The Wagon

"What the fuck is funny?" I asked, pissed I was cuffed and then all four limbs strapped down tight to a gurney.

"One of my guards ate shit trying to catch you." He tried to stifle his laugh, although I was still drunk and started laughing myself.

"Sorry." I croaked. "Need water now." I didn't get it for a while.

I'm not sure how I managed my escape from the emergency room. All I know is that whoever was in that parking lot, saw a barefoot girl sprinting towards the parking garage, covered in blood with nothing but an open hospital gown flapping behind her, with thirteen nurses and security guards in tow. They may have realized they no longer needed to visit the emergency room that night.

I can't remember what it was like to think before the thing that broke my mind.

When I shattered my kneecap senior year of high school, my childhood dreams of being a Marine were trashed. I'd always wondered at things I didn't really know or hadn't experienced myself. I discovered that broken bodies can lead to broken minds. And broken minds can lead to broken lives.

You can't be broken down and rebuilt by the Corps, when you're already broken.

When the pills ran out, I turned to the bottle and the sweet release of a blackout; the worst kind of drunk. The crippling anxiety the next day.

"Babe, why do you even drink if you puke every time?"

I added bricks to my wall of tolerance daily, until overtime it was nearly impenetrable. A cycle of perpetually falling off the damn wagon; so much loss. I was different than her, my mother. I was always so different, and then I wasn't. I didn't know succumbing to the sirens call would be so goddamn long and unending; it was supposed to quick.

Summer of 2018 was a hot one, I remember. Although, I was so drunk out of my mind, inebriated before dinner most days. I don't remember eating much of anything, but boy could I chug a tallboy of Natty. There's no hangover like a Natty Daddy hangover. My days were marked by either hangovers or blackouts, that was it.

One day in that hot 2018 summer, I lost myself. They say cheaters tend to accuse their partners of cheating out of paranoia and guilt. I had no reason to ruin every single article of clothing and every pair of shoes that my boyfriend owned. Harassed to buy beers with handfuls of change every other day. Threatened, abused and blackmailed by my sickness.

"How do you still love me after everythin' I've done? How can you still wanna be with me?" Slurred. I hated myself.

"Because I love you. Please stop doing this." Anger. Everything in the fridge was mixed with everything he owned. A baseball bat to the glass pub table, flat screen and whatever else. There's always that one last straw that breaks the camel's back. I thought that was my rock bottom, it had to be.

A formidable force, nothing could stop me. Not the bilirubin found in my liver at the ripe age of twenty-one. Not the vivitrol running through my system months later from a giant needle at the outpatient clinic. Not the bleeding out in the tub after a blackout episode that scarred my mother just as much as it did my skin. Not losing my car, apartment and personal things. Then, after six long years, Alex left me. I finally blinked.

A wilting flower. My sanity slowly slipping away with each falling petal. Self-hatred so prevalent, my reflection became my nemesis. Jealousy so potent, it could be seen on the outside like the skin of a leper. Disgusting.

After Alex left, I woke up the next day left with absolutely nothing. I forgot how it felt to feel heathy and clean. So, I of course cleaned up my act long enough for him to take me back.

The relapse was better than previous ones, with careful consumption and only a few fuck-ups that left me passed out in the running shower or my head hanging over a trash bin. One day I woke up not feeling right; lower than usual. And just like that, I fell off again.

4 o'clock in the evening and I had just rolled out of bed. Binge sleeping is never a good idea, leaves me floating somewhere between reality and dreamland. Stomach empty, but craving something to drink, stronger than my usual coronas. An old friend that was kicked to the curb years ago would have alcohol for sure. My wallet empty as my stomach. Hours of rum shots and chain-smoking Newport's, at least I think so. The memory cuts off at some point and I'm not even sure at what point. I've always wondered where all the memories go? Can I ever access them or are they really gone; what did I do?

After I got home and settled back in for a few days, I was filled in at least to what happened when I arrived home around 11 pm. There's something severely unsettling being told what you did, not remembering yourself. There wasn't much, besides being found laying on the floor in the front room, smiling. After being questioned, going straight to the kitchen and slicing so deep into both ankles, there were quarter inch thick puddles of blood where I was standing in the kitchen and then sitting at the foot of my bed. Not mentioning everywhere else. If my boyfriend hadn't of called the ambulance, I'm honestly positive that I wouldn't have made it that night.

They always show patients in psych wards in the movies, but never the process of how they got there. It's terrifying, long and exhausting. Fifty-seven stitches after being forced to stay awake with smelling salts from loss of blood.

Whether you're crazy or not, you get to see what real crazy looks like. You get to feel the presence of darkness in that place and you have to sleep in it too. You get to feel what it would be like to have your life taken away, not just your things.

Manipulation has always been a useful gift, but it simply doesn't work in that place. You are literally stripped of everything. No amount of tears and begging would change the psychiatrist's mind, when I tried my best to explain that the attempt on my life was a total accident and I would never actually try to kill myself.

"Please, please, please just listen to me. I have a cat and I have sooo much homework I have to do. If you just drop me off at my aunt's house, she'll take care of me, I promise. I really can't be here, you don't understand. I'm not crazy, I was just drunk." Still drunk.

"You need rest and food, as well as taking your medicine properly. You need to be on a schedule. We can help you. I'm not going to change my mind, I'm sorry." That was it.

Thank God for the exhaustion. I submitted to a reclining chair and a scratchy white blanket after sobbing until my eyes hurt. So tired, shivering and sweating; no sleep.

"Yo Dante! I told you to shut the fuck up and leave me alone, I am tired of ya bullshit!" I looked up to find a man facing a wall. I don't know who Dante is still, but I couldn't see him.

Unable to walk, I was wheeled to the other side of the hospital after waiting thirteen plus hours to the locked ward, where I'd receive a room with a bed. I'd be able to shower finally and fully lay down. You came out of that shower dirtier than going in. A little sleep, but more sweating and shivering than anything. It's hard to sleep with a bright light shined into your face every hour, not to mention the patients that had screaming fits at various times throughout the night.

"How was your first night in your room?" My care team, consisting of my nurse, psychiatrist and social worker crowded me. I'm just like you, I don't belong here. Do you think I'm crazy?

"It was okay, I just can't sleep well without being in my own bed."

"Do you want to tell us a little about what happened to bring you here? Were you trying to kill yourself?" The psychiatrist asked.

"I definitely don't think so. I have self-harmed in the past, but really not since I was a teenager." Lie. "I've had a ton of therapy and have created positive coping skills." Partial lie. "I rarely drink liquor and I didn't eat anything, I really don't remember anything." I babbled on, trying to convince myself more than them that I really didn't try to kill myself. I still hoped it was enough to go home.

After one day in that place, blinded by the brightness of white on white; I felt crazier than I have in my entire life. Nothing to do, nothing to look at. The incessant screaming, banging, fighting, crying, and lack of fresh air. The cold food, filth, lack of privacy, the palpable fear. Hobbling on ankles twice their normal size with heartbeats of their own, because pacing the U-shaped hall over and over was the only thing keeping me from screaming too. And the scariest part, these people were comfortable with being there, almost like they wanted to be there. This was my rock bottom; that's what it feels like. Scared shitless.

It was maybe the second day in and this girl, who believed herself to be twelve, walked up to the old man's room across from mine. "Should I wait for you in my room?" She asks him.

"What are you on about now Missy?" The former pastor grumbled.

"The hearth has come, should I wait in my room for you and mom to spank me?" He promptly called his nurse and told her to keep praying, to which she of course responded that Jesus was only the president. Duh.

For three days I endured that little slice of hell, and I truly cannot imagine staying any longer. Exhausted, unable to sleep, but compliant in every way. Maybe they realized I really couldn't sleep there, no matter what they gave me. Maybe they realized there wasn't much they could do for me there, that I needed therapy, programs and to be with my family. I'm sure it helped that my aunt acted as my secretary and probably told my social worker my life story. I'm not crazy, I'm just damaged in my own way. I think most of us are.

When you're mentally unwell for so long, with a legitimate chemical imbalance, but refusing to take any medications, the things that you obsess over in your head can sometimes morph into reality. For so long I let myself marinate on the thought that cutting through the ankles would be the best way to go. As graphic and disturbing as that sounds, this became normal to me. In that almost daily catatonic state, behind closed lids the images of what could have been and what once was slowly chipped away at my sanity. And when I added a substance to drown out the chaos, it drew it out instead. I wanted to be saved, pulled out of that deep blue I was drowning in. I wanted help, had thought about the hospital before as a last resort, but imprisoned by fear. I'm a believer of blessings in disguise. My rock bottom was my blessing. My scars remind me to take my medicine every day, even when I'm feeling better and to keep moving forward, to keep busy. The locked ward of the psychiatry unit is somewhere I will never be returning to, so when I have a craving, I remember what it was was like.

I remember now what it used to be like to think before the thing that broke my mind.