Sally, Interrupted (Working Title)

Jill said that I wasn't actually crazy. But I felt like I was crazy. I saw this all around me. Nothing seemed real. It felt like I was living in a painting, and the world was painted all around me. I had even heard my first voice two months earlier. It was loud and angry, but thankfully inconsistent.
I couldn't see how I wasn't crazy.
         But I wasn't. Not really. She had said I would understand once I got to Ridgeview. I was definitely ill, but I wasn't crazy.
         For the first time in my life, I met people who were much more unstable than I was. No one seemed truly crazy, even though some were volatile and a danger to others. When someone calls an individual crazy, they assume they completely lack sanity. Even at my worst, I still felt like I had one foot in sanity. I always thought that schizophrenia was the worst thing that could happen to someone, but at Ridgeview, I met my first schizophrenic. His name was James. He had been at Ridgeview for two weeks, while my worst nightmare was having to stay longer than the legally required 72 hours. His symptoms just weren't getting better. He would see streams of bright yellow light all around him, coming in from the windows at the far end of the day room that would float down the hallways and under the cracks in the doors.
         The afternoon that I met James, I hallucinated again, this time visually. I was sitting in my low hospital bed during our one-hour nap time. I saw dozens of roaches crawl across my lap and down the sides of the bed. I thought to myself that I needed to get out of Ridgeview more than I needed to tell my doctor that I started seeing things. I would want to kill myself even more if I had to stay two weeks like James was.
         "Did you bring any books with you?" James asked me on the day we met, the second full day I was there, as my medication was kicking in, and as I began to feel less terrified of my situation.
         "No, I didn't know what I could bring with me." I said. I had already read the book of short stories and an encyclopedia on Spanish grammar, a bizarre combination, I know, but the rest of the books on the built-in bookshelf to the side of the day room were abysmal. With the exception of the two books I had already read, the bookshelf contained only mass-market science fiction books. I did not want to read those.
         "I'll go get you some." He stood up out of the brown, plastic arm chair that sat near the nurses' station. He walked over to his room (which was supposed to be locked), opened the door, and went in.
         I sat and stared around the day room. My friend Chloe was just recently prescribed clozapine, and she was so drowsy that she had permission to sleep from the head nurse. James was the only person with whom I wanted to speak. I watched across the big brown room as the bi-polar patient, Clint, who came in the same time as I did, make a fool of himself in front of some of the addiction patients who were just trying to chat. The room was an oppressive brown.
         James quickly returned, carrying a small stack of books. He handed the stack to me, and I looked them through. Most of them were war books, not my preferred genre. But James had been in the military before getting discharged because of his schizophrenia, so it made sense. He watched me as I read the backs of the books and inside the front jackets. I finally chose a book about a soldier in Vietnam. I don't like war books, but Vietnam didn't seem too bad. Each book had come from a library. I didn't know if they had been free or if he had stolen them.
         "I have a whole duffle bag of books in my room. I take them with me everywhere." He explained to me. He kept one book in his hands. It was old and blue, looking as if it was from the 1960s. It looked like an old textbook. "I'm not done with the book you picked, so I'll need it back, but I think you might like this book, because of your major."
         I read the title, then flipped over to the synopsis. The language was difficult and academic, but I could still make out what it was about. It was on psycho-linguistics, a complicated science. I forget the title now and who wrote it, but I know I still have it, buried in a box somewhere, or on a shelf at my parent's house somewhere. Inside of it, as a bookmark, I have James' phone number.
         "The looks really cool." I halfway meant it--I love linguistics--and halfway said it to make him happy. But I did appreciate my gift.
         "I don't really understand it, but I thought you might." James smiled at me. His smiles were always distant and flat, but mine are, too.
         I sat and read the book all day in the day room until we were allowed to go to our rooms and sleep. It was a Sunday, so we had the whole afternoon free, but we couldn't go to our rooms. James sat beside me, silently, following the streams of light off into the distance.

...

         It had gotten to the point where I couldn't take the oppressive misery any more. I spent all day fantasizing the easiest, most effective way of killing myself. My drive home from college was only three and a half minutes long, but I would spend the whole drive wanting, and holding back the impulse, to run my car off the road and into a tree. At that point, I didn't care if I died or just hurt myself really badly. I just wanted to escape from my emotional suffering and all the pressure that surrounded me.
         I really should have sought out help months earlier when I tried to fall asleep in my mother's running car in the garage. (Guilt pulled me out of it--I was taking care of my little sisters for the week and I couldn't abandon them or put them through something like that.)
         At this point, I didn't know I needed help. And I didn't know how to get it.
         I eventually figured this out, though. I needed help badly. Something bad was inevitable if I didn't seek help.
         I had known the patient advocate, Jill, at my university's health center all my life, and I felt like I could trust her to help me. I emailed her and all I said was that I needed to make an appointment. She got back to me quickly and made an appointment for the next day.
         The next morning, I got up early and drove myself to the health center on campus. I sat in the waiting room, trying to stop myself from shaking. My anxiety was off the charts. I had started having panic attacks regularly. I even had to leave class one day because I felt one coming on. After a few minutes, Jill came out to get me. She asked how my family was doing, and we discussed them briefly. We got to her office, so I sat across from her in an armchair in front of her desk. I couldn't keep my hands from shaking, so I started taking apart a wooden puzzle that sat on her desk.
         "So what did you want to talk about?" Jill asked.
         Since I hadn't said much in the email, Jill was curious. I didn't speak right away. I felt like throwing up. My anxiety made me afraid to talk. "I think I'm depressed." I finally responded.
         "What makes you say that?"
         "I'm not sure," I lied, then paused. "Well, I guess I just feel so empty and helpless all the time. I have no motivation. My anxiety is so bad, I can't do my schoolwork. And I haven't been sleeping."
         "Are you feeling suicidal at all?"
         I was scared to answer this. I didn't know much about hospitalization and I was afraid I would get committed if I answered truthfully. "Yes."
         "Have you tried to kill yourself, or are they just thoughts?"
         "Just thoughts." I lied again.
         "What are your thoughts like?"
         "Um, usually when I'm driving. I have these feelings that I want to run myself off the road into this big oak tree by my neighborhood."
         Jill nodded and turned to her computer. We sat in silence until a few seconds later, when a paper printed. She handed the page to me. "Fill this out according to the directions." She said as I took it from her.
         I sat and stared at the paper. It was full of questions like:
                   1) Do you ever feel hopeless or guilty?
                   2) Has your sex drive increased or decreased significantly lately?
                   3) Do you sleep significantly more or less recently?
                   4) Do you ever feel like you would be better off dead, or the world would be a better place if you were dead?
I answered yes to nearly every question. I handed it back to Jill.
         "You probably have depression." She said as she looked it over.
         "How can it be treated?" I didn't know much about how to treat it.
         "Medication will help. And therapy is good, too."
         "Do you think I need medication?" I had never tried psychotropic medications before. I had heard the common beliefs (lies, really) that they make you flat and slow, so I was afraid of that. But at this point, I was willing to try anything.
         "I think you would definitely benefit from some, especially since you are having suicidal ideations."
         "Let's do that then," I said.