That's Why You're Here

Personal Essay

Content warning: This is a personal essay with heavy themes. Please take care of yourself if you choose to read.

Quality warning: I wrote this on my notes app… typos abound.

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My second grippy sock vacation started much like the first, with a trip to the ER. But this trip was different. Traumatizing.

Apparently after my first grippy sock vacation, because I got established with medications like a responsible person, the ER didn't want to touch that. So when I followed my emergency plan and got to the ER, I was expecting an emergency Ativan-Benadryl cocktail. Instead I was dressed in paper clothing and put into a room where the furniture was bolted to the floor. I had to sit and wait for hours while they processed me for insert mental hospital name here....

If I had known this medication bit, woulda skipped the ER part. Mostly because paper clothes tear.

I was in the ER so long that a meal arrived for me and when I stepped out of my room to get it another patient, there for very similar reasons, saw my outfit.

"Why are you wearing that?" She asked, because she knew why I was wearing that.

My intake was eventually done by a very sweet, very beautiful woman named a Emma. She looked exactly how you would expect an Emma to look. She remembered me from my first visit, but I didn't remember her.

It's embarrassing to be remembered at a mental health hospital.

It's embarrassing to have to go ever. To have to tell your friends and family afterward and watch them grimace because everything about our society has taught them the wrong way to act when someone needs mental health support. So they look at you like you're a contagion that they could catch if they acknowledge it.

They'll whisper about you at their next dinner party, but I don't give a fuck. Because they’re naive and I’m strong as hell. I don’t know anyone stronger than me.

When the person that wants to murder you is you, and you survive, that's a kind of hell that no one else knows. That’s a kind of hell you hope they never know.

I've walked through hell six times and I only had to go to the hospital twice so there. Let em think they're better. Let em whisper and put me down. If it makes them feel better about themselves what do I care. They have no idea what it's like to be afraid of the knives in your own kitchen, the medicines that are supposed to make you feel better. They have no idea. I hope they never have any idea.

Emma had to take my sneakers but I negotiated to keep my sweatpants if I permanently removed the drawstring from the waist. Then I was escorted to my room which had been stocked by a woman named Amber who I did remember. She had almost lovingly placed the bin of tools on the desk for me. All the things that worked for me the last time I had been there. Sour candy, ouchie fidgets, a bucket for ice water. It was obvious that these details were in my notes, but I like to pretend that Amber just remembered on account of how I'm so likable.

Being in the mental hospital for the second time... It felt like a failure to need this resource more than once and the weight of that sunk over me like a fog the first day. I had failed. I should be better. Why wasn’t I better? Why didn’t I better better enough?

I ordered quesadilla for the next three days lunches and Santa Fe chicken rice bowl for every dinner. Those were the only things on the menu I would like. And in the cafeteria there's a cookbook, written by patients, with a lot of Santa Fe chicken rice bowl recipes in it.

I forwent breakfasts because I knew I wouldn't be able to eat them. Mornings would be hard. Mornings would be when I was most in crisis. I would fill that tipps bucket with ice and water and dunk my head into it and that would be my sustenance.

On second day my family visited me. My son already familiar with the space and me feeling guilty that he should have to know it at all.

He knew why I was there.

He understood this to be a hospital and he knew I was here because my head was hurting. I was floored how smart and how aware he was.

They brought me greasy fast food, which of course I couldn't eat. I drank the soda which made my stomach feel better and I visited with them pretending as hard as I could that life was normal.

When they had to leave, the staff buzzed them out into the lobby where they collected their things from a locker. I peeked through the tiny window of the door at them until the last possible moment. I watched my husband get his car keys and his wallet. Place them in his pockets. I watched them put on their coats. Then they turned the corner to leave the lobby and I could no longer see his face—my son. Tears bloomed in my eyes and I turned to return in my room.

But not before she could say, "That's why you're here!"

Amber.

It took a minute for the words to penetrate my brain.

That's why you're here.
That little boy is the reason you are living this hard hard life.
He's the reason you endure.
That's why you're here.
That boy is why you're here.
That's why you're here.
Not just here at the hospital.
But here in this life.
That's why you're here.

That's why you're here.

That’s why you’re here!

I'm still here.

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Kofi donations noting this piece will directly support the hospital that saved my life… twice.

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