harder.

My suicide plan had always been to slit my wrists.

At first I think I just wanted to see if I could even cut myself. To see if I was brave enough.

But then I couldn’t stop.

And all I could think was how nothing was ever going to change. I would never get better. I would always be the same.

And I think I knew. I knew the moment I didn’t open that door, that maybe I would do it. I would finally kill myself.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the Mr.

So I called one more suicide hotline. I couldn’t stop cutting my wrist, even while I was talking to Marta. We talked for a long time before she finally convinced me to call the hospital. And by the time I talked to Sue at the Crisis Intervention Center, I’d hit rock bottom. My wrist and legs were covered in cuts, cuts that I would have to explain to the Mr. To my friends. To my boss. Sue was gently, but persistently asking me to come into the hospital. And in my perspective, I had two options:

Go to the hospital or press harder and kill myself.

And that’s when I completely shut down. I told Sue I’d be there in ten minutes. I threw on some clothes. I grabbed my water bottle. I drove to the hospital.

The two interns listened intently, and I was so thankful to see that there was no pity on their faces.

I was exhausted. They thanked me, and I retreated again to my room, where I pretended to read. Lunch came. I sat in my room and watched everyone else get their trays. I wondered if anyone would notice if I didn’t eat anything. Finally I decided that I should choose my battles. I could play the game. Lunch was beef stroganoff. I slowly ate the canned green beans that were on the side, one at a time. Everyone else cleared their trays away, but I was still there, slowly eating one bean at a time.

A concerned nurse sat next to me and asked me if I knew about the menus that came with the breakfast trays. It sounded vaguely familiar. Someone had probably told me, and it had probably slipped through the cracks. He told me that tomorrow morning I should fill it out so I could have what I wanted to eat. He told me it was breaking his heart watching me pick at my food. I forced a smile and told him I would fill the menu out tomorrow.

I didn’t tell him that food itself was a general problem.

After lunch, I paced. I paced up and down, across the ward. It wasn’t really helping though. I felt trapped. I felt overwhelmed. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. 

So I found a blank coloring sheet and a box of crayons and started coloring. As I colored, a quiet older man, a patient, sat in the corner and began softly playing a guitar. It was nice, soothing.

And then he started playing "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel.

I picked that song to be my favorite song when I was four years old. I used to dance to it in our living room, wearing this white satin slip that I called my “skip dress.” It’s remained one of my favorite songs for my entire life. And he was playing it.

I kept coloring, but I just started crying, fat tears dripping onto my coloring page. No one noticed, or at least, no one said anything. And I was thankful for that, because these tears weren't the panicky, frightened ones from last night. These were just sad. I needed these tears. I needed that moment.

The song ended. I wiped my face. The medical students came back and tried to make more awkward small talk. Trey showed up again and told me bluntly that I needed to pull my hair back because I looked “fucking depressed” which made me laugh again.

Then my team came back. This time with my doctor. Well, my two doctors. That made six of us that filed into a small private room. The residents had told the doctors what I had said, but they made me tell it all again. Again, I found myself curling up into a small ball, talking to the table, my voice numb.

Until one of the doctors suddenly asked me if I felt guilty.

And then I was suddenly sobbing.

Sobbing because I did feel guilty. I felt guilty about everything. Especially about my younger siblings. About how I couldn’t protect them from our mother. About how they struggled just as much as I did, all of us in our own ways. And how I carried the weight of that. I hadn’t even realized how heavy that weight was until that moment, when I sobbed it all out for six strangers.

They asked some more specific questions about my eating. So I finally told them about how I’d started not eating to feel like I was in control. So I wouldn’t think about how I wanted to kill myself. But then somewhere along the line, it had switched. It wasn’t working as a coping mechanism anymore. Now eating was a huge trigger. I confessed that maybe I knew it was risky. Because sometimes I didn’t get enough nutrients. I hadn’t meant to tell them all of that, but I was too emotionally exhausted to really care.

They told me they were going to start me on medication. Klonopin for anxiety. Prozac for depression. Prozac is good for people with eating disorders, they said. I stiffened, but I didn’t argue.

That afternoon, I worked up my courage and approached Bill, the older man who had played the guitar earlier. I shyly sat down next to him and we started talking, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve made. I knew as soon as we started talking that we were, as Anne of Green Gables would say, kindred spirits. He’s a dreamer, like I am, and he also walked into the ER after a sort of failed suicide attempt.

I cannot ever express in words how wonderful it was to have someone who so deeply understood the turbulent emotions in my head. Emotions that are nearly impossible to explain. All I had to do was say a few simple words, and he just knew. He knew what I meant. What I felt.

After dinner, which I hardly touched, the Mr. and my little brother and sister came to visit. It was a good visit, draining, but good. There were a few tears, but not many. I could feel myself slipping back into old habits, trying to be lighthearted and smile. I could tell my siblings were fascinated and intimidated and nervous about the other patients. It was then that I realized how accustomed to them I had become.

There was the man who prowled the lounge like a lion, muttering and occasionally shouting and things and people no one else could see. “Faggot! Get out of there, faggot!” He screamed at one point as he pedaled furiously on the exercise bike.

There was the girl who had thrown the fit about her pills. She wandered around, occasionally spouting off sentences of disturbing gibberish. “They know. They put me in closet, and they hit me. They beat me and say ‘Shhhhh.’”

There was Sue who waited impatiently for the phones to be turned on in the morning so she could make a series of calls. She always spoke very urgently. Strange things about birds missing and the FBI having a file on it and the government being full of corruption. These conversations never seemed to go well. At one point she shouted fiercely into the phone, “No I do NOT have paranoid delusions about the government!”

There was a woman who erupted with fury whenever a nurse would speak with her. A man who steadfastly refused to let anyone take his blood pressure. Marie, who loved to join conversations and tell people about the book she was going to write.
]
Yet there was something comforting about them. We were all fucked up, all of us. And even though most of the people denied having any problems, there was still an unspoken sort of community. We had each other, and for some, we were all they had.
]
The Mr. brought me some clothes and books from home. My favorite jeans, a comfy sweatshirt, and underwear. I have never been so happy to see my own underwear. I held his hand through our entire visit. He updated me on everything going on. He had informed all our family and friends. Everyone was worried, but wanted me to know they loved me.

Although my sister let it slip that my mother was frantically trying to keep this quiet. You know, the scandal of how her oldest daughter was locked in a psych ward.

I tried to let it roll off my shoulders, but it got stuck at the base of my skull and stayed there.

I took my first dose of Klonopin that night. I answered no, that I still wasn’t seeing or hearing anything no one else was, and then I went to bed early. My roommate had turned in at approximately 7:00 pm. I tiptoed around the room, trying not to wake her. I took my contacts out after three solid days of wear, and my eyes gasped in relief.

I cried again, that second night in Orange 8, but this time I did so quietly in my bed. And when the nurses shined the flashlight through the window in our door during rounds, I kept my face to the wall and pretended to sleep until eventually I did.