A second chance

After my discharge from the mental hospital, things seemed to get even worse. The Lexapro made me feel empty. Completely empty. The habits continued.

Vanna opened up one night, about 2-3 months after my stay in the nuthouse. She told me about how I was destroying myself, that I was a complete slut and drug addict, and that I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and just change what I was doing. It was harsh, really harsh, but the thing that killed me most about it was how true it was. I was only 16 and this was the reality of my life. It hit me like a brick.

I couldn't take it.

I took every pill in my house, which was a cocktail of cold medicines, benzos, anti-depressives, antibiotics, sleeping pills and NSAIDs. I felt like it wouldn't be enough because there was only a small amount of each available so I started searching for an instrument to slit my wrists with but couldn't find one because my dad had thrown out all of the sharp objects while I was hospitalized. I found a dull knife but it didn't really do the job. It did leave me bloodied though. I laid on the floor defeated and in misery from all of the pills. I kept trying to close my eyes, and they were closed because I could feel my closed eyelids with my fingers, but I couldn't stop seeing. It was like my eyelids were transparent. Imagine trying to fall asleep but being unable to close your eyes.

I crawled into my room and eventually got up the strength to hang a sloppy noose of shoelaces from the rod in my closet. As I slipped my neck into it and let myself collapse into it... I started blacking out and felt so relieved... but the noose slipped from the bar and I fell to the floor. I pawed the laces loose from my neck and finally fell asleep. My dad tried to take his medications in the morning but they were all gone. He found me in my closet bloody, sick and with a shoelace around my neck. I went back to the ER, and back to the same mental hospital yet again.

The EMT who rode with me to the nuthouse was unbelievably sweet. He gave me a teddy bear and didn't treat me like a dumb ass for what I had done. They actually let me keep the teddy bear with me while I was in the nuthouse.

One of my favorite nurses from my first stay admitted me. The look of disappointment and sorrow on his face when he saw me coming back in absolutely crushed me. My roommate this time around was a girl my age who had also tried to kill herself. We were very similar and became good friends. They had given her charcoal in the ER because she had ODed and I remember that she was pooping black for her entire stay.

On the second day I was sitting in the commons when a new patient came in. Instantly after seeing him, I thought to myself, "for all I know I could end up marrying that guy," I don't know why that thought came to mind. He was pretty cute though, and something about him intrigued me.

His name was Chris and he was 19. He threatened suicide after his long-time girlfriend cheated on him and dumped him. Him and I became friends quickly and I had a serious crush on him.

This time around I had a new psychiatrist. He threw out the borderline personality disorder and depression diagnoses, and instead diagnosed me with Bipolar Disorder and placed me on an anti-psychotic. I didn't believe the diagnosis but didn't really care.

One day in my stay I suddenly realized the only person who could fix me was myself. I stayed up all night and wrote out a list of everything I wanted to do, see and accomplish before I died. This was my revelation. I woke up the next morning a different person and have never been the same, in a good way, since.

Chris was scheduled for discharge that day also. It saddened me. Patients weren't allowed to exchange any contact information and were strictly forbidden from making any effort to make contact with each other after discharge.

I was sitting in my room when all of a sudden Chris came in. I was shocked because this was huge violation of the rules and a nurse could easily see down the halls at all times. He hugged me and slipped a piece of paper into my hand. It had a little love poem and his contact information. I almost fell over from excitement. I didn't think the feelings were reciprocal until then. I couldn't wait to get home.

I went home a day after he did. I called him immediately. We talked for hours and scheduled a date for the next day.

We did a lot of things on our first date, but the most memorable was when we sat on top of this tiny man-made waterfall in my favorite park and kissed. At that moment I fell in love, and as if reading my mind, he said "I think I love you."