I sat in the cold room and there was nothing but a mattress and me within the beige-colored walls. The metal door with only a small window taunted me. My heart was beating rapidly as tears surged down my now-red cheeks like raindrops In a spring downpour I couldn’t get over how the nurse had treated us. She made it seem as If we were toys that had been broken and there was no way to mend them I had thought she was supposed to be there for us: we all had thought this but apparently we were wrong. Six days earlier I had been at home livmg life as always but all that changed on the night of December 19. My mom and I sat in the olive-colored living room. We didn’t say a word or even look at each other, it was so quit we could have heard a pen drop in the other room.
As always she was in a bad mood and it was best I kept to myself. My phone rang and I told them I would call them back later and that I was with my mom. My mom was furious Ii answered and immediately began to yell “You’re nothing but a selfish teenager that doesn’t even want to spend time with your’ own morn, all you care about is your stupid little friends!” Like a bullet her words went through me they hurt worse than anything anyone had ever said to me. How could she say that she was the one whom had just came back into my life after five years and wouldn’t even talk to me unless it was to yell? Running to the kitchen and grabbing the bottle of pills is the last thing I remember from that night. Now on Christmas Eve I sat in a room at, Laurel Ridge Treatment Center, that smelt like dirty gym socks with six other girls and 4 boys.
I was listening to a nurse bash on how we were all just broken and no amount of therapy could ever “fix” us. After thirty minutes of her criticism, I could no longer take it. “How can you judge us without even knowing mine or anyone else‘s in this room‘s story?” I blurted out I felt a shrill go down my spine, I was now totally aware of my surrounding. The room was chilly and the air dry, the walls white with brown wooden trim that matched the wooden chairs with the tacky green cushions that were fashioned in a makeshift Circle. so that we were all facing each other, “You need to watch what you say.” The nurse uttered in an agitated voice. “Why so you can criticize us some more? Do you think you‘re better than us just because we are in here because of drugs, anger, suicidal attempt or idealization or depression? I bet you don’t even know that every single one of us in here was beat, raped, or molested or that all of our parents either aren’t there for us, alcoholics, in jail or died when we were younger.”
Nurse Renae stopped for a moment then began to talk ”Young lady do not talk to me in that tone of voice, or…” She was interrupted by the doctors as they came to escort me to the seclusion room. As I lay on the plastic mattress in the dark sullen room secluded from all other people, I thought over the past week and realized that I had learned that not everyone who is supposed to be there for you and be the one you can go to without being judged are often the ones who judge you the most. I knew that overdosing was a permanent solution to a temporary problem but no one had the right to judge me until they knew my life. It‘s been almost nine months since the incident and my and my mom‘s relationship is stronger than ever we talk more and have both gotten better at controlling our emotions. I now talk to hundreds of kids a month on suicide awareness and its effect on a family.
