Lakeside: Hell In Eight Letters

Warnings: Self harm, suicide attempts, explicit language


Note: Back in later 2014 my grandfather that was living with us passed away in his room of a heart attack. I was struck with guilt and grief from it. I was depressed since that happened which was July 10th I believe and September 17th, that night I tried to cut myself with a pencil. I told my parents in the morning and then.....well...this. I would also like to say, that you don't need to worry for my safety, I am not suicidal nor do I self harm anymore. This is just an experience that haunts me and I needed to get it out.


My therapist lied to me. She said it was a good place....she said they'd take good care of me.

Day 1 Of Hell (September 18th, 2014)

I sat in this waiting room for hours, peed in a cup, gave my shoelaces to my parents, got my blood pressure taken, got a dirty look because I self harmed with a pencil, and had silent panic attacks. They tried to comfort me but all I wanted was to go home. Then they left. All I could do was cry and pace the small room I was locked in until two kind black ladies asked me to strip (only my top half since I was on my period, bless them). They then drove me to the building I would be staying in. I saw my parents in the waiting room beside the building. Pure torture if you ask me. I was sat down at a desk and given two hospital bracelets and a packet about the rules and shit. She then said "If you ever feel like hurting yourself, or running away please let me know so we can help you." So I told her and she brushed it off. I was taken to my room and cried myself to sleep on a sheet covered mattress and a sheet to cover up with.

Day 2 (full day)

I was woken by a knock at I believe 6 or 6:30 AM by three knocks and "Good morning ladies time for morning vitals." I sat up and a male nurse came in and told me to go out and get my blood drawn. I fucking hate needles. The lab tech asked me if I was afraid of them and when I nodded she pretty shrugged it off and stuck me with it anyway. I was dehydrated so they didn't get anything out of me. They gave me a small bottle of Gatorade and told me to drink lots of water. Which I did. The rest of this details in order are blurry, but I will tell them to you anyway in no particular order.

Let me tell you something. Something that pissed me off so much at this place. Look, I get that you want teens to be educated, but we're in a mental hospital for fuck sake! Math, Science, English, who the hell cares!? Why don't you teach us methods to help with anxiety? Or ways to cope with depression? How about anger management? Nope! Geometry is apparently more useful that learning breathing techniques! And the teacher was just an ahole in my opinion. I tried to be nice to her. Then I just gave up and didn't even look at her. We were required to finish something in class. A sufficient amount of school work. Or you received write offs. WRITE OFFS! ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Ugh, I'll get to something that made my blood boil in a minute or two. I wanted to punch all of their teeth out.

The next thing, is the guy who worked the weekends. Every morning on the weekends we'd be woken up at 6 ish am by three knocks accompanied by, "Good morning ladies, time for morning vitals." Every. Damn. Day. Except the weekends. So that made it better right? Wrong! This guy, blasted his music, and turned the light on in everyone's rooms at like 7 am. Then we had to listen to him speak, which was ok I guess, before breakfast. Then we had to stand in line to wait for each meal, which whatever. He would yell at us for being too loud, or getting out of line, and like fucking public school, warned us that he would make every single one of us do write offs. I hated him, so much. Also, one evening we were in the little "community room" or whatever you call it, and again, a few people were being loud, and he kept telling us to quiet down or there would be consequences pretty much. So finally, they wouldn't be quiet, so he said ok whoever doesn't want to be in here can go back to their room. And the rest of us would sit there, but we'd still get fed. First off, that's messed up. I should have gone back, but I was too scared to be ridiculed for it. So we sat there in silence while he played A FUCKING SONG OVER AND OVER AGAIN FOR LIKE 5-10 MINUTES.

"This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend. Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue singing it forever just because..." and again, and again, and again.....and fucking again. I was ready to pull my ears off. To shoot the damn phone. That's not how you treat mental hospital patients! You're so fucked up! I hated him, I still do.

We also got to go outside...yay...right? Hell no! Look, I get that you need something to keep people from running off, but you could have done without the arrows jutting out of the like 10 foot high fence. Just make it a prison with some barbed wire instead? Unless you're really strong, you're not getting up there anyway, but if you do, hey, why not just get tetanus too? And when I finally got out of my shell to play kick the ball to each other with another girl, we got yelled at and threatened with, guess what, write offs if we kicked it over by the staff member again. It was an accident! They seemed to not care about us there very much. Well I'm sorry if you hate your job. Go work somewhere else for fuck sake!

I also felt threatened by one of my roommates because she got kind of hostile towards me because of drama between her and another one of my roommates. I didn't feel too safe there sometimes. But I never told anyone there or my parents when I got home. I was too scared to. But now everything is out.

The only good times I had there were when I got to play UNO with some of the girls, we played a fun game with everyone (don't even remember what it's called), we had a karaoke session one night, and we did a little bit of yoga with an instructor. I was there for 12 days people. 12 days. I did get a little bit of therapy which helped a great bit with the guilt I was feeling, but that was it. I got to call my parents every night for 5 minutes and got to visit them once.

Now the last thing I can remember for now, is on the last night I was to be there, I had an allergic reaction to something I ate (my fault I'll take the blame for that.) and had to go back to our hallway thing to take some Benadryl. The nurse that was there (shout out to you Melissa, I love you! ) gave it to me, and let me color a few pictures before I got too tired and she let me sleep for a little while. Then I had to eat something else for dinner, it was pork spring rolls which was pretty good I'll give them that and then they let me color again. I did color her a picture. She was my favorite.

But that's not the bad part. A girl from one of the other rooms, she had anorexia, and she cut her throat open in the shower as a suicide attempt. So of course the nurses and doctors had to patch her up, and they carried bloody towels and such to the laundry room. I don't do well with blood so I was feeling sick and lightheaded. So I asked if I could go lay down in my bed and they let me go back. Well, one of my roommates was in the bathroom and she asked if it was me. I obviously told her yes, and she asked if I could hand her her pair of jeans. Being already flustered and panicked from that past episode, I gave them to her not thinking anything of it and laid down. From the bathroom, I heard her tell me to face the window, so I thought she was going to change in the room (even though we weren't supposed to) so I did. And she kept telling me to face the window, so I asked her why. She refused to tell me. So I turned around getting a little scared and I saw her with her jeans around her neck, her face purple and her eyes bugging out. I freaked the fuck out and ran for the door (we were supposed to keep it open slightly) and she tried to push it closed to lock me in there, but I pretty much pushed her out of the way and ran to tell the nurse. They of course helped her and made her be where they could keep an eye on her, and I was taken back to a desk in the main part since I was having a panic attack. Eventually things became calm again. I didn't want to go back in the room because I thought she was going to kill me for telling the nurses on her. They finally convinced me to go back after taking my medication and I fell asleep. After school and lunch the next day I was discharged.

Let me just say a few things here. They didn't try to help me or talk to me or anything when I was clearly having a panic attack. And they certainly didn't get a good review from me when they asked me to fill out a survey before I could leave. I don't remember how back of a score I gave them because I was too scared that they'd keep me longer. I just wanted to leave. I did put Melissa under the nominations section for like an award/pay raise or something like that. She was pretty much the only one I liked there and remembered her name. Also a shout out to my therapist and doctor there. They were pretty good too. And there were only a few girls (we weren't allowed to be by the boys so I didn't know them. Except one on karaoke night. He had a beautiful voice.) that I was ok with. I don't blame my parents at all for this. They were worried about me, and wanted to get me help. And I love them for that. It was just a bad place.

In the end....I'm traumatized.