DEAD ENDS- Beginning

Have you ever felt like you had no two feet to stand on? You keep repeating what you feel strongly about, or have feeling about and people keep interrupting you. People have this glazed look of “hmm, insert superficial nod here.” The look of not wanting said subject to know they are hearing these invisible irrational statements as insane. The inability to be heard, understood, unjudged, unstereotyped, uninterpreted, a whole person.

            When you are labeled insane, you no longer have a way to be recognized. The inability to be sound of mind. People look past you. People do not listen to you. You can no longer make decisions for yourself or have an input of the decisions being made for you. You simply are broken and you simply are no longer “there”.

            This is my story of being sane with a big fat label of INSANE written across my forehead.

            When I was eight or so, I remember being scared to have attention. I was also scared of being forgotten. I would crave any attention, I usually received negative awareness of my existence, but it was something. However, I would cower when my mother, step father, teacher, anyone of authority, turned their eyes onto me with their own intentions. I had fear of being seen as something other than what I was.       

            As an adult, I look back into my childhood, and just think how could no one see? How could no one do anything to save me? Couldn’t they see that I wasn’t delusional? Didn’t they recognize I wasn’t myself? Couldn’t they see that I was drugged out of my mind? The questions are overflowing. Many turned their heads. Fear and not knowing what to do had left me to be sucked into a mental cage with no way out.

            When I was thirteen I had just been released out of the behavioral hospital. Ya know, the one where they take people who can’t function in society. The one where those who have a tendency of homicide or suicide. The one where they drug you up and stick you in padded rooms. Ya, that one. I had just come home from my eight day stay there and I was sitting at the kitchen table. My mother and my aunt interrogating me about these obvious scars on my knee and inner thigh. Repeatedly asking me, “Are you harming yourself? Are you cutting, Jerrika? If not, then why are these on your body?”

 I couldn’t help but laugh and mock them in their faces. Partially out of rage and pain, but also out of a place I had learned to occupy in myself. This place of safety for myself. Making any statement, as a crazy person, was a perfect opportunity to be twisted into irrational, delusional, hallucinatory examples of “my insanity.” My one and only statement in these times, “I don’t care”. Whether it applied or not, it was a safe statement. It was mine and could not be used against me. Later, it bit me in my a*s, but it worked for the time being.

 What caused me pain in this certain memory, was that I had made the cuts a year and a half prior, at a friend’s house. My best friend at the time was cutting and I wanted to try it. I made five cuts. Three on my knee and two on my inner thigh before I couldn’t stand the pain anymore. I had decided cutting was not for me.

The part that hurt the most is that if she had been paying attention to me then, she would have noticed them. I didn’t try to hide them. There was no need to when I wasn’t going to do it anymore. Plus, I didn’t do it to intentionally hurt myself, I wanted to understand my best friend, fit in, and see what it felt like.

My mother now had her eyes turned on me and the cuts were in the spot light. They were relevant all the sudden. There was no form of communication with her or her side kick (my aunt). If I had told the truth, it would have been used against me and “these problems” had occurred a lot sooner than they thought. So now a year and a half later, I was a lot more severe in my suicide attempts. Oh no! But if I said nothing, then I was lying and was refusing to get better. If I came up with a story, then I was my mother. Yet again, caught in a no end situation. So, I repeated, “I don’t care.”

Less than 8 hours of being released from the behavioral hospital, I was returned and admitted for “attempt at suicide”. For scars! Scars that were made a year and a half ago. No one cared about that though. My history stated I was clinically unstable and mentally unreliable. AND I was only thirteen, so lots of room for my disorders to pop up and my already established illnesses to progress.  I was perfectly insane. A comfort to those specialized in this medical field and a comfort to my mother. 

Reviews

[Tiana]

I felt like I was reading a story of my own childhood. I have been diagnosed with PTSD and bi-polar disorder, and I am a cutter as well. Of course, I was immediately intrigued.
My first question is the age of the character telling this story. I realize this is only the beginning, so I will wait and see where that leads. BUT, if they are older, I think a larger vocabulary would suit the character when they mock those that "try" to understand them.

Keep it up! :)

[Tobin]

It seems as though it was your "friend" that you emulated by cutting yourself who was actually the catalyst for the dichotomy of what came later: the false judgements by your mother based on incomplete evidence. It also seems that your reluctance to try to explain yourself to her are due to the realization that she doesn't hear the real you. She only hears the you that is simply a preconception of what she already believes. This false preconception is the basis for what you view as the hypocrisy of those, especially your mother, for basing their conclusions without ever really listening to the reality of you. The problem with labels is that they are always applied with a strong adhesive.