My First Hospitalization: Part Three

An interesting quote from this lecture by Paula Caplan, PhD, “If upsetting things happen to you and you’re upset, that doesn’t make you mentally ill.”

Well, I was upset the first time I was taken to the ER. I was upset for so many reasons, but the most immediate was that my grandfather had just beat the fuck out of me. I had taken the first swing this time. Of course, that’s how everybody remembers it. Of course, that’s how it was explained to the police and the psych professionals.

“She attacked her grandfather.”

Nobody cared that I’d experienced violence my entire life. That my entire existence was watching the violent members of my family, my mom and grandfather, and being constantly on edge and trying to protect the vulnerable people in my family, my grandmother and my little sisters.

It doesn’t matter that I spent so many years scared, sad, angry, and trying one thing after another to stop the screaming and shoving and hitting, and sometimes worse-the time that my mom burned Mary’s arm, the time that she beat our dog with a chain and he screamed like I’ve never heard anything scream.

See, none of that matters.

Because I was the one in the emergency room covered in cuts, screaming, spitting mad, and barely able to put a sentence together.

There was no way to show the people responsible for intervening the 14 years that had led up to this.

I felt trapped.

I felt powerless.

I felt PISSED.

I was so pissed.

I was the one who was wrong and awful. I could see it in the way the cops talked to me, and the way their voices changed when they talked to my mom and grandfather. I was the one who was unreasonable.

So what would have been reasonable?

What should I have done to be the perfect victim?

Politely and reasonably told someone what was going on? I did this many times in the years leading up to this catalyst. Telling other people always made it worse.

Keeping my head down didn’t work.

Flight didn’t work.

I turned to fight.

And then I was the crazy one.

I’m so so so fucking mad still, even today, that anybody expected anything more from me, when I was 14 years old. That I was supposed to be so calm and reasonable, when I was 14 and not exactly at an age known for being calm and reasonable under the best circumstances. I was never given the chance to exist without a constant threat over me. I mean, I had that briefly when I was really little and lived with my grandparents. Until I was six. But after that, it was like so much screaming and fighting and you never NEVER knew when it was going to start. You never knew when a day would go bad and then you’d be getting dragged across the house by your hair, slapped in the face repeatedly, thrown into furniture, told what a mistake and a disappointment you are. You never knew, you never knew.

And like…WHAT? I was supposed to calmly and reasonably deal with that?

I’m not saying I don’t have psych issues. I’m saying my issues were greatly exacerbated by my toxic and unpredictable living situation. The doctors never asked about my living situation. When I told them, they ignored me.

My situation is not atypical.

Tell me where in the diagnosis procedure protocol clinicians are instructed to take the patient’s living situation into account. show me.

The doctors who initially evaluated me did so with my mom and her friend in the room.

Fucking assholes.

One male nurse in the ER came in and started fucking with me. The one thing he asked that stood out to me was, “What’s got you so down? Huh, what are you so upset about?”

And it was soo much! It was stuff that was painful to talk about. It was messy. I didn’t know where to start. And his tone told me there was no reason to go through the effort of explaining it to him. He didn’t care. He thought I was over-reacting or something. He didn’t believe I had a right to be upset. It was all over his face and the tone he used.

I shrugged and didn’t look at him.

“Come on, what?” he pressed. “World politics?”

This question made me nervous. I didn’t know anything about politics. I knew America might be about to go to war because of 9/11 and I knew most people didn’t like Bush. This guy was talking to me like I was a dumb teenage girl, which you know, I was.

I hated him for it.

I struggled to come up with a non-commital answer that didn’t make me sound like a complete idiot.

“World politics are in the toilet.”

He snickered and left.

After waiting for hours in the ER, I started to feel calm. I can’t explain why, but my mood picked up considerably. I’d already been told I was probably going to be taken to a children’s crisis unit. I’d been upset at first, but thinking about it for the many hours I had to wait (you ALWAYS spend hours in the ER waiting for a psych eval), I decided it was a good thing. I didn’t know what to expect, but I had the vague sense that help was coming. Someone would help me.

I stopped being angry. I started joking around and being goofy, which is basically my default state when I’m not incredibly depressed or agitated. When a nurse came in to say the doctor wouldn’t be able to see me until tomorrow and I’d have to spend the night in the ER, I pointed to a trash can that had a biohazard label on it and asked if that was where they kept the old body parts. She glared at me and removed the trash can from the room.

So, I slept in the ER.

And it was, weirdly enough, the best night’s sleep I’d had in a really long time.

I felt really, really safe.

I wasn’t. But I didn’t know that then.

I thought they were going to help me.