CYR

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Gender: Male
Status: In a relationship
Age: 22
Sign: Pisces
Country: United States

Signup Date:
September 16, 2019

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03/29/2020 04:35 PM 

life on the inside
Category: Blogging
Current mood:  contemplative

on january 27th, i was admitted into the psych ward. on january 30th, i was discharged. i think it was a very good experience overall. i wanted to write my experience out soon after my release, but i was a bit too exhausted back then, so i guess ill recount it now.

i went to therapy that monday night and my mood was apathetic. i was smiling lamely the whole time while telling my therapist that i was suicidal and had given up talking with friends. she became very concerned, though i kept smiling, uncomprehending. she asked to call my mom and i allowed her to. she told my mom i would need to go to the hospital. my mom suggested doing it tomorrow morning, and she said that, unfortunately, i would have to go now. if i didnt, the police would be called.

i messaged two friends that i would probably be admitted to the mental hospital soon and turned on some merchant ships for the ride over. i cried a bit and my mom seemed very annoyed. she told me i needed to watch my mouth.

we arrived at the hospital. some formalities went by before we entered a room with a very kind social worker of some sort. i kept fairly quiet at first, answering questions with 'yes' 'no' and 'i said i was suicidal.' he put me at ease very quickly though. once hed gotten my guard down, he kept asking questions. i was asked about drug use (i said none -- do they really need to know i occasionally enjoy smoking a nearly harmless plant?), sexual history (genuinely nonexistent), and history of self-harm (extensive). my mom was present the whole time, and she was very surprised by the last one.

after some forms were filled out and more questions were answered, some nurses came into the room. it had been probably an hour or even more since id entered the hospital. at this point i was still unsure if i was actually being admitted, but the nurses asked me to hand my electronics, jewelry, and other such belongings to my mother. i did so and i gave her a hug. she told me shed see me soon. i followed the nurses out.

they brought me to some sort of examination room, i guess -- i havent been to a regular doctor in years, so im a bit unfamiliar. they weighed me and then asked me to remove my shoes. i did. then they strip-searched me. they held a sheet up to cover my chest and such, but it was still uncomfortable. i had to crouch down so they could make sure i wasnt hiding anything in any cavities. they marked down that i was free of marks on most of my body, but when they got to my left thigh, the woman searching me sounded a bit dismayed and shocked when she reported that i had many, many scars there. i thought for a moment about the fact that i had enough scars to make psych ward workers nervous. finally i put my clothes back on, though they kept my shoes and replaced them with some light blue psych ward socks. i quickly thought back to the meme i had seen about "crazy socks" that i didnt understand. i understood.

they told me the rules of the ward while they escorted me there. no sharing information, because i wasnt there to get a boyfriend -- or a girlfriend, added one of the nurses. i thought it was nice that they were inclusive. i entered the ward and... there i was. i was in a mental hospital. some kids were talking quietly at the table. i sat in a chair and stared blankly ahead for a while.

the nighttime nurse, or whatever that job is that watches the kids and takes their blood pressure and stuff -- he came over and had me fill out yet more papers. this time it was about my triggers and coping skills. he took my temperature, pulse, and blood pressure. at the beginning of this trip, i had nearly a phobia of having my blood pressure taken. by the end it only slightly bothered me. snacks were given out. graham crackers! so many graham crackers. i ate feebly and they turned on chronicles of narnia. my mom called. i told her i was fine and i needed daryn to do my daily petsite games. then we went to nighttime group, which isnt really group therapy or anything. we just discussed what we learned that day and what our goal was for the next day. the doctor was a stern but kind man. to be honest, ive already forgotten the names of most of the staff i met, but almost all of them were lovely. i was a new face, so he asked why i was there, of course. i responded bluntly that i was suicidal. after group, i went to bed.

i had a roommate named cheryl. she was somewhat of a psych ward regular so shed already adjusted to the place. most people are very shell-shocked when they enter, either crying a lot or sitting and staring into space. i was the latter. i was just going over the events that had gotten me there, and i still wasnt sure i really needed to be there. i somewhat regretted being admitted. i knew id be missing way too much work at school and my best friends 18th birthday was tomorrow. cheryl had only gotten there a few hours before i did and was already talking to everyone, asking for sleep and headache meds, and joking around with the nurses. she was an anxious type, i guess, but she seemed comfortable in the ward. she reported her headache at a pain level of 8 and it took her the entire stay to read less than a full diary of a wimpy kid book.

some of the other kids i met when i was there: rayvn, a girl who had some sort of family problem. i think shed run away or been caught selling drugs or something and thats why she was there. she was trying to get put in a childrens home, and when i got there shed been stuck in the ward for almost a week. most of us were very depressed or otherwise troubled, and i know rayvn had her own problems, but she was upbeat, funny, and outgoing regardless. she was our dj when it was time to go outside and listen to music, our dealer for uno, and a great friend. i didnt learn much about her, maybe because shed already gone through a lot of therapy and all before i arrived and now spent most group sessions being snarky or talking about smoking weed. she was on supervision meaning she sat in the hallway apart from all of us except for at meals and during activities. i miss her.

angela had also been there a few days when i got there, i think. she had curly hair and was extremely quiet during group, answering monosyllabically. she didnt talk much between activities either. i got to know her during meals on my first full day. she was friends with rayvn. theyd already developed a pretty strong rapport and would playfully make fun of each other. she also seemed to be there for some kind of family problem. i think she left to go to a different childrens home a few days after i got out. she wasnt afraid to tell the staff to shut up when they crossed a line.

cailin was a girl who had spent a few nights in the er before being moved to the ward. she had cut her forearms a lot, at least 30 horizontal slices on each one. she arrived while i was in bed the first night. i learned a lot more about her because she got targeted in group one day, just before i was also targeted… haha. she and her mom had had a lot of issues.

the others were more periphery figures, and ive already forgotten a lot of their names. there was a schizophrenic boy who paced a lot and talked to himself in different voices. a girl came in the same night as cailin and when we had to discuss what were grateful for in group she listed her beautiful smile, her face, her body, her family, her health — it was a long list. i didnt know why she was there. a few more came in on my last day. they were all a lot younger and more rambunctious than me. one girl was crying about being there and having to take out her earrings. a boy had been brought in for fighting at his middle school, i think, and he would talk out of turn incessantly in group. a freshman from another high school came in not long before i had to leave and i sat with her and answered her questions, because id grown used to the place. its amazing how well you can adapt to even the worst of situations.

i barely slept the first night i was there and they woke me up at 6 am to pee in a cup and have my blood taken. i couldnt sleep after that, so i was awake in bed until breakfast at 8 am. i trudged out and ate my cinnamon toast crunch. on my first day, they had some psychology students or something in to observe. it made me feel a bit like a science experiment, but id fully succumbed to the understanding that i was crazy and had been landed here for being crazy, so it only validated me. i sat very quietly and filled out the little packet theyd given me. no one was allowed pencils. it was all done in crayola marker which we checked in and out as necessary. we also had to write a short statement on how we felt every morning, and my first one was too vague. the disapproval made me upset enough to start crying, and it was also my friends 18th birthday, and i felt extremely guilty for missing it.

group therapy started, but i had to go see the psychologist. id never been to a psychologist before. he was very nice as well — i honestly found myself more comfortable around the adults than the kids at this point. he asked the usual questions about why i was there and what my usual symptoms were. i explained that i was suicidal and very depressed and anxious. he prescribed me zoloft. it was that simple.

i think we probably had to go to our “class” next. it was taught by a woman with a very severe bun in her hair. we all lined up to sign out our markers and went down to the end of the hall of rooms. at the end of that hall were glass doors leading to the outside world. class was pathetic. we had to select rhyming words and do word searches, and some people managed to get things wrong even then. anyway, after that, we had another group. it was with a different therapist who i only saw that one time, and all the students watched it.

she went for cailin first. she interrogated her about what had landed her there. cailins parents had been to jail for fighting or something, and cailin had been relocated to new york temporarily, but she returned to florida. her mom didnt understand that she was clinically depressed. she had cut herself in some fit of depression or something. as far as i remember, she kept it together pretty well, but its a bit fuzzy.

i was next. she asked yet again why i was there. i answered about my suicidal feelings. she asked why i was suicidal. i explained id been depressed for a very long time. she asked how long. i said since i was around 10 or 11. she asked what happened at that time in my life. i told her my stepdad left. she asked if it was upsetting to me. i said it was more of a relief. she asked why. i told her he wasnt a good person. she asked why. i answered that he tried to kill my mom twice. she asked how. i told her he choked her. i saw the bruises.

i was crying a lot already, and it was hard to talk because my throat wanted to close up. she asked why i was crying. i was dumbstruck.

she then went on to berate cailin and i for self-harming. she warned us of infections and whatnot — what i wanted to say was that id been admitted for wanting to kill myself, so an infection didnt really worry me that much. she asked what i had in my life that i love, and i told her about my dog, charlie. all the students ‘aww’ed when i said he was a little chihuahua. i wonder now if that visit seemed harrowing for them. they caught me on my first day, when i had a lot to get off my chest. for reference, we were in there for about an hour, and she only talked to me and cailin for the entire time. it was pretty excruciating. one girl, who was there for anger issues, left the room and hit her head on the wall because she was so upset. angela refused to speak. when we got out of the room, one of the students asked me to say hello to charlie for her when i got out.

later that day i had family therapy. everyone has to have at least one family therapy session. some of the patients would have multiple, like cailin, and hers always ended in screaming matches. on probably the third day i remember she came out of the room crying and one of the nurses sat by her and told her “dont take any of your mothers sh*t. i want you to go in there and tell her what you need to say and dont back down. you dont have to deal with that sh*t. youre strong.”

while the others lined up to go to the gym, i sat in the main room and waited for my mom to appear. i dont think id discovered the joys of reading the elementary school level books they kept on the ward yet, so i just sat and looked at the floor for a while. she showed up and went into the therapy room with the nicer therapist, mrs marcia. she was a black woman with a wonderful sense of humor. she always made us laugh in group. sitting outside the therapy room, i could hear them laughing like crazy. they must have been getting along very well. after what seemed like forever, they called me in and talked to me for a little bit.

while ive had a lot of issues with my mom, they werent necessarily my reason for coming in. im going to move to the future for a second and recount something very strange that happened only a few weeks ago: we were discussing my stepdad, and i mentioned something that happened that was traumatic for me. my mom was definitely there. and yet she didnt remember. i dont remember a lot of things from that period of my life, but i remember that moment very clearly, and she doesnt. it turns out that part of our misunderstandings just come from blocking out different things. she thought i had no reason to be traumatized because she was repressing memories that i hadnt repressed.

anyway, mrs marcia basically told us that we both love each other and im going to get out in a few days and be ready to go on to my life. we talked about my lack of hope for the future and she told me to write a list of goals and a short paper called “what i would do if i had a future”. then she gave my mom and i a few minutes to talk.

i was pretty emotional all day because of the terrible therapy session, so i think i cried a lot, but it wasnt an upsetting meeting or anything. she brought me some pyjamas and another change of clothes to wear. i couldnt take the pants, though, because they had a string in the waistband that i guess i couldve hung myself with if i were very determined. but i took the rest. it was incredibly cold on the ward so i was very glad to get more sweaters. we said goodbye and i went to the gym for the last little bit of time we had there.

i think i picked up the hobbit at this point, because we had an hour of resting time in our rooms. you wouldnt believe how amazing that single hour of free time to nap and go to the bathroom whenever we want feels when youd have to ask them to escort you to the bathroom for the rest of the time. plus, the rooms had heaters that you could turn all the way up to 90 degrees. wed blast them at the highest setting to get the chill out of our bones. i was starting to have a horrific headache, though, because i was used to taking four to eight aspirin a day, a terrible habit id picked up nearly eight years ago. detoxing from that was probably the worst part of my entire visit. it felt like my brain was on fire. still, these afternoon hours were the most restful of my stay, i think. even though i was in a psychiatric ward, this relatively unstructured time seemed almost like normalcy.

when we had dinner, i sat with angela, cailin, and rayvn. the ward had surprisingly acceptable vegetarian options for the most part. lots of grilled cheeses, but they were good. at this point they told me how f***ed up it was what happened in therapy, and, well, i guess i decided to let my guard down because id already cried and told them all about my traumas. from that point on, we tended to sit together and converse in whispers when we were between activities. during mealtimes we got a spoon and when we were done we had to put it on a paper towel in the middle of the table to make sure no one was storing them for god knows what reason. apparently there had been an incident.

i had my first dose of zoloft that day. i wished it could be fast acting, that i would just snap out of my depression, but of course that wasnt how it worked. for about the first two weeks on the medication i just felt numb and boring. it got better after that. now ive been on it for two months and i feel like a real person again. i dont just sit around all day feeling like a worthless waste of space anymore. im starting to think i might deserve the love and care of others. and im still anxious, but its so much easier. before medication i was having daily panic attacks, heart palpitations, extremely scary chest pains, shakes — after medication, im almost free of all of those symptoms. but i digress.

we worked on puzzles in the evening, though a lot of the pieces were missing. the stern yet kind doctor would come in for evening activities, too, and him and i talked about our mutual hobby of painting. on my last night there we even did some art therapy outside until it started to rain. i want my little painting to go in my exhibition. its not impressive, but it represents a lot.

i got so used to the routine that by only my second full day there i was settled in, chatting with the other people on the ward, speaking up in therapy — and i was a pro at telling people i was in the hospital because i wanted to kill myself. they really desensitize you to your own condition in this place. you have to explain it to basically every employee at least once. even the gym coach had to have me take a survey that let him know i was a suicidal, self-harming abuse victim. i think this might be why im able to talk so candidly about all of this now. i was certainly a lot more closed off before my visit.

the showers were lukewarm at best and you only got a small capful of body soap. my curly hair was trying earnestly to form dreadlocks by the time i got out. your clothes would come back from the wash every day all staticky and shrunken feeling, and i had to wear my comfier pair of jeans to bed because i hadnt been able to secure actual pyjama pants. you got toothpaste dispensed on your toothbrush and a little paper cup of alcohol-free mouthwash, and then you brought your toothbrush back when you were done. it was the same with deodorant, too — they hand you a little roll-on antiperspirant bottle and you bring it back once youre dressed. i was at least glad that they let you keep a fairly nice hygiene schedule. imagine how dreadful the ward would be if you were trapped there, forced to tell strangers about your darkest secrets, AND you smelled bad. i wouldnt have survived. i wouldve gouged my eyes out with those carefully counted spoons.

on my last morning there, i had a scare where i thought i might have to stay longer because i had a sore throat and my vitals were going crazy. once i woke up, i had an adverse reaction to the medication and my blood pressure dropped extremely low which caused me to almost pass out. i was drenched in cold sweat, pale as a ghost, dry-heaving. but everyone around me knew my secrets so i wasnt really that embarrassed about it or anything. haha. i recovered alright, but that first week or so of medication was kind of rough in terms of side effects. i havent had anything that bad since. anyway, i was determined to make it out that afternoon, so i just returned to my normal self as rapidly as possible and made sure no one was too worried.

i think my last day there was cailins as well. rayvn and angela were also scheduled to head off to their new homes in the coming days. my notes on how i was feeling got more and more optimistic each morning, but i wasnt lying. i was starting to believe i really could get out of this place and maybe even move on with my life once i got a few things sorted out. the placebo effect really is wonderful — im sure the meds do a little bit to improve my mood, but i dont think theyd be half as effective if i werent so deadset on being okay. you have to understand that id been severely depressed for the better part of a decade and i was at my breaking point. instead of breaking, i decided to be idiotically optimistic and put all of my strength into the knowledge that things would get better.

they did. my mom came and picked me up during class that afternoon. i thanked cailin, angela, and rayvn, assuring the latter that she had shooters out there. it was something like an inside joke wed been repeating for the past couple days.

as i was escorted out of the building, i couldnt stop crying. i was so grateful for the experience and for everyone id met, and i was sad that i may never see them again. i kept crying on the way home and all the way inside the house, and when i saw my dog i fell to my knees and sobbed even more. i had about 90 messages on my phone from concerned friends to respond to and my own bed to sleep in — finally. i hadnt slept more than two or three hours at a time since my admission.

it was good to be home. i appreciated little things like warm air and music so much more. and this story still isnt over, because im still living it, but the ending is shaping up to be a happy one, i think.

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