Let’s Begin in the Beginning

Hey guys/probably just my mom! I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in 2016 and I’ve been fighting an eating disorder since I was about thirteen and I’m in treatment for all of these things! Yay! But! Not everyone is as lucky as me and no one is talking about this stuff enough so, at the expense of being another white girl with a blog, I’m starting this bad boy to chronicle my experience and how I’m getting through it all.

I’m gonna start with a scary story, my scary story. (WARNING: It’s about to get personal ya’ll – but it ends with chocolate chip pancakes so how bad could it be?)

I went to the hospital April 2nd, 2016 because I was going to commit suicide but I had a panic attack instead. My roommate was gone for most of the day and I was in my room by myself. I didn’t know how to say I needed help, that I just wanted some company. It’s stupid, because I’m sure there are so many people who would’ve hung out with me for a couple hours if I’d asked but even typing this I don’t believe it. So, I was by myself. And I started looking at old messages from the first person I’d ever fallen in love with. He broke my heart into a million little pieces and it sucks because he was so far away and I never got to have the happy bits that usually come before the heart break (he was a narcissistic fuck boy that told me all kinds of wonderful things I wanted to believe about myself in a time that I wasn’t strong enough to realize he didn’t mean it – he was just bored and needed someone to fan his ego). I kept wondering what I’d done, what had I done to have deserved it? I wrote this that night:

“Do you remember then? I miss then. I miss it a lot. It was softer and full of stupid promises. I don’t care that they were stupid and I don’t care that we are both so very broken now. Can we just be broken together and make stupid promises and find a tiny bit of happiness in everything that is wrong and I don’t care that I care too much. I really don’t. But I know you can’t love me anymore, can you? It makes me so sad. It’s devastating and I hate myself for it and I guess I already hate myself enough for everything else and maybe you do to and maybe together will kill us both but I’m not sure I’m surviving on my own”

I was in a lot of pain. Not even him-specific pain. Everything just started to hurt and I didn’t want to live in a world where I was not worthy of love. My roommate came home and I was crying. She ignored it, as she always did, and went about her business until I decided I was either going to put on my heaviest coat and boots and jump in the lake or maybe give life one more chance. I tried to call the national suicide prevention hotline and it was busy. I almost laughed out loud through the tears. What irony. I started to hyperventilate and then my roommate went and got an RA who got the on campus EMTs and campus safety who eventually called an ambulance for me. My hands seized and my limbs and face felt fuzzy and tingly. I put partial blame on the people who tried to help me, and I hate to do that, but I was having a panic attack for crissakes! They kept filling my room with more and more people I didn’t know, heightening the panic and I swear every time a new person came in any progress I’d made with the hyperventilating went out the window. I kept screaming that I was fine and that I just wanted everyone to leave me alone. It must’ve looked pretty scary from the outside. They brought in a sitting-up stretcher (like a wheel chair but also not?) and wheeled me down to the ambulance. That was my first ever ride in an ambulance. There was one nice EMT who kept trying to hold my seized hand and telling me that I was doing just great and one EMT who kept exasperatedly telling me to just breathe (lady, if I could breathe on my own and make you guys go the hell away I WOULD BE DOING THAT). The nice EMT sat with me in the ambulance until they switched her out for my roommate. I tried telling them not to make my roommate come with me because she had things to do early tomorrow and that I was just fine to go by myself. Nobody understood me through the hyperventilating though. I doubt they would’ve listened to me anyway but I tried, I really did. I remember the man in the ambulance telling me that I was looking better because my lips weren’t as blue anymore. We got to the hospital and they made me change into this little hospital gown (they had given me two – one to wear on my front and the other for my back for modesty’s sake I guess – whoever decided that was a thing, thank you because that was way better). My roommate helped me change and helped me give them a urine sample (gross – right? I spent so much time being mortified. It was to make sure I wasn’t pregnant but I was a virgin! I tried telling them that but they didn’t believe me. Hospital people are not very trusting). Then I stayed in a little hospital bed in the hallway of the emergency room. They weren’t swimming in open rooms at the time and nobody quite knew what to do with this suicidal teenager when everyone else my age was coming in with alcohol poisoning (college!). The first nurse I talked to wanted me to be transferred to a full time psych ward so I could get better but I absolutely positively did not want that. I argued on my behalf as much as possible, couldn’t they just please let me go home? I wanted to shower and then sleep as much as physically possible but they couldn’t let me go home. Eventually, they decided not to send me to a psych ward but to keep me overnight until their crisis specialist could come talk to me. (I don’t know why I think it’s so funny that their crisis specialist only works from 10-6 but I do. I think it’s hilarious that that hospital decided crises only happen from 10-6- I mean how nice would that be!) So, I waited. I got tucked off in a little room eventually and that was kind of nice but it was still very loud and very bright. I tried to sleep but I didn’t get much. One of my sorority sisters was there with a friend, I’m not sure why, but she stopped by my room and chatted with me for a little bit. If I were running a hospital, I would make sure every suicidal person had someone to talk to all the time. Not a therapist or anything, just somebody. All I really wanted was company, somebody to talk to about the weather and what was on TV, sometimes that’s really all you need. She drew a little face on a glove and set him and a bag of pretzels on my bed while I tried to sleep. Little acts of kindness, friends. Sometimes that’s all anybody needs.

The next morning, the nurses brought me lots of breakfast foods that were all the same flavor of bland. I think they felt bad for me, this sad little teenager who’d cried off all her make-up and thanked them for everything with a soft, teary smile. I noticed they were gentler with me than they were with most of their other patients, I appreciated it. My mom called the hospital to talk to me, I’d left my keys and phone in my dorm room, and we talked about what happened and about regular life until the phone cut out. I tried desperately to call her back but I didn’t know how to dial out on the little hospital phone they set on the end of my bed. My mom also called my cousin Michelle who lived in Chicago to come get me. Michelle more or less functions as my cool older sister and seeing her in my little hospital room brought some reality to the situation. She waited with me until the crisis specialist came in to talk to me. Her name was Christine and she was far better at dealing with me than anybody else I’d ever talked to about the sad, scary world inside my head. I had a counselor through Loyola and she wasn’t very good at levity. I needed levity to keep my head above water and Christine wanted to talk about what made me happy and what I was excited for instead of how suicidal I was feeling in that moment. She let me leave with Michelle and we went to go get chocolate chip pancakes.

That was the most exhausting 12 hours of my life. That’s where my treatment/recovery really began. Until then, I thought I was doing fine – not great, but fine. That’s why you can’t live your life in ‘fine’ – seek treatment when you need a little bit of help and not when you’re in a tail spin. That’s what I have for you right now – I’ll be back to document my life and stuff later this week!