Institutionalized

Institutionalized

I remember the day I arrived. I had been driven there by the universal transport van – all I had from the last hospital in two Wal-Mart bags in the back. There were bars in all the windows of the van and wire mesh separating the drivers from me. They completely ignored me, except to say that I could lie down across the plastic covered seats and sleep if I wanted to – it was going to be a long ride.
The news that I was being transported to Ten Broeck, the long term mental hospital I was being sent, was sudden. I knew, of course, that they were sending me long term - I had been hospitalized too many times, too quickly – but I was completely unaware that I was leaving that day. I had been in the CSU – the Crisis Stabilization Unit – for several weeks, after attempting suicide, again, and had watched other kids come and go. That day the doctor had released all of the other teens that had been with me for several days – a grand total of two people. But I had no idea he planned to release (well, not exactly release) me as well. Shortly after they left, a tech came in and told me that my ride was waiting out front – to pack up my things to leave. So I threw what I had with me in those two bags and prepared for a new life. I had no idea what to expect – I didn’t know anything about the place where I was headed, except that I would be there for a while and that it was located in Jacksonville, Florida, several hundred miles from my hometown. I was escorted out of the small locked fortress off the CSU and into the white van and headed away from everything I knew for certain.
When we finally got there (I did end up sleeping restlessly on the plastic covered seats), they escorted me through the front doors. I felt so free, for the first time in weeks. No one watching me! Or so I thought. I didn’t know that I would not leave the hospital, would not breathe free air for another three months or so. But I was left in the small foyer of the hospital – doors clear to the outside. I fantasized about running through those doors and being free – but I didn’t know those doors were locked (a fact that seems obvious, but that I would not realize for months – giving me a sense of freedom I had only imagined)! The drivers smoked outside. My mom could not make it until the next day – no one had informed her of my transport either – so I didn’t have to wait for papers to be processed – I was led straight through to my new home.
A man came out of the office and walked me over to the doors leading to the adolescent SIPP (statewide inpatient program or something or other) unit. They were double locked. Figures. He led me through the doors, and I found myself in chaos. The walls were red – a provoking color, I thought. Sprawled all over the blue carpet were 20 odd kids, ranging in age from 11 to 16. They were doing art, but at the time, I didn’t know that. I was just trying to avoid all eyes and get where I was going as quick as possible. “Is that a new Patient?” I heard whispered as I walked past. The man led me into the nurse’s station, me still clutching my two Wal-Mart bags for all I was worth. I was handed over to the head nurse on staff that night – I have no idea who, now – and then ushered into a small room. I looked around, shyly, and then set my bags down under my seat. The room contained only a desk and two chairs. For therapy, I later learned. I assume that they gave me a preliminary interview, but I was in – I guess shock – so I don’t remember anything said.
They took my things – to search – and led me to my room, telling me that while I would sleep on this side of the nurse’s station (these walls were painted with fish and butterflies – to give it a cheerful look, I wondered?) – I would do everything else on the other side of the unit. This side was for short timers, like those back in the CSU. I looked around my new room, still managing to only look at the floor. There were four beds – most rooms had three, I would soon learn. One of my then-time roommates was folding clothes from one bed and putting them on the next. I was introduced then abandoned. I called her Q.
I asked if she would like some help – my attempt at a greeting. Sure – she said, and we went to work. All the clothes – and when I say all, I mean A LOT – were my other roommate, M’s. I couldn’t imagine owning that many clothes – let alone bringing them to a place like this. Some appeared better suited for a club than a hospital. All I had was the clothes on my back and something to sleep in. This was looking better by the minute. At the CSU I slept in the “dayroom,” on a mattress I dragged out from my room every night, babysat by the night tech – I had been on one to one. There, they knew me too well. I had cut too many times there, and it was my sixth hospitalization in two months. I hated it – I had no freedom, and was watched whenever I went anywhere – even the restroom. It seemed like heaven – or as close as I could get, being locked up. No supervision? Roommates? A bathroom with a door I could shut? Awesome!
Q and I folded the clothes, making small talk all the while. I felt like everything might be okay – no one was trying to make me stop cutting. No one was going to try to stop me or watch me. I don’t remember much of the details of my first night there, but I remember how free I felt. I knew, at last, that I could cut. And no one was going to stop me. How ironic – I felt free when I was the furthest from it.
When you first arrive on the unit, you are automatically restricted to the unit – usually until you see your doctor for the first time (my doctor, Dr. Pathak was called Dr. Sykopathik by her patients) I don’t know how long I was on unit restriction that first time, but it couldn’t have been for too long. When you are on unit restriction, you eat your meals in the dayroom – out of Styrofoam containers, half cold and always after everyone else. I always hated eating in front of those not in my family, and by the time I got my meal, usually the others had returned from the cafeteria – so when I first arrived at Ten Broeck, I did not eat. Or, not more than a few bites here or there.
The first few weeks I was shy and polite and always, always cheerful. I was afraid of everyone. I was polite to my roommates, but their familiarity scared me. They were such – friends – that I was forced to back away, psychologically. I didn’t keep friends well. I didn’t handle people well. I knew how to be polite – I knew the rules by which my life was ordered well – keep a smile on your face and always do what you’re told and everything will be fine. But not there. Because of the fact that I am a vegan, the hospital had a lot of problems finding things that I could eat. But once they realized I wouldn’t eat – not that there was a problem with the food – they got tough. I felt as though the only thing I had control over was my food. One tech forced me to carry a box of cereal (one of those single serving boxes) around with me for hours until it was finished.
They took my blood and urine. When the results came back, I had a high number of ketones – I was starving (though I still had, and have, a very healthy weight – my medicine I was on kept me at the same weight, though my body chemistry told me I was starving). As if I didn’t know that. I didn’t want to eat. Threatening me with tube feeding, (I was used to the threat from other hospitals) they ordered me to drink a Boost shake – it’s kind of like Ensure – twice a day. I slowly relaxed around the group of kids and began to eat more. They tried to take my blood again – several times – but I was too dehydrated for them to get any out of me. Slowly I returned to health (they then had the pleasure of vampiring me) – and they continued, to the day of my discharge, to make me drink those shakes twice a day. I cannot stand the smell or taste of those things, even still – well, you would too if you had to drink them every day for months! By the time a few weeks had gone by, I was off unit restriction and well settled into the routine. I arrived in July. A few weeks before my school was due to start, I became very stressed out. I was ready to leave. This place could do no good for me. I wanted out. I asked my therapist, Ms. Stephanee, (who I would come to love as the months went by) if there was any chance of my going home before school started. She said yes – if I worked really hard between now and then. I didn’t want to work. I gave up on it.
I made a friend – or something close to it, in K, another girl there. I didn’t get that close to her, as she left soon after my arrival, but she had quite and impact on my life. Directly. One day, we were sitting in the gym (yes, there was a gym), and I took the opportunity (there were no staff looking, as we were hiding behind the pool table) to hurt myself. I assumed that no one would notice. Assumed. I have an, um, habit, of punching things…or, should I say, slamming my fists into things with the direct intention of bruising my hands, maybe even breaking bones, if I do it right (I cannot punch anymore – I’ve dislocated/broken too many bones there). The others, in a small group of people I was then a part of, were busy talking. I thus began to slam my fist into the carpeted floor. It hurt just enough, but they didn’t know then that I’d been cutting for weeks. K, noticed, and “ratted” on me. I was pissed. They escorted me back to the unit, and a nurse was sent out to watch me in the dayroom. Mr. Chris.
Mr. Chris terrified me. He was young and educated and kind. What’s more – he was male. (really!) The combination scared the hell out of me. To make it worse, he (as well as all the staff) knew about my past. About all I had done and thought – they had read through all of my journals of the last four years, I would later learn. He engaged me in conversation. Mr. Chris is a very health conscious guy. He knows more than anyone I know about eating right and exercising and he ran our workouts in the gym. And he knew about my past history of an eating disorder (he was the one that got a doctor’ss order on me drinking those shakes). My past of which I was humiliated. I felt so embarrassed because I felt fat and I felt as though he were judging me for my past. I would feel that way until I left – I still feel it now. In truth – my eating disorder – what of one I had – was just another way to hurt myself. That was all I cared about.
Early in my hospitalization, I had my mom unknowingly bring me a razorblade. In between the pages of the largest book I own – the entire collected works of Shakespeare (an award I won from my school) – I had it hidden, from before – I knew by then what would get by the screeners at the hospital. I felt completely in control – well, not completely, but as close as I could get, seeing where I was. I could cut whenever I wanted to. Of course, the staff didn’t know about any of this, or they never would have allowed it to go on – this was a hospital, for christsakes! The first time I got caught (well, at Ten Broeck) for cutting, it was because my therapist saw it. She called the nurse – incidentally Mr. Chris. I refused to talk about it. Of course, I wasn’t talking about anything, yet. In therapy, all I would do was talk about why I could not talk – I was entirely uncooperative – all the while maintaining a polite and, for the most part, cheerful affect. They did a body check – finding where else on my body I had sliced with my razor. By then I knew all the tricks. I told them that I had used a staple (ha!) – and produced one from my store (what I had stolen from the school there). They did what I expected them to do – they searched my room, my roommates looking on bewilderedly. Of course, they didn’t find anything, because, by then, I was adept at concealing things, much to my chagrin.
They took away my clothes and I was placed in gowns and sandals – they wouldn’t even trust me in socks. They knew that I had a history of hiding things in my clothes – and I was. Hiding things in my clothes, I mean. They just didn’t find it. But, anyway, I was put on one to one status, and restricted to the unit. One to one status means that you have a constant “hip attachment” – a tech to follow you around everywhere. I hated it, but there was nothing I could do about it. And, sadly, I was used to the treatment. All I could do was wait for my doctor to release me. Each time it lasted several weeks. Several weeks of being followed around and watched in the shower, several weeks stuck in the radius of a pin (or so it felt), several weeks of gowns and sleeping in isolation. Several weeks of torture. But I minded it so that I could cut again. I would fake cured – say I wouldn’t cut if they would just take me off unit restriction, or gowns. I’d lie.
Now, isolation is the most horrible thing in the world. Towards the end of my stay, they made the isolation room my permanent home. It is a small, bare room containing only a bed and plenty of cameras. Whenever I wasn’t in group or otherwise occupied, I was in there. At night, I slept under the starry camera sky, with a guard posted outside my door. Gowns became my permanent fashion statement. I became the author of boredom – I guess they thought that if they couldn’t treat this out of me, they would bore it out of me.
I worry a lot about school. When I was in school, I had straight A’s and plenty of extracurricular activities. Trying to create an image of someone who had no problems. At Ten Broeck, there was a school – one room where all ages met and were assigned based on their skill level (well, I had my work sent in from my school so that I would not fall behind – they didn’t have the work for the classes I needed). We were divided into two groups, based on our skill level. Half of the day was spent at school. But, as the majority of my time there was spent on unit restriction, I didn’t get to spend much time in school. A big concern for me. Upon getting back, I was a semester behind. But I made it up in the end.
I still don’t know how they let me out. I guess my insurance ran out, but I was not ready to leave. When I left, things got worse, and then, now, they are finally getting a little better.
I had become, essentially, limited as a human being only to my ability to cut. That was my only reason to live, and my reason to die. I realized, somewhat shockingly, that I cared about nothing but cutting. That my family and life no longer mattered. That all that mattered was cutting. All I wanted to do was hurt myself, and I didn’t care what stood in my way. I cut again and again – finally to a gruesome extent. I could no longer hide my razorblade (my roommate was about to turn me in), so I turned it in as they bandaged me up. It was my last time. After months of cutting and punishment, cutting and punishment, it was over. I was tired of the hospital. I was tired of watching the other kids leave to go outside, leave to go to school or lunch, (all within the locked compound, however), while I remained locked inside. I was tired of gowns and of constant supervision. I was worried about having missed so much school and not being able to catch up, and I wanted my life back. So I gave it all up. I gave up what I had been fighting my life for. And it felt so horrible. But so freeing. I was finally free.
But I still fight. It’s still incredibly hard. But I am making it.
I guess the point of all this is to let people know how bad – and worse – things can get. I know there are a lot of cutters out there – people who have just started and people that have been cutting for a long time, like I have – and I want them to know that there is a way out, in all of this. You don’t have to be alone. You can get over this, as I will someday. The result does not have to be long term hospitalization – that is last resort – you can really feel better. Please, don’t let this destroy your life. I have lost my childhood, my teenage years, and almost my life. Don’t lose yours.