I’d like to begin by apologizing for making anyone worry, but I get the feeling that would be rather presumptuous of me.  Just let me do it anyway, though.  I feel like I need to.

I’m sorry.  I’m an idiot, a fool, sometimes drunk, often STUPID, and I’ve got to get things together for many people’s sake, but mostly my own.

There.

Now that that’s done, I have a good (well technically terrible) explanation for my extended absence, and this time it wasn’t work, or lack of sleep, or anything trivial like that.

I might have spent this time in the loony bin.

And by ‘might’ I mean ‘did.’

Getting it out there helps me to deal with it.  So here it is.  Looking back, when my head wasn’t spinning off its shoulders, my nerves actually unwound after it was all said and done.  And some of it was actually kind of funny.  Putting it all down like this also helps me out another way: there were bits of time where, during attacks or shortly before, things would just vanish from my head—writing them down shakes them loose.  I actually lost a day and didn’t remember what went down until I’d begun writing, putting the pieces in order.

Work went awesome on Sunday.  I was making my time, I had an awesome sandwich, and there was an easy end to even a 16-room run.  Except, at some point in the day, my nerves got worked up.  I couldn’t tell what it was, but there was just something off about things, and I tried to ignore it.  I put it off to just being tired.  Nothing was going to happen, nothing was going on, and nothing would go wrong.  I’d have a couple of beers when I got home and things would be done with.  Except that I got to my last room and suddenly—it takes hanging onto my cart to keep me from tipping over.  The hall seems a bit smaller, things are louder, and I can’t focus.

Fuckflans.

I’ve only got one room left, and I can’t move.  I put my head on my cart, trying to get my head back on straight.  I figure I just need a minute without anyone bothering me.

Unfortunately in a mis-aimed attempt to be helpful, my co-worker closes in and asks if I’m all right.

She’s too close.  Hand on me.  Two people talking.

I bolt.

I don’t keep my legs.

It gets worse. 

Next thing I know, I’m down, and there’s this wrenching primal scream and I smell fear—I’m surprised to realize two things: that this is an actual thing, smelling fear; and that it’s me that’s just shaken frickin’ dust from the ceiling with that shriek.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I KNOW this isn’t normal, but I’m down and screaming before I can do anything about it.  It’s like being ripped open, and I can’t take it. 

Against my wishes, a team of EMTs arrives.   I’m so rattled that them talking sets it off again, worse.  I’m so rattled that I can’t make a false statement about wanting to hurt myself (I did.  I had fingernails hooked into an arm trying to peel myself out of my skin.  I wanted out of my own head that badly).

I get two choices:  Hospital A willingly, or Hospital B unwillingly.

It’s obvious I have no actual choice.  After some more time pinned at the wall, I make for the stretcher that’s been wheeled in.  I have to bite my tongue to keep quiet as the straps are put on.

First Night – 3 Nights Remain

I’m seen by several people in the ER.  Vitals are tricky because people are approaching me holding things up, and that’s…well, not good.  I explain this to them and eventually this soft-spoken whitecoat steps in and asks for details.

It’s bad when the whitecoats give you the “Oh, holy fuck” look after you’re done explaining.   I mean, they’ve seen it all.

I’m given one of those weird wrap-around hospital gowns and told to relax until I’m taken upstairs.  A turkey sandwich on wheat with tomatoes and raddichio.  It’s hospital food, but it’s the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time.  Every bite tastes like life.

My first few hours up there in the mental ward are uneventful.  The day’s winding down and I’m shortly asked if I’m  hungry—to which the answer is, “I could eat.”   The second meal of the day turns out to be chicken (steamed, bare), carrots (steamed, bare) and a salad (one tomato, Russian dressing).  After food, another whitecoat takes me in for a series of questions.

·         Are you anxious? (Fucking DUH)

·         Sleeping more? (PFT.)

·         Sleeping less? (Try NONE!)

·         Feeling suicidal? (Hesitation.)

·         Homicidal?*  (Hesitation.)

*Full disclosure: Both of those were initially met with a scoff, and a “Try ‘omnicidal.’”  I proceed to rattle off the Latin origin.

·         How long has this been happening?  (Hesitation, then an answer.)

·         Do you drink?  (Only when this hits me, around three times a week, about three to six a time.  Been as high as eight in a sitting.)

·         Smoke?  (One month.  Quit immediately afterward when I started getting nosebleeds.  Cold-turkey no less.)

·         Illegal drugs, any at all?  (I’m on too many ‘scripts.  LEGAL drugs are dicey, let alone illegal.)

·         Are you sure?*

*Full disclosure: the flashback was so bad that the EMTs thought I was having a bad trip.  What a long, BAD trip it’s been…

·         Have you tried to hurt yourself?  Or done it before?

I give a bit of a guilty look at my left arm.  I’ve dug my nails into the skin without noticing it, just like earlier when I’d tried to pull myself out of my own skin.  A zipper-like pattern runs down the arm where I’ve tried to get my nails to slice in, and crescent-shaped little bits of skin rise where they’ve gone through the first layer of skin.  “Er.  A bit.”  Oddly I’m a little proud of my ‘handy’ work: if I pulled that much force with my weak hand, I could have done some serious damage with, say-oh, a staple like I used to use in high school.  Or the knife to the foot soles, followed by a walk through salt, just to determine whether or not I was actually alive or not back then.

Then I’ve got to explain what went down, how long it’s been going down, and the supreme irony that I was originally planning on getting help with it next week—obviously, I wasn’t going to make it that long.  After all this had happened, it seemed rather silly to put it off to a one-time thing.  Besides, it’d happened four times before this.  Lights out is shortly afterward.

They don’t sedate me enough that night.  I’m chased by nightmares.  As soon as I start to drop off—I’m up again.

Dawn of the First Day – 2 Nights Remain

The next day I’m given that same battery of questions.  This time I have no problem answering honestly; I’m tired of feeling like this.  I explain that the sedation was not nearly enough, and they quintuple the dose—apparently that first attempt should have had me out like a light, and that level of resistance is mighty bad.  I also get my leg pill, my migraine pill, and a new, little blue one—and this fricken horse pill that I hadn’t seen before.

“Yeowch.  What’s he for?” and I point to the big one.

I get a look.  “You’ve got an infection on top of all this, remember?”

I did not.  I didn’t even know.  Another sign that my health’s fading under the stress: I get informed that this thing’s been in my system for quite some time—months, even—and I haven’t even noticed it, wouldn’t have even known if it wasn’t for the blood test.  I get its name and it turns out I’ve had it before.  (Don’t ask me to spell or Google it; I can’t even remember how to pronounce it properly.  I just know when she named it I went “AGAIN?”)  I make a note to ask for a spoon’s worth of pudding next time and go to breakfast.

At breakfast I get a scrambled egg, two strips of bacon, decaf coffee, OJ, and milk.  I can’t drink the milk without a lactase supplement (it’s 2%; if it were skim, I’d’ve been fine), so I trade it for OJ.  The atmosphere’s a bit like junior high: everyone knows they’re fucked up in the head, and no one takes it too seriously—it’s too painful to take seriously.

The rest of the day is a blur.  We are in and out of substance-abuse classes, introductions to AA and NA (that’s Narcotics Anonymous), and group therapy.  I get an uneasy sense of foreboding from the AA/NA intros, but I don’t know why.  I get the feeling that there’s something I should know…

The class ends and we all rise to go—

And hands reach out to me for the Serenity prayer.

Oh fuckflans.

I really did try to stand my ground.  But the next thing I know I’m pinned against the wall, palms on the wall, heart going as fast as a jackhammer.

“I’m sorry—I can’t do—I’m sorry.”

The prayer goes on without me.

The rest of the day, I’m rattled.  The trigger’s already gone off, and people approaching me is enough to get me to scramble away with a “Don’t get so close!” that manages to skip up three octaves before I finish saying it.

Lunch is…edible.  It’s not as good as breakfast or yesterday’s dinner (or that delicious LIFE sandwich) was.  After this, there’s much fraternizing.  Everyone but me discusses what they’re in for, what they plan on doing once back on the outside.  I can’t finish the sentence.  A nurse takes my vitals and gives me another pair of pills.  One’s that fricken horse pill from this morning.  I don’t ask questions, I just reach for it and shoot it like a shot of vodka.  “…blech.”

More group sessions follow.  I’m ping-ponged between substance-abuse classes and mental health classes.  I find that sitting with one wall to my back and the exit to one side calms me a bit…until I’m told to give my name, last initial, and what I’m here for.

I can’t even think it.  I sort of scrunch into the corner for the session and don’t say anything—

Until the therapist, totally meaning well, asks if I’m OK, holds out a hand to help me up…and next thing I know I’m in the doorway, not sure how I moved that fast on this leg, apologizing and explaining in broken sentences (out of syntax no less).  Luckily for me, the groups are over.  I huddle up in one of the lounges.  There’s more talk about what we’re in for.  Someone asks what the deal with my triggers is, and I explain it.  While I’m explaining, a newcomer to the bin arrives—I might be unhinged, but THIS one’s completely out of touch with reality.  Reminds me of the druggie in “The Harder They Come,” the Jimmy Clif movie.  We all felt a little more sane after that.  A funny thing happened that night.  The vast majority of us went from feeling sorry for ourselves, to being to make fun of ourselves.

Nightmare Central

The nightmare is strange.  First I see the headless body of my ex—but his face is gone.  He—I should say “it,” I suppose, because this body is about as lifeless as pizza dough and about as solid when nudged with a foot.  My foot sinks into it.  I realize that this pizza-dough-corpse-thing is in the second-floor laundry room at work, and we can’ have corpses in the laundry room, it’s against policy, I have to move this corpse.  I turn back around and instead of a pizza-dough-corpse-thing, there’s a ripped, spilled bag of trash: coffee stirrers, photos, saccharin packets, and magnets with his picture.  For some reason, I begin to sort these things: photos here, saccharin packets in the garbage bag full of paper, magnets in a different stack.  I start to throw these things away, but there’s something else here, and I put the magnets and photos (all of which are seriously tattered, he’s barely recognizable) with another, larger photo I’ve found.  The glare on the larger photo I’ve found is keeping me from seeing it clearly, but it’s a group shot of my friends and me, torn down one side.  I realize two things:  I own no such photograph, and the photo’s ripped through where I’m standing.  The edges are burnt.

I wake up when the nurse comes in with two of my pills.  I don’t mind being woken up.  That was fucking disturbing.  And I hadn’t been asleep that long, so no biggie.

Dawn of the Second Day – 1 Night Remains

I’ve…never had pancakes this dry.  I mean, seriously.  It’s

The texture’s something resembling my first attempt at dorayaki—except that’s a sponge cake, not a pancake, and they’re supposed to be a little drier than usual so that they can soak up either over-moist azuki bean paste—or my favorite, be dunked in almond milk before chowing down.  (Yummly.)

Also, you’re not supposed to see little dry pockets of flour.  They’re edible only because I traded a muffin for extra syrup to deluge them with.

Groups run roughly the same as yesterday.  Except this time, someone tries to lighten the situation a bit, comes toward me—

I’m not even positive when I bolted this time.  I remember losing my legs, then being in the lavatory on the floor curled up.  I think it was then when I bit my tongue and hit my head.  I don’t remember.  I remember fighting to get my nerves back and mentally shouting at myself, “THIS IS STUPID!” and then rage at myself for…well, this being stupid.

Back in the lounge, we’re discussing our situations again, and mine comes up again.  “So, what are you going to do about that trigger, anyway?”

By this point, I’m feeling so STUPID about it, I half-jokingly say, “Well, as long as people don’t let me see their palms when they come at me, I’m fine.”

Suddenly: zombie dance.  EVERYBODY DO THE SHAMBLER WALK!  It’s insane, it’s ludicrous, and it makes absolutely no fucking sense…but I laugh the hardest at it, and as it turns out, that little precaution of “HANDS WHERE I CAN’T SEE’EM BUSTER” actually does help.

Lunch is infinitely better than breakfast, a grilled chicken sandwich with mayo—real mayo.  Like the sandwich in the ER, it tastes of life.

It’s immediately followed by my one-on-one for the day, and the battery of questions.  I initially do not like the meds that they put me on, but as time’s passed, it’s been easier to come out of my room.  I wind up requesting reading material (since my dad’s car-less and cannot access my apartment at the  moment) and wind up selecting a Patricia Briggs novel—inadvertently selecting a novel featuring a protagonist who has been through roughly the same damn thing I have.  (I say ‘roughly’ because I am not a coyote-shapeshifter and am currently involved in werewolf-pack politics induced by the alpha selecting me as a mate, for starters.)  The story’s good enough that I muscle through to a crazy and sometimes-hilarious adventure.  (Really, Mercy?  You’re passing off this werewolf as a Pyrenees mix named SNOWBALL?)  Now I’ve got to read the rest of the series.  My other selection?  “Who Moved My Cheese,” that one motivational book.

The Bad Door

I get to bed a little later than usual, on account of having my nose in that novel (Apparently gremlins curse like sailors and this one finds it amusing to levitate a car that won’t do as he says and BE FIXED DAMMIT), to find that I’ve got a different roommate.  It goes noticed, and at the same time not noticed.  The new dosage is like WHOA.  I put a bookmark down and lie down—and ten minutes later, I’m up again.  My mouth tastes like dust and matches.  To the lavatory for a rinse.

The room’s a different one than where I started, and it’s got this one disadvantage: the lavatory door’s bad.  It’s put on wrong: there’s two solid millimeters difference between where it’s attached at the top and the bottom.  There’s a couple of pieces missing.  The screws aren’t the right make or size.  It’s workmanship that would make my uncle—a retired bricklayer—cringe.  Then he’d curse a blue streak about it, order it fixed, get impatient, and do it himself.

This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the door makes this…this horrendous squawk when it opens past one-third of the way.  It’s like—

*SCCRW_KNKDK^GGRH!*

—and would make my teeth rattle were it not for the fact that they’re clenched in frustration as I seethe “I HATE that thing!”  I’ve been meaning to mention it to my RNs, but it slips my mind until I have to be in there.  It becomes almost a mantra.  As usual, I give it a glare before I go to bed.

Again With The Chocolate Dreams?

It takes me a half hour to doze off but when I do, I dream about the leaky pipe in my apartment.  It bursts, and floods the place with…chocolate syrup.  I hustle to get my technology off the floor and…it turns out to be a false alarm.

No need to get things off the floor when they’re all levitating, after all.  Including the furniture.

“Huh.  Cool.”

I sit down and read my Nook.

Dawn of the Third Day – Final Night

The first thing I hear this morning is my new roommate apologizing for that damn door’s racket.  After I dropped off, though, I didn’t hear a damn thing.  Her incredulous reaction reminds me of the time I slept through two separate tornadoes (true story).  A while into what’s become a rollicking conversation (I haven’t laughed this much sober in weeks) my assigned RN comes in and gives me the first of four questionaires—and then the meds.

There’s no way around it: I was feeling awesome.

This day blazes by for the most part.  I can tell I’ve improved because the rushing coked-up-monkey-brain effect of stress is situated around my writing instead of the question “What happens if someone comes up to me?”  We get into the discussion on what we’ll do on the outside, books, writing—that one got me hyper-happy; the fact that the reaction is near-universal to my favorite jerk-ass-type characters—a raised eyebrow and then the “PFFTLOL”—is somehow satisfying.

Lunch is delicious:  Meatloaf.  Glorious BEEF.

The one-on-one begins early, and it is a bit different than before.  For one, my improved mood.  For another, she hits me with the question:

“How do you feel about going home?”

At the last second I didn’t look around to see where the Victory Fanfare was coming from.

After some phone tag, some art therapy, and pet therapy—fluffiest collie-mix ever—I’ve got a ride set up.  I’m hanging around the lounge discussing prime-time dramas past and present when I nod too hard and—vertigo.  Except it’s weird.  The top of the hospital’s spinning the opposite direction from the bottom.  The middle’s sitting still.  When I’m informed that I didn’t actually move, it’s time to lay down.

My ride turns out to be my uncle.  He arrives in the Buick my grandfather once drove.  After some awkwardness—he kicked a trigger and I had to explain—I’m in…and home.  The apartment is a mess, likely a bit of aftermath from Saturday’s run-in.  I pick things up before bed, thinking about the AA and NA and EA (Emotions Anonymous this time) meetings, realizing that I’d indeed given myself a potential problem, and I’d have to make sure I worked on it right away.

Tonight.

I’m sitting on my chair, barely awake.  Remembering all of this has been exhausting.  But unlike last night, remembering it hasn’t sent me into the throes of another impending panic attack.  I can look back on the stay in the ‘bin with perspective that I didn’t have going in.  My supervisor, who refused to call off the whitecoats when I demanded it, had said “You can be mad at me later, but now, you’re going in and getting help.”  I thanked her today as I picked up my paycheck and a few things from the grocer.

I’ve got a sandalwood candle on a warmer.  It mingles nicely with the raspberry freshener.  It’ll be even nicer with the vanilla.  I’ve eaten my first outside meals—might have to modify my diet.  Going back to ‘normal,’ my stomach argued with me.  I’ve cleaned the apartment, and it went so quickly I don’t understand how the mess had me hemmed in in the first place.

I’ve taken the med they gave me for the nightmares, and being awake right now and seeing straight is one hell of a neat trick.  And I took this with my coffee (first liquid available).

Now, it’s time for sleep.

But more importantly, it’s time for progress.

 Published by WebStory