“Please take off your shoes.” I stood up and the woman scanned me with the metal detector. “Thank you, you can sit down.” I was terrified at this point. I had looked into this place before online, considering it to be a possible solution to my problem. Unfortunately, the website didn’t have the information I was looking for, leaving my curiosity unsatisfied. The woman was writing in a notebook. By this time I was shaking like crazy, I was being impatient. What was this woman writing? I kept thinking this same thing over and over again.
When my mom and I walked into The Ridge we were met by a woman who was sitting at a desk behind something like four inches of glass. Her name tag said Sherry. She greeted me and my mom with a friendly “Hello” and asked my mom to put her name and my name on a sheet of paper on a clip board. I assumed this was the sign in sheet. She did, and then Sherry gave her a white sticker and gave me one that was orange. I was confused to why I had to have an orange one and my mom had to have a white one. All they said was visitor pass, so why did they have to be two different colors? Maybe it was to separate the normal people and the insane people. I sat down beside my mom who was playing on her phone; I was bored. Sherry told my mom it could take up to two hours to have me evaluated. My mother had remained sort of calm throughout the car ride to Lexington. She never really said anything to me about why I was coming here, or how long anything had been going on. She only found out because one of my friends made her aware that I was acting strange and he was scared for me. She was upset about that, and I could tell. She was quiet because she didn’t know what to say to me, unaware of if I wanted to talk about it or not. I didn’t want to talk about it, not to her, not to anyone. I was angry that I had to be here.
Something outside then caught my eye. I guess I’ve always been a little more observant of things that don’t really pop up on other people’s radar. Things like why does an orange have to be orange, why can’t it be red like an apple? I noticed a woman; she was standing outside talking on the phone and smoking a cigarette. She appeared to be alone. She was boring as well. I quickly lost interest in her, and dozed off. Not worrying about missing anything. I was woke to the sound of a child making disruptive airplane noises. It was a young boy about four, or five. He was running in a circle with his arms stretched out wide, serving as the wings of his imaginary airplane. His mom was standing beside him. She was the woman I had seen outside 30 minutes earlier. The situation was the same for them, the white sticker for her, and for him it was orange. The boy was upset to why he had to wear the orange sticker, and not be the same as his mom. He ran around the lobby, he exploded in a tantrum, beginning to yell and cry, knocking over tables and the magazines on them. His mother just stood there, calmly and watched.
Sherry picked up the phone lying beside her, and almost immediately after her hanging it up a man came running into the lobby out of one of the doors on the other side of the room from where we had walked in. The boy stopped his outburst and turned his attention to the man, the man walked to him, and the boy said “Who are you?” The man looked at Sherry, she nodded her head gently. The man turned back to the little boy “If you don’t calm down, I will be forced to put you in restraints.” The little boy wasn’t having it, he spit in the man’s face and the sat down in the chair waiting for what was to come. The man left the lobby. I looked at my mom and her face was expressing shock. He came back with a restraint chair, he spoke to the boy “Grant, you need to sit in this chair.” Grant got up and sat in the chair like it was nothing he hadn’t experienced before. The amount of calmness in this room from the man, the mom, sherry, and Grant has shocked me and my mother. He fastened Grant into the chair and rolled him behind the door, his mother soon followed. I can’t understand how this woman had contained her composure. I would be hysterical. All I could think to myself is that this place is crazy. Is everyone here like that? Do they think I’m like that? The thought of it was imposturous.
After fifteen more minutes, another woman came out of the door, announced my name and invited me back to her office. I had noticed that her name tag said Marie. We got into her office, and I sat down across the room from her desk. My mom sat right beside it. I was scared of this place, even more now than before the fiasco in the lobby. I wasn’t about to try and talk to anyone, not after what I had just witnessed. I didn’t want to get spit on, or put in a restraint chair. The woman then asked me to stand up and take off my shoes; she scanned me with the metal detector and then told me I could sit down. Then began her ridiculous amount of question asking and writing in that journal. She was asking me questions like “Why are you here?” and “What seems to be the problem?” Didn’t she already know? I know she talked to my mom on the phone, or someone associated with her talked to my mom on the phone. I gave her short answers. And then she asked me a question that really got to me “Why don’t you just tell me?” I let it go. “The reason I’m here is for cutting myself and because I make myself throw up so I don’t get fat. Are you happy now?” My mom thought it would be a good idea to add in how my depression was affecting my home life, and about how I not only make myself throw up but how I restrict myself from eating. By this time, I probably looked like a drowned raccoon because I had makeup on that day, and tears were rolling down my face. I looked at my mom. She was crying but her face had nothing on it. I guess she wasn’t wearing makeup that day. She never really wore a lot of makeup. She was too pretty for it. “Unlike me.” I thought to myself. I’ve always wanted to look like my mom. She looked like an angel no matter if she had make up on or not.
The bullying started in fifth grade. The “popular” girls always picked on me. They always had something to say about the clothes I had on, or about my face breaking out. I developed acne early, I guess. There was one girl who really did get to me. Chapin was her name. She was tall, skinny, and everyone liked her. Everyone wanted to be her. Every day in our class she would sit by me, and tell me all the mean things the other girls had to say about me. I went home and cried almost every day. The same girls I went to school with all through middle school as well. Sixth grade they picked on me, but it wasn’t as bad as fifth grade. In seventh grade, my body grew. I filled out more, gained some weight, and my face started to break out some more. I mostly stayed to myself but I made some friends. I ate lunch with a few people, they were nice, except for the one boy who sat with us. Ben was his name. He made fun of my weight, my face, and anything else that he could find that was potentially wrong with me in his eyes. I was still not even as big as half the girls we went to school with. I didn’t know what I had done to this boy. I stayed to myself, and never really said anything to anyone. I went through seventh grade being tortured by Ben about my weight, and about my face.
In eighth grade, I hadn’t noticed that anyone had really gained any weight, or changed in anyway. They all looked the same as in seventh grade. Not me. I had gained a couple of pounds, five pounds to be exact. I was happy though, they didn’t make fun of me this year as much as they did the year before. I did have one class with Ben, and I was excited for that. He really didn’t bother me; it was like he was thinking about the worst thing to say to me, and when the perfect time to say it to me was going to be.
I remember the day like it was yesterday. It was November 3rd, 2010. We were in class and we had to watch this video on childhood obesity, this was the time when Michelle Obama was on her health kick. When the video was over, Ben looks at me and says “Lovelle!” Everyone looks at me, and some of the kids laugh.
“I’m not that big.” I looked at my stomach. I really wasn’t big. I weighed 106 pounds and if anything I was underweight.
“Have you looked at yourself lately?” He grinned. “We all watch what you eat at lunch.” He finally did it. He said the worst thing. That day when I went home, I sat down in front of the toilet in my bathroom, and shoved my fingers in the back of my throat. I puked, did it again, again, and again. This would eventually turn into the problem of my eating disorder, and the reason of why I went to the Ridge.
You shouldn’t ever make fun of anyone for their appearance. You don’t know what the effects of your words can be. Ben’s words for me caused a problem that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. The whole point of this story, and me telling it, is because I don’t think anyone should have to go through what I went through. Bullying isn’t okay. 77% of all students in the United States are bullied. That isn’t okay. Honestly, I’ve bullied people before, and I have been bullied, I will never bully anyone again, and I won’t let anyone bully me or anyone else, I stop it if I see it happening and everyone else should too.
