This is a poetry/journal book about my experience in the Psych Ward.
It's all true accounts with names changed for privacy. I wrote this while in the ward, except for the last day.
Please take care in reading. If topics of suicide, depression, rap...
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What's more depressing than a Christmas in a Psych Ward? No, seriously. What is?
At this point, I'd spent eight days without talking to my boyfriend because he lives abroad and they said the phones can't connect. So I hadn't even attempted to memorize his phone number. But today, a nurse tells me they're doing facetime on an ipad. I'm not sure my boyfriend has an iphone, but I'm willing to try. I tell the nurse I need my phone to check his number and then I'll attempt.
Everything takes six hours, my peoples. So I put this in the back of my mind.
On Christmas Eve, I met two other patients besides Allie. Their names are Brianna and Annie. And they end up becoming the light of my life in the Psych Ward. Brianna was a loud, beautiful, and hilarious woman. The amount of stories she told could fill an entire book of its own. I'll discuss her on another day.
Annie was a beautiful woman with dyed dark pink hair. She was quieter, but still a bit of a talker and humorous as well. Annie had a lot in common with me in that she was dealing with depression, was a cutter, and suicidal. She showed me her cuts on her arms and I showed her the ones on mine. I also had scars on my legs from high school and we spent time telling stories, triggers be damned. We also both had a bad knee with traumatic stories behind them. It was eerie.
Annie was in the ward because she got upset and cut her wrists. Her boyfriend called the ambulance for her and when she arrived at the hospital, they forced her into the ward as involuntary.
Wait. Pause. Involuntary? I forgot to mention this. There are two statuses for entering the hospital: voluntary and involuntary. They're pretty much self explanatory, but if you go to the Psych Ward willingly like me, you're voluntary. If you go unwillingly like Annie, you're involuntary. It's apparently better to go voluntarily, but I'm just throwing this out there... I didn't see the difference once I was in there.
So six hours passed and I go to check on my phone, only to discover no one knows where they put my phone. Thank the Lord for my new medications because I would have lost it completely under normal circumstances! Instead, I only sat in a corner and did deep breath meditations until I was sure I wasn't going to fight anyone. Then I asked again and waited until they found my phone.
Turns out my boyfriend doesn't have an iphone, so facetime doesn't work. I was terribly disappointed, but I thanked the staff for trying to help me anyway. I would just have to hold out until I leave the ward to speak to him again. This was my saddest Christmas and this was my eighth day in the Psych Ward.
