In Which I Was Committed

Real life story about being crazy

I had depression for a very long time as a child/teenager, and I had a lot of ups and downs. One of the biggest, if not the absolute biggest, down was when my first serious boyfriend broke up with me. We weren't serious like having sex serious, but we had been together for nine months, and that's a pretty big deal for a 14 year old. So after he sent a girl I'm pretty sure he cheated on me with to tell me he wanted to break up with me, there was a pretty severe mental breakdown that involved being sent home from school early and taken to an emergency psychologist appointment, and a lot of really bad fallout from the whole ordeal. There may have been some photos of a certain half-erect penis shown to some parents out of spite, and a threatening phone call on the answering machine from said cheating girl, as well as a nasty fight between mothers...I try not to think about it too much. I wasn't in any semblance of functional for about a month and a half afterwards, and by then I was already picking up a rebound relationship.

It was one that had me feeling bad about myself because the guy was way more into me than I was into him, and I knew I was only using him to fill in the gaping wound that was my heart at the time. It was those feelings of self-hate for being a terrible person mixed with some gossip about things my ex had said about me that had me on edge during school one day, and unfortunately with no rebound boyfriend in attendance to comfort me. Every little thing seemed to make it worse. My brain just could not cope with normal school stuff.

By the time I was sitting on the girls' locker room bench dreading gym class due to later-realized parallels between getting undressed and vulnerability, I decided I should probably go to the nurse. I sat in the nurse's office shaking softly, feeling cold and sweaty at the same time, hugging the box of tissues she had handed me because I guess there was crying involved, and she decided to call my mother to pick me up.

My mother could not possibly have been more worried. She had brought me a bottle of soda in some effort to cheer me up, which replaced the tissue box as my cuddle buddy. I don't remember exactly what sorts of things she tried to find out about what was going on with me on the way home, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't really in the mindset to answer questions, especially not about what was going on in my own brain. I was coherent enough to know that I wanted to be left alone, but unable to parse any sort of subtlety. So as my mother was asking me if I needed her to stay home and look after me, my attempts at saying "no" came out a bit more harshly than they should have and involved phrases like "leave me alone" and "don't touch me". When that was coupled with the soda bottle I was still hugging to my chest, it's understandable that my mother thought it was best to take me to the emergency room, but not before giving me half a Zanax.

I had never had anything like Zanax before, but I do remember that I liked the feeling of it. When you're 14 years old and living with the pain of depression on a day to day basis, the slightly loopy sedation of Zanax is just wonderful. Mostly it just made me feel like I wanted a nap, but I also stopped molesting the soda bottle and started talking a little more, though who even knows how much sense I was making. The emergency room was a little full so it was over an hour before they finally got me into a bed, and by that time I was pretty much passing out from the Zanax. There wasn't anything for the doctors and nurses to do for my attack at that point, so they sent in a counselor to feel useful, I suppose. She explained that I had suffered an anxiety attack, and asked me about any anxiety problems I've had in the past, to which the answer was "plenty", although never as an attack. Crippling social anxiety, standard edition generalized anxiety, and just a worrier by nature were all standard fare for me, and I made sure to throw in the bit about the depression and wanting to die too. I guess my story seemed sad enough that they thought I should spend some time in a mental health facility, and they somehow even got my mother to agree to it.

Finding a bed for me in a mental ward took even longer than the emergency room had. By the time they found a facility willing to take me, it was 3am and I had spent all day in the emergency room with my parents. I was taken to the new hospital in an ambulance. They actually strapped me onto a stretcher and everything, and I can say from firsthand experience that being strapped onto a stretcher when you're not in any immediate physical pain is entirely comfortable and relaxing, and I absolutely took a nap in it.

Despite all the crazy that had happened to me, I honestly liked the idea of going to the hospital. There was a part of me that always felt like my depression wasn't "real". That I was a big wuss who was "faking it", and I should just suck it up and move on. But a doctor telling me I was messed up enough to be committed? Well, that's really all the proof I needed to know what I felt was real. And plus there's always that part of you as a teenager that wants to be something special. Calling myself bisexual didn't pan out since girl parts just gross me out, but being sent to the mental ward definitely makes a person special.

So as my parents tearfully left me at the hospital, and the night shift nurse led me into a room I had all to myself, and I snuggled down into my rock hard bed, I felt somewhat good about myself and even about where I was. I would be with my people now. My crazy, crazy people.

...Until 7am rolled around, and they forced me to wake up after four hours of sleep to have blood drawn to check for drugs, where I almost passed out from low blood sugar afterwards, and they messed it up so badly that I had a half-dollar sized yellow and purple bruise for the rest of the week. I was pretty much miserable at that point, and then they shipped me off to group therapy.

Let me tell you something interesting about being locked in a mental ward of a rather nice hospital with a group of eight or so other depressed teenagers: social interactions don't work the same way. There were three boys who started the day by pulling the "tough guy" card with the nurses, and I figured I had best stay away from them because they were bad news. But the thing about being in a mental ward is the first thing you're talking to the other people about are your innermost thoughts and secrets, and you're talking about them to the entire group. Those guys who seemed like bad news were just scarred inside like I was, and I actually became friends with every single person in there with me.

There was an awesome girl whose hair was pink, blue, and purple. There was a rather pretty girl who suffered from trichotillomania, which is a big word that means she pulled her hair out and had to wear wigs. Her parents would reward her wig new wigs when she did well in her therapy. There was an adorably sassy gay boy who was short with curly hair, and I nicknamed him Frodo. There was another kid who just had run-of-the-mill depression, and I kind of developed a crush on him. The rest of the gang were a mix of depressed, suicidal, anxiety-ridden teenagers that I generally enjoyed being around.

Being in the clinic was honestly a pretty sweet deal. For a person with crippling social anxieties, I actually flourished in group therapy. My mom started calling every day to take junk food orders from all of the kids for when she came to visit me because she knew that not everyone was visited by their parents. It was really heartwarming to have a bunch of mentally screwed up kids shout "I LOVE YOU, MOM" into the phone as you're instructing your mother to bring in more donut holes and gummy bears. I even learned to do my own laundry, which made me feel like a proper adult at the tender age of 15. It was Halloween while I was there, and we painted pumpkins and even went Trick-or-Treating around the hospital.

Of course, it wasn't all great. My dad had a pretty good shouting match with me the first day they visited which resulted in me hyperventilating on the floor. They switched my medication a few days in and I had a full meltdown from the difference in chemical levels before they kicked in. There was no hot water when I took my showers. The food practically bit back. They took my shoelaces away because of my suicidal thoughts, and I had to walk around with unlaced shoes because slippers weren't allowed either. Falling asleep on the concrete slab they called a mattress was nearly impossible, even with my Lord of the Rings soundtrack playing in my portable CD player. There was always a light on in the hallway, which also made it difficult to sleep. I didn't get much sleep in a few nights because I preferred laying awake to asking for Benedryl to knock me out. The windows in the rooms were painted up so you couldn't see outside. You could only place one ten minute long phone call a day. And by the time I felt like I was really starting to get somewhere, to feel better about myself, to feel welcome in a place that was comfortable and safe, they told me that my parents' insurance wouldn't pay for me to stay there any longer and sent me home.

I was in there for about a month. I had made wonderful friends. I couldn't even hug them goodbye. There was a "six inches distance" rule due to blowjobs that had happened before I had even shown up? I don't know. They just packed me up and shipped me out. I did a week of intensive out-patient where I went to the hospital for six hours a day, like I was going to school. I met another "tough guy" who I was again nervous about, until I learned that he had the biggest heart in the world for his daughter and how much he wished he could be with her more.

And then I was back in school, dealing with the harsh realities of the "real world". I missed the clinic. It was better there. People didn't judge you. People didn't try to force you to be anything you weren't. They accepted you while gently trying to guide you to something better.

I've heard stories from other people who were put into hospitals and felt like it was hell. I'm honestly glad that my own story is so different. Being in the hospital is one of the fondest memories of my life.