Hospital I

This is the first installment in a short story series I am writing about my depression and recent hospital experience. Most names will be changed and details may be left out or altered slightly. Let me emphasize that this is creative nonfiction, and I am just trying to capture my experience in a way that is truthful and able to be shared. And I am not trying to get attention with this. I think this is my way of being honest and stating that mental illness is something that happens and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Cognitive and behavioral therapy is just like physical therapy; the muscle being rehabilitated is your brain.

Sorry about part one. It's a bit sad.

Monday Morning

Nothing is going to happen on November 1st, nothing is going to happen on November 1st. Maybe if I keep saying this to myself, nothing will actually happen. I don’t need to die… “The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, - by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.”

“Have you had any other suicidal thoughts since our last conversation?”

My therapist’s voice cuts through my mental recitation of Septimus Smith’s pre-suicide monologue. Do I tell her about yesterday? Do I tell her about the plan my thoughts lingered on and played with during the trip home from Portland? Pockets. Stones. Bridge. Water. November 1st. Silence. Stop.

“I’ve basically decided that nothing is going to happen on November 1st nothing is going to happen nothing is going to happen nothing is going to happen but I’ve been a little fixated on the specific details of what I might do.”

“What are those plans?”

Nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to happen.

And so I tell her.

I am confused when I hear the words “hospital” and “today” in the same sentence. Maybe I can be admitted on Friday, stay the weekend, possibly through Tuesday if necessary. But not today, not this week. I have school and rent needs to be paid and my 500 presentation and Assignment 2 is due on Friday and registration for winter quarter and my research group and what will my professors think will they question why they let this crazy awkward silent and stupid girl into their program and nothing is going to happen.

Hot tears begin streaming down my already flushed cheeks. I am agitated and worried and ashamed. There is something sitting on my chest. I cannot breathe.

But I know I need this. Almost everything is grey and dark, but a small piece of my brain (heart? soul?) is colored ocean TARDIS Rainier on a clear day the sky over London on May 24, 2012 blue. And that part knows that I need this. Because when I say that nothing is going to happen on November 1st, I am lying.

“Okay.”