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10 Years Ago


I have been looking for an online group with which to share my writing.  I am trying to write about some very personal experiences as both a mental health patient and mental health professional.  

I am going to post chapter 1 here.

“Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light… These strains welcomed me as I was loaded into the ambulance, the red lights twisting through the darkness.  I told them I’d never been in an ambulance before.  Then I was somehow attached to the inside of the vehicle and left to stare at my surroundings as if I had landed on another planet.  The ball game was starting, the crowd building to a climax as the words were belted out, “And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night, that our flag was still there…”  The EMT who wasn’t driving listened intently as the song wound down and the game began.  He and his buddy, the other EMT, the one who had pointed to the cuts on my wrist and asked if I had done that to myself, began talking about the game.  I stared out the back of the ambulance and realized I would be going backwards the entre time, something that always induced nausea.  My head pounded.  My eyes felt like two huge grains of sand.  I felt a sob expand its way into my throat and tickle my nose, but I sucked it in.  I couldn’t let these men see me cry and ruin their ball game.
As the ambulance slowly crept through bay area rush hour traffic, I pondered how all of the facts currently making up my life had come to be.  How does one go from competent professional to patient on a 72-hour hold within the short span of a weekend?  What happened to me?
The nursery is my last clear memory.  We had gone for bulbs: Bearded Iris, Hyacinth, Daffodil, Narcissus.  Allen loves nurseries.  He loves them almost as much as he loves grocery stores.  I think it’s the aisles.  He is compelled to stroll up and down, marveling at all the amazing things one can eat.  I’m not sure if he thinks he’s going to miss something.  At any rate, we were at the nursery, Allen cruising around.  I remember it being a very gray, heavy day with the smell of rain in the air.  My mood was extremely dark.  I was also very irritable.  My children ran around, as they will do at nurseries, yearning to see the Coi in their pond, demanding pennies to throw into the pond, disappearing in a flash before I could say no.  I felt helpless to stop them beyond a few feeble tries, and Allen was immersed in the beauty offered by the nursery and absolutely no help.  Finally, angry at his need to peruse every section of the premises, I called both kids to the car and locked them in with me.  There I sat, stewing.  Eventually Allen came out of the shop with his bag of trophies.  We drove home in stony silence.
This is where time shifts strangely, and I can’t remember how I got from point A to point B.  I must have made dinner, got the kids in their jammies, the usual routine.  Extremely depressed, I fell asleep early.  The next thing I remember is lying in bed the next morning, flattened.  I was hollow, empty, and numb.  In California’s Humboldt County Redwood Forest, there are huge, burnt out skeletons of Redwoods from long-ago fires.  I used to play in them as a child.  That morning, I felt like those trees: burnt up, hollowed out, dark.
A strange sense of total detachment descended over me, an electric hum that surrounded my being.  I was there, and not there.  I was free and trapped.  I suddenly sat up in bed, threw back the covers, and walked without hesitation to the bathroom where Allen was showering.
In the cupboard were several straight razors ensconced in a zippered case.  My hands found the bag and pulled out one of the razors.  It fell open; years of use in the loose screws holding it together.  It is hard to say exactly what happened next.  I remember marveling at the way the blood beaded up and slid down my arm, dripping onto the floor.  Slowly, deliberately, I cut the side of my wrist over and over, contemplating turning my wrist and slicing open the azure veins pulsing beneath my nearly translucent skin. 
This is remembered as if it was a dream.  Surreal and hazy.  What was I doing? Allen pulled back the shower curtain, shimmying along its track.  Steamy and naked, he stepped onto the green bathmat, and noticed. 
“What are you doing?”  He sounded angry and afraid.
I was mute.  How do you answer that?  “Well, gee, honey, I just thought I’d stand here and slice my wrist open while you showered.  Oh, is that a problem?”
He grabbed my other wrist and took the razor out of my hand.  Roughly he turned me towards the sink and turned on the faucet.  Water poured over the cuts, stinging me back into my body.  “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Well throw up then,” he snapped.
I didn’t understand why he was angry.  Shame deluged, cold and hard and thick.  What the hell was I doing?
I was loaded into our small blue car, buckled in, and taken to the hospital.  Allen didn’t speak.  Inside myself I was in a fetal position, waiting, frightened by my actions and hurting.  Didn’t he care? In the emergency room, I slid under a warm, rough blanket and waited.  I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.  One tear slipped down my face and settled at the corner of my mouth.  I lay there in the bed, pondering my fate.
A woman entered the room with a clipboard and asked if she could speak to Allen first.  His demeanor had changed.  Anger had been replaced with concern, and he squeezed my leg once before he left the room.  They returned shortly and she began asking me questions.  Had anything stressful happened recently?  How was work?  What was happening at home?  Was I safe?
Safe?  Obviously not, at my own hands.  Sobbing, I managed to get out the fact that I had been held up at gunpoint several months earlier, which seemed to be the precipitating event that had started a series of melt downs and finally the beginning of taking an anti-depressant a few weeks earlier.  I explained that once I had started the anti-depressant, I would be going along, and random thoughts of killing myself would pop into my mind.  I would be driving my car and suddenly have the urge to ram it into the oncoming traffic.  I would be at work, and  the thought of slitting my wrist would come, unbidden.  I would be playing with my children and find myself wanting to run from them and take a bottle of Tylenol.
I shared with her that work was not going well, that one of my co-workers hated me and was trying to get me fired, and looking back now I realize that I sounded desperate and paranoid. 
I told her that I knew where to buy razor blades.
“I think you need to be in the hospital” were her next words.
I broke.  Hysterical I launched myself at Allen who was called back into the room. ”I’m so sorry,” I wept over and over again.  He patted me, and sadly looked at me.  He thinks I’m crazy, I realized.  Hours later, after a long wait in that small hospital room, the EMT’s came.  They were kind and careful.  I clambered up tonto the gurney and tried not to cry again.  One of them looked at my wrist and gently asked, “Did you do that to yourself?”  I didn’t answer.  The evidence spoke for itself.