wasionlymadetocry

[wasionlymadetocry]

The troubled teen industry isn't anything new. In fact, I think it's more well-known than it's ever been in the past. It seems like everyone I know has had their own experiences within it. Somehow their's seem worse than mine ever was. Does that make mine worth less? Or is that just another way of thinking that got me placed in psychiatric care in the first place?

The first time I was ever admitted to a mental health facility was when I was twelve. I was in sixth grade, and my birthday had only recently passed. When my family had come home from eating out that night, I found a razor. The type you use for construction. I remember staying up way later than I usually did, and I self-harmed for the first time.

I was scared. Scared of the blood, of consequences, of the relief it brought. I don't think I hid for very long before I broke down and told someone. My friends knew I was sad, but not depressed I don't think. I told our little group at the lunch table, and by the end of fifth period I was in the guidance counselor's office.

My counselor was kind, but the school officer legally required to be in the room was not. She acted like the whole ordeal was a waste of time. That it would have been easier to have called the cops and have me Baker Acted. My counselor wanted to call my parents. Have them pick me up, take me home, and have me voluntarily admitted. A supposedly far less traumatizing experience than the former. I suppose it was.

It was exceedingly difficult to get ahold of my parents that day, which just made the cop more and more irritated at me. My mother works from home and was in a meeting when I tried to call her. Even after being told it was an emergency, it was still more important that she finished her stupid work call. My father didn't answer the phone either. But he listened to my guidance counselor's voicemail and immediately called back. At least it seemed like one parent prioritized me over work.

All of my times in the system are so jumbled up I can't remember what details belong to which visit. I'm pretty sure for my first-ever visit I went almost right away. I was admitted to a psychiatric unit in a local hospital, and then I was trapped there for five days. Those visits never really help much. You spend more time in the emergency room going through the process of being admitted than talking to a therapist once you're on the unit.

All I ever did in that unit was sit around and wait for the doctor to say I was healthy enough to go home. It was a never-ending cycle of waking up, eating breakfast, doing fake school work, having lunch, going to our rooms for quiet hour, doing jack shit until dinner, having dinner, visitation hours, showering, then sleeping. And you do that every fucking day without change until you're not anywhere close to stable enough to go home but they don't want you any longer.

You sleep in a shitty bed, in a cold room, with no comfort other than the thought that maybe you're a little bit more sane than the kid in the bedroom across from yours. You have the endless discomfort of being on medications that fuck up your body, and that everyone will look at you like you're going to snap once you go back to your everyday life.

All of my friends decided they didn't want me to be around anymore. For the first time in my life, I had absolutely nobody. And it would remain that way for 10 more years. And my depression would only get more and more severe over that decade. There's so much more to it that takes so long to discuss, and takes even longer to put into eligible words.

maybe one day i will