I have this curse of remembering dates... sure, it was a blessing in history class, but I wish it could have stayed there. I could tell you the day of the month, year, week, and time of day to each less than fortunate loss in my life. The day that is haunting me now is October 14th, 2010. It was a Thursday, the week before Fall break of my Senior year in High School. I had a choir concert that night; my family of choice was preforming for the school board and I absolutely needed to go. But preforming wasn't the only thing on my agenda that day...
I had been depressed for a very long time, and had been over working myself in academics, extra-circulars, and volunteer work. Behind the scenes was my own personal Hell that a few close teachers, a couple of my summer camp counselors, and DHS knew about. The summer of 2010 I told my counselor everything... I was 17. I told her about the childhood sexual abuse, I told her about the constant bullying, I told her I was afraid to go home, I told her I was hurting, I wasn't eating enough, I felt like I couldn't continue and I wanted to get out. She and my camp director decided it was necessary to report this to DHS. They told me their plans to help me and I was scared, I didn't want to get in more trouble, I just wanted things to be okay, I wanted to be okay.
When I went to pick up my school schedule in August, filled with 5 AP classes, Latin IV, Orchestra, and Choir, as well as an online course to finish my required health credit, my school counselor and school social worker stopped me in the hall. Mrs. G and Ms. W took me into an office and told me that they read the case file given to DHS about me... my secret was out, my school knew, my escape was no longer a place I could run to.
Yet I continued to push through, in September I turned 18, therefore my case was dropped with DHS and never underwent further investigation because I was then considered an adult. Mrs. G and Ms. W wouldn't let up. Homecoming was the first week of October and I was put in charge of decorations and the planning committee. My school sorority in which I was secretary of was planning a blood drive, my Orchestra in which I was concert master was getting ready for Metro Honor auditions, and my Show Choir was getting ready to start our "Sounds of the Season" caroling tour. Yet, by the beginning of October I was being pulled out of class at least once a day to see Mrs. G or Ms. W, my teachers were beginning to get suspicious and I grew more and more depressed.
On October 14th I told one of my teachers I had access to a gun, I was desperate, I was at the end of the rope, I needed someone to hear me. I didn't really have access to a gun; I knew my Dad had some, but I had never discovered where. They ended up calling an outreach program to the school to talk to me. They pulled me out of AP CALC and demanded I go to the psych hospital. I told them about my concert that night... I had to go or my choir director would shame me, I had to go, I couldn't break down. I told the outreach program I would talk to them after the concert.
I remember standing in line with the rest of my choir, backstage in the auditorium waiting to go on. I was dressed in my 3/4 length black tulip skirt and velvet and rhinestone top with character shoes- the show choir uniform. I took off my jacket just before entering stage left because it was hiding the evidence on my arm that things were far less than okay. I gave in my best performance, but my choir director was disappointed in us, saying that we gave a poor performance.
I went home just to tell my parents that I was going to the store to pick up supplies for a school project due the next day, and at 9:30 I left to meet this outreach team in a gas station parking lot. After a long conversation they told me I was going to die or I was going to go to the hospital. I let them bring me to the hospital.
October 15th, 2010 was the Friday before Fall Break. It was the first day of school I had ever missed. I was in the hospital for a week. It was the worst week of my life thus far. I had never been so close to confronting my demons. It was the first psychiatric care I had ever received. I had never seen a therapist or a psychiatrist prior to that day. All of a sudden I was behind locked doors, surrounded my mental patients. I was the youngest one there by over a decade. I was still in my choir uniform.
My parents filed a missing persons report, and the police initially confirmed I had committed suicide, then somehow restated that I was at the local psych ward. My Mother camped out in the lobby for seven days, when it was time for me to discharge I had a security guard bring me out the back doors and I ran away. I had my camp counselor pick me up and from there I couch surfed for 5 months.
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Since October 14th, 2010 I have been hospitalized 11 times, for a total of 367 and counting days in a psych hospital or eating disorder treatment hospital, Plus 16 days of intensive out patient.
I am in the last level of care in my most recent treatment center. It is a half-way-home connected to the hospital. I want to believe this is the last time, that I will never have to experience the pain of relapse again. It scares me though, I have been reliving the past four years in slow motion. In those four years I was raped three times, I have had maybe a handful of days in good recovery and I haven't been close to my family since. In fact, I have been the source of grief in my family, the black sheep, the scape goat, the reason why nobody is happy.
I told my last therapist, when I was a kid, the worst thing I could do was drop a plate or spill orange juice on the carpet and hide it with a pillow... As an 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22 year old trying to find myself in a mess of an existence, I realize I am capable of much more than a stain on the carpet or a broken dish. I have this ability to be trusted and to trust people, and to break that trust or to trust the wrong people. I have this insatiable hunger for a different story, but the quest to change this predisposition for chaos leads me back to the same emptiness every time.
My psychiatrist in treatment always says that PSTD is like the World Trade Center Attack.... for weeks, even months, and sometimes years after September 11th, 2001 the news channels played the video of the plane colliding with the World Trade Center over, and over, and over, and over again. It's something that our country does not want to forget. PTSD is like a video or a record being played over, and over, and over in my head. Like I am not allowed to forget, I cannot forget, because I know when I close my eyes it will always be there. A hat, a cat, a popsicle, a cactus, a complete stranger that bares some resemblance, a date like October 14th can be a trigger that sends the records playing on repeat again.
So yes, this time is difficult and I know that the same day this year doesn't really have anything predisposed about it, it's not cursed, it's not destined to be bad. No part of me wants it to be. I have told many medical and psychiatric professionals that I often go on wishing that the outreach team would have never got involved, that DHS would have never got involved, that I didn't tell my camp counselor, that I could have just died in peace... it's always been sad to admit that I have those thoughts, but I hold on to hope that surviving what I have will lead me to a new chapter to a better life. I know I have dreams and desires, cluttered with a lot of despair. "Living in the past is like driving a car backwards, it is okay to get out of the driveway, but that is not what cars are made for." Yes, I just quoted myself, but I have to tell myself that a lot. It's okay to hold both. It's okay for me to be shaken up right now, but it's also okay for me to move forward, to stay in recovery, to not let this October be the same as the years before. I can hold both good and bad. I can be both four and twenty-two. I can use the past to make the stepping stones on which I build my future.
For so long I have believed that there is nothing beautiful about my existence, but I have to see something different now. I am an artist, a creator of beauty, of intrigue, of awe. One cannot create beauty if something beautiful does not live inside. I'm learning to grow beauty from my ashes. Beauty is not something you become, it is something that grows within us. Each story has a tragedy, that does not mean that each story is a tragedy. I'm learning now that I am not the monster or some apocalyptical storm, leaving behind destruction in its wake; my story can have tragedy and miracles and beauty and pain and hope. I intend to hold it all, to be human, to live on.
