This quote is something I thought of today during my seemingly endless spirals of panic attacks and ever flowing tears. Most of today has ended up a blur in my mind, maybe it will become more clear as days go by, but I want to repress the fear and the anxiousness I've endured today. At least for now. I've cried for it seems like the past 24 hours constantly, cried on my way there, cried when the cops came, cried when I was there, cried when I took a nap after I got home. I'm an emo dirtbag, as you can to realize. At least in jail in you get phone calls, at least there you have some control over your time, you get told what's happening to you, and you have people there that listen. I can't say all psychiatric unit's are like this, but what I've experienced is pushing me towards that type of thinking. Yes, this visit wasn't as bad as my last, but it did not make it any less distressing at the time. I will highlight that fact later on as well.
As some of you might have known, I've been in the psych ward once before now, and my life's been filled with numerous threats for me to return. Today I had a temporary return, it certainly wasn't a bad as it's been before, but that doesn't make it any less scary. I think the best way to get you to really comprehend the immense toll this particular visitation, as well as former events, is to begin quite simply.
The last visit I made to this exact hospital was around last May, due to something similar than what had happened this time. One day I came home from school, my Mom wasn't there, by my Mom's, boyfriend's, Mom was. We lived with her. For a long time she was my best friend, she was like the relative I never had because a lot of my real family had disowned my mother and I due to past events, which I haven't decided if I would discuss or not on this blog. To put it simply, we weren't trusted nor liked. It didn't exactly bother as, or at least we liked to think so. My mother wasn't home when I got home from school because the night before she was put away for a very short while. I know it was temporary, it didn't upset me or startle me. It was just a fact of life. Just something that happens every once in awhile.
My route when I get home from school is to go into the bathroom and breathe, I sit on the floor and just listen to my mp3 for a few minutes to try to relax. I think now would be a good time to explain that I have a strong phobia of school, due to my anxiety. I fear social interaction extremely, and on top of that I'm a major introvert. I need a lot of time to myself, needless to say. I heard a knock on the bathroom door, I stripped my earbuds from my lobes and quickly stood up thinking it was John needing into the bathroom. If he wanted something, you needed to comply right away, or he would get angry. He could yell and threaten to call the cops and accuse of you of drugs or whatever he had on his mind that day. It was just a fact of life, something I had come to accept.
I quickly unlocked the door and ran out without thinking trying to make room for him to get inside before he became upset. I didn't look up for a couple moments because I was shuffling through songs, I heard a voice I didn't recognize so I looked up. What I had presumed to be the less threatening reality, ended up being one of my major phobias. There was a tall, broad shouldered, moustached cop standing in front of me with his arms crossed sternly. He proceeded to guide me into my bedroom and told me to pack my bags, I was leaving.
"Leaving?" I couldn't figure out why. I'm a good kid. I don't break laws, except the occasional jaywalking. I don't do drugs, I don't party, I'm not in a gang. I'm a honors student, I keep good grades and I get lots of awards in school and I try to make everybody like me. My mind started to race, trying to come up with a logical reason to what was happening, where I was going, and why. What had I done wrong? The cop further explained that my grandmother had filed for emergency custody of me that morning. It was a nightmare. I started panicking. Emergency custody? Going with a woman who I rarely ever saw, and when I did it was usually fighting? What about Mom? What about Brenda and John? I wanted to flee instantly. I felt tears began forming and before I could wipe them away they ran down my face making cracks in my makeup and soon washing my face bear. My heart rate sped up, shaky hands, racing thoughts. Am I dying? No. I know I wasn't. I couldn't be having a heart attack, I'm too young.
I quickly shoved all I could inside of my stuffed backpack. I didn't know what to grab, what to leave.
Should I take my sisters ash's? Should I take my Dad's blanket? Should I take my clothes? Should I take my hair brush. All the while this cop leaned over me, another close behind. I saw flashing lights outside and it through me into this rage. I shook and cried and pleaded not to have to go with them. He said he was sorry and he had no choice. I panicked. I don't remember what I said. I just remember feeling terrified. So much was happening, in such a short time. My Dad had only passed weeks before hand, and my Mom was put away. I felt alone. I felt out of control. I am a control freak, I need to be in control. I need to know what's happening. Nobody told me. Soon an ambulance arrived and I was escorted by the cops into the back of this ambulence. I started to cry as soon as my tears had stopped again.
I suffer from nosocomephobia (the fear of hospitals), politicophobia (fear of police), latrophobia (the fear of doctors), trypanophobia (fear of needles), and claustrophobia (the fear of being locked in/up), as well as other things of course, but this is mostly what pertains to this blog post. Usually in a normal day I would come in contact with none of these things, or at least extensively speaking. Sometimes I would have to suck it up and accept my fate experiencing maybe two of these fears. For example; I might have to go to the doctor to get a shot. Yes, that alone is a traumatic event as is for me, because of my overwhelming anxiety and PTSD. Facing two of those fears in one day is enough to knock me on my bum for weeks and to make me not want to leave my dark cave of a bedroom for a substantial amount of time. Luckily enough, today I got to experience all five of these phobias in less than a couple hours, back to back, even some at the same time! To someone who doesn't suffer from extreme crippling anxiety, this may be an overwhelming task, they may experience discomfort, that's normal. Now, imagine someone who their biggest fears were all cracking down on them, all at once, and they had no say when to stop it, when to calm it, or when to take a break. This was the reality I had to face.
Meanwhile, later on down the road while I'm in the emergency psychiatric unit I was talking to a nurse. Well...more like mumbling and gasping for air in between sobs. She tried to calm my fears by saying, "I'm a forty year old woman, and I'm still scared of horror movies. But sometimes I suck it up so my friends can watch the movie with me, and I know I'll be okay because it's an irrational fear, much like yours." And my smart-ass piped up by saying something along the lines of, "That's not exactly relatable. Your biggest phobia is something that you can pause and opt out of whenever you'd like. You get the decision on if you watch the movie or not, and you get to decide how to react. I cannot. I have an extreme reaction where I start to shake, sweat, and panic. A panic that is completely out of my control. A panic that is so terrible that people in the past have mistaken it for a heart attack or psychosis." Let's just say the nurse wasn't too thrilled with me.
After much discussion with the doctors and social workers, I finally somewhat proved to them that I was stable enough to go home, and that staying hospitalized would end up being worse for me in long run because of missing work and school. Yes, this visit was less traumatic than the last, thankfully. That didn't make everything that happened today okay though, afterall. It was a large mess, that maybe I'll get into in a future post, I don't know. I want to keep this broad and try to stay on topic better.
Yes, I haven't been forced to stay in the psych ward for a long time. I am no expert on the subject nor do I have a degree of any sort. I simply have my own experiences that I've learned from, and others that I have studied to learn from as well. Growing up I had a fascination with these places, family were in there a lot, it was normal. I wondered what happened behind closed doors. I am morbidly curious about the oddities, but I would have rather learned about this one from the safety of my own bed with my fuzzy kitten asleep next to me.
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p.s.
I wrote this awhile back but I'm just NOW posting because I'm a sad blob.
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