6 years ago today, I have just turned 15. At around noon that Friday, I am called out of my class and told to go to the school's information desk. Since they call you on an intercom system, they usually tell you to just go to the information desk and from there will tell you where to go. I have never been called out of class, I feel like my entire world is caving in, and I am trying not to cry. I have been feeling like this for months.
4 days ago was my birthday. My Mom hands me a journal. I began chronicling my descent into hell and wrote about the blackness of it all. I wrote about the black wave of terror that swallowed me whole. I had been writing when my name had been called. Walking to the information desk, I have no idea how I get there. Everything seems to be moving extremely fast and my anxiety is getting the best of me. I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack. This isn't my first panic attack, and it won't be the last. I tell the woman my name and she tells me my guidance counselor wants to speak with me. When she notices how scared I look, she reassures me that it's probably just about classes and not a big deal.
I walk into the guidance office and tell the woman my name. She immediately puts me into my counselor's room. He and I had never met and he rushes in with a set of writings I had written in my 3rd hour English class. Since I had been cutting, I was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and ripped jeans. I have dyed my hair pink and it is long enough to hide most of my face. I have on heavy eyeliner and my fingernails are painted black with a sharpie. My ears are bleeding because in my English class I got the wonderful idea to pierce my ears with paperclips. Here comes another question several people ask: Was I Gothic because I was depressed, or was I depressed because I was Gothic? I don't think it's either, for the record. The counselor stares at me for a moment, doing what most people who saw me that year did. He was taking an inventory of what I was wearing, and I felt like he was judging me. He was looking to see where I had hidden my cuts, but I didn't know that.
He begins telling me how worried he and others are for me. He asks me to lift up my sleeves and I don't know why he is telling me this because I can feel myself shaking from the weight of the world on my shoulders. I can feel the ground spinning and I begin sobbing and taking quick breaths. Since he knew I was having a panic attack, he asked if I wanted someone with me. Ben was called out of class and I immediately apologized. He held my hand as they called my Mom. When she walked in, she took one look at me, and said what the hell is going on? When they told her I had been cutting and I needed to be tested for major depression, my Mom turned to me and said what the hell is so wrong with you that you have to cut yourself? I tell you over and over again how wonderful you are and you just don't get it. What the hell is wrong with you? I tell her in a whisper: I cut because I'm dead inside. I bleed just to know I'm alive.
My Mom takes me to the doctor and we stop for McDonald's on the way. It is 6 years ago today and I can remember exactly what I ordered. I can remember chewing my entire meal counting each bite I took. 20 chews for each bite. 120 bites for my burger and 120 for my fries. Does this seem odd that I can remember in detail what I ate? I can remember sitting in the doctors office waiting for them to do my inventory and I would shake my leg in a nervous twitch so that I would be burning calories. I remember wondering how I could get away from my Mom long enough to purge, but since she had just found out I was a cutter and suicidal, she wouldn't let me out of her sight.
The woman who sees me was anything but professional. She wouldn't even talk to me and I hated her for it. I began to yell at her and used every profane word I knew. The woman said to my Mom not to worry, cutting, being suicidal, and being bulimic was an adolescent phase, I was fine. I left the office screaming at her. I just wanted one person to understand how low I felt. How every inch of me had been bruised. How I had no energy to do anything. How I tried so hard to just get through my days and as soon as I would get home from school I would collapse into bed and sleep. Forget about homework. Forget about anything else. I would sit in bed half dead waiting for the courage to end my life. My Mom drives me home and I am ignoring her. I won't say a word. I blare my headphones and listen to the CD Ben made me for my birthday.
When I get home, I collapse into my covers in my Green Bay Packers sweatshirt my parents gave me for my birthday. A few hours later I tell my Mom the shit in my head won't stop and I just want to die. She had been on the phone pleading with insurance companies, pleading with my old therapist, pleading with doctors, pleading to let someone see me. She says get dressed you're going to the ER.
In the ER, I run into my old babysitter and she asks me why I'm here. My Mom makes up some excuse I can't remember and silences me before I open my mouth to say I'm f'ed up and it doesn't matter. When I am finally seen by a very pregnant doctor, she admits me into GeneRose1 West at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. That's a 2 hour drive from my house. I arrive at Rochester and fight with everyone there until finally at 4am they let me go to bed.
In the hospital, I get some of the best sleep I have ever gotten. Everything is peaceful and quiet and I feel safe. Looking back as I write this, I see just how far I have come in 6 years. Who was this little girl so bent on dying? I don't recognize her. Even though I still have my slip ups, I feel so far removed from her. I have strength and love and light in my life. The girl going into the hospital, going into hell for the first of many times, did not have any of that.
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