Before my admittance, I travelled to my vacation home, Valley, first. I stayed for about a week before they decided what to do with me. In a unanimous vote, without any opinion from me, I was transferred to Atlanta, GA. This hospital was told to be "Top-of-the-Line" and a breath of "fresh" air. Nothing is fresh about the smell of cramped and emotional sweaty teenagers going through the motions. Needless to say, every personnel at Valley got a mouthful, including the head advisor over the whole adolescent unit, Mr. Hedgehog. Yes, that is the coverup name I have decided to give him because of his unique appearance.
At this point in my life, I had piercings galore. Size 7/16 gauges, a nose ring, my first and second hole pierced in my ears, and a cartilage piercing. I mean, how else was I suppose to enjoy a little sting without being called suicidal? I loved piercings and adored them closer than anything else. I was a whopping 150lbs. walking into Valley and a slimming 120lbs leaving and my tremor infected hands had made that evident. I trembled like an elderly women, barely able to pick anything up. We drove up to the building where visitors and future patients sat in, fingernails bitten to a nub.
I could not lie, it was beautiful. A washed brick building, surrounded in Amazonian foliage. Who would have thought such a beautiful place could be in Atlanta. When I arrived I was taken straight back through what seemed to be a school hall and cafeteria. Great, even suicide can not keep school stress away. Past the cafe was a pair of double doors and three flights of stairs. Once more, double doors. To my surprise it led outside, but it was fenced in. Straight ahead you saw what seemed like a park. There were stone benches, playgrounds, sand, and vegetation for miles. It was stunning. I could not believe I was at a hospital. I absent mindedly headed towards the paradise, but was abruptly ordered to turn left into a small cramped office. Nurses' Station. I hate the sights of these, it has its own scent. Rubbing alcohol and latex, soothing to me now but not then.
"This is where you will come for medication, injuries, or scheduled TL's. I did not even bother asking what a TL was, I was too busy admiring this hidden paradise, in the dump of America, through the glass windows. I easily endured millenniums of boring paperwork, rules, describing my dilemma to four or five strangers over and over. One warning is, if you end up in a behavioral center, you will lose your sense of privacy because that is taboo here, especially for the adolescents. It was probably evening by the time I was able to go down to my "unit". Unlike Valley, where there were two halls for boys and girls, The Heights had separate buildings for gender, age group, and reasoning for coming.
I walked down the never ending concrete to the very end of the fence where lied a condo sized building labeled: "Unit 6". The glass windows were tainted with previous paintings, I assumed done by the girls residing, and it looked a bit rundown. To my surprise, when I walked in, it was empty oppose to a few personnel. The building was a straight hallway down to a back door. Down this hall was a series of six or eight doors. I take that back, there was one young lady in the hall floor. She looked a few years younger than me but twice my size. She had a bulldog stature that you did not want to mess with. Her dark skin was rough and calloused on her feet, I figure it was because of the lack of shoes she wore. Also, she rocked a coarse high risen Mohawk that added to the Pity-the-Fool attitude she posed. The nurse told me to take a seat in the Day room and promised me the unit's return soon. I sat in silence, fear. What had I gotten myself into?
