Sitting in my wheelchair on the Intensive Care Patient Unit at the DePaul Psychiatric facility, I wept loudly and openly at the sight before me.

“How am I back here?!”

It wasn’t a question.

I lost all sense of whatever decorum and dignity I had left, as I was under the watchful eye of no one, save a video-only closed circuit camera. Besides, I’d only been on the ward for ten minutes. It wasn’t like I’d get out any later if my first day was awful and full of semi-problematic behavior. A fancy way of saying I had nothing to lose. So yes, I wept openly and loudly, slumped and ugly in a wheelchair, because that was what was required for my soul’s digestion of seeing an empty bench, table, and television, next to a window, which was letting in a slant of sun that rested on the tabletop.

I remembered everything about them.

“HOW am I back here!” I wailed, with a building sense of bitterness and resentment at myself and my illness. In such a state, my illness was completely my own fault and personal failing. My brain was filled with lies, and I wasn’t coping well.

That table. The TV it faced. The ray of sun.

Crucifixion and resurrection.

I’d hung myself in this hospital in 2006, at age 19, when I was only 1 month into my illness “presenting”. My neck didn’t break, so I was strangled instead, no air in or out. I was found by a nurse who cut me down just as I was finally slipping away into whiteness. When I landed on the floor with a heartbreaking thump and involuntarily took a breath, I remember not understanding the sounds I made. I sounded like a wolf.

That bench, the one making me cry, was where I sat under 1-to-1 observation for (I’m not even sure how many) days after that first suicide attempt. The staff members who watched me changed every four hours, and we didn’t speak much. I had nothing to say.

I was dead, sitting upright on a bench in front of a table and a television.

That bench was also where I was redeemed; where I realized that I was capable of recovery. After however many days of being on an antipsychotic and two mood stabilizers (prior to that I’d been unmedicated), I started feeling things again and reconnecting to my environment. I was aware of where I was and could process my five senses again.

One morning, at breakfast, a patch of sunlight on my left forearm started to feel warm. I remember it with perfect clarity: I hadn’t felt warmth for six months. Warmth was not something that registered in my brain until that moment.

I realized I was coming back. My suicidality and psychosis weren’t permanent. There was life after diagnosis. Episodes aren’t forever. I kept my forearm exactly where it was to take in as much heat as I could, and began to cry. Fat tears ran down my cheeks and my whole body shook silently. It was relief. It was rebirth. It was forgiveness. It was redemption. My life was safe.

I told the nurse who brought my medication that morning that I thought I was going to get better.

She said, “Of course you are, baby. I could see it in your eyes.”

Flash forward two years to 2008, and I was in DePaul again after a massive failed overdose. I’d had a bad reaction to lithium when the doctor first put me on it, but couldn’t identify (being only 2 years into my illness) what was happening to me. It was a slow, three-month-long descent into suicidality. The worse I got, the more lithium the doctor prescribed. By month three, I was researching and planning. I was on a trip with my family (an activity I now try to avoid) the night I made the decision. I remember looking up the lethal dose of lithium and doing the math on how much I had. Not enough right now. I’ll have to wait until I refill the script. Only 12 days. Then I’m out forever.

It wasn’t a panicked decision. My suffering was a slow burn. My planning process was meticulous.

The night before I got my refill, I stopped believing that love existed. No one loved me and I loved no one. Love had been my very last reason for considering staying. Knowing that there was no love felt like the universe was giving me permission, telling me yes, of course this is exactly what you should do. You can see the truth that the others can’t.

They’ll all get over it in a year or so anyway.

I failed in an important detail. I won’t say what, because I don’t want to help teach anyone to effectively overdose. I took twice the fatal dose and fell asleep. A few hours later, I vomited up my dose. I took a second more-than-lethal-sized dose and fell back into dark sleep. Woke up vomiting. I took the last of what was in the bottle, only half a lethal dose, and added a bottle of Tylenol. Hopefully, I figured, the cumulative effect of what I’ve already digested would allow me my escape. Back to sleep again. Woke up. Threw up. I went back to sleep.

Eight hours later, I woke up. I was furious. I had failed. I was an atheist at the time, but in my drugged up haze I was firmly psychotic. I had digested massive amounts of lithium before vomiting each time. I was heavily “medicated”.

And all I could think was “God said no.”

God said no. God said no. God said no.

Fuck you, God.

I went into the living room, where I told my mom, calmly, that God had said no. I thought she would understand, somehow. And she wouldn’t worry. I was alive, plus love didn’t exist. She was very confused and concerned at my behavior, and when I admitted to my failure, she took me directly to the emergency room.

The doctor who first saw me asked me how much lithium I’d taken. I told him (the lethal dose times 4.5) and he said “You shouldn’t do that, you could have died.”

How fucking ignorant can you be.

In the ER, they said it was too late to pump my stomach, so they gave me something intravenous and had me drink several big styrofoam cups of thick charcoal powder mixed with water. It was (I probably don’t have to tell you) very disturbing: like drinking dirt mixed with kitty litter. I gagged my way through them. It seemed every time I finished one, another was swiftly presented to me. I felt like they were punishing me for wasting their time. They did all seem pretty pissed. Maybe they were.

I gave zero fucks. God said no.

They kept me overnight in a room upstairs, and in the morning two police officers came into my room and said they were going to “escort” me next door to the psych hospital, DePaul. They wanted to put handcuffs on me. My father begged them not to, and he (and our collective white privilege, I now recognize) won out with the cops. I put my shoes on with the laces removed, but had to leave still in my hospital gown, and the five of us walked down an endlessly long hallway, my father firmly holding my shaking hand. My mother followed behind us carrying my belongings.

My parents had to say goodbye to me at the cop car. We hugged.

I didn’t feel anything. There was no love. It meant zilch.

Empty.

I was waiting, in my mind, to try again. This time, I’d climb the fire escape of the Alico building and dive headfirst. I couldn’t possibly fuck that up. I just had to wait and pretend to be okay until they let me out again. I was waiting to finally get to Forever. I could wait another week. Forever would be forever. I’d just hurt like hell in the meantime.

I was put on the intensive care unit when I arrived, but I answered all their questions “correctly” and completely dishonestly, acting pleasant and normal. In a few hours, I was deemed to not be a danger to myself or others and was transferred to the regular “adult unit”. I was still in my hospital gown. It didn’t matter. I was nothing. I didn’t speak to anyone. They were all nothing, too.

And now, here I am in 2020, slumped in the wheelchair while my dizzy-making drugs wear off, and sobbing at seeing a bench and table after 16 years. How am I back here? How have I failed so badly that I’m back here? I’m supposed to be a role model. A helper. A small but positive force in the universe. Someone who helps people. Someone with lived experience who has vitally important things to share with others. Someone whose full life for 16 years has been learning, coping, living, falling, struggling, suffering, persisting, and ultimately, saving myself from myself without ceasing. I don’t want others to go through everything I have, so I give as much of what I’ve learned to my readers in the hope that they can skip over some of the really bad parts. I tell my stories so they know they’re not alone.

And still, I’m back here.

True, I wasn’t there for suicide. But still, I felt I’d failed at something. And I knew that to treat a manic episode, they would keep me more than 3 days (they kept me a week). I felt I’d failed at my only profession in life; staying healthy. I’d failed as a role model. I was not “the woman who got better” whom I so desperately long to be. I was still sick, after all these years, and was now realizing that this could happen again and again throughout my life. My illness might come roaring out from time to time to sabotage me, and this might not be the last time I see this bench and table and weep.

Those stories, containing everything I felt in my past stays there, were clear as the summer sun during my most recent stay in DePaul. I had to sit with the vibrant memories of those stories for my week-long hospitalization for a manic episode. Haunted by my past, I was once again haunting these hallways. That is the root of the trauma I now have to recover from. It wasn’t just the injustice of the staff not offering us care. It wasn’t just the danger of Time Lady. It wasn’t David singing “Medicaid comes to mediquaid” over and over as he paced. It wasn’t just the near-violent episode that my new, 20-year-old friend James had that pierced my heart and sent me into my own crying fit, knowing how deeply and long he would suffer. It wasn’t just my own mania and episodes. It wasn’t just the pure hopelessness that inhabited this ward.

It was all those things. But all those things reeked of memories from the darkest days in my life. Those memories rested in my hospital bed, inhabited the trays of food I ate and were echoed by all the archetypes of people with severe mental illness that seem to always populate this ward. Even the smell of the blankets opened old wounds I’d worked for years to close.

Although it may seem trivial, my week in DePaul was traumatic, and it’s going to take time to close those wounds again. When I get back from a vacation that lasts longer than two days, it takes me two full weeks to regain my mental balance. This was not a vacation, and it was not two days long. I need space. I need time to stare at the wall. There is a difference between isolating to cope with depression and isolating to conserve psychological energy. I’m doing the latter. And it is making me happier. I am improving. I’m getting past my anger and fear, bit by bit, and although I know it will come back on occasion, I’m doing the bulk of the work right now. The boundaries I’ve put up have become a little more permeable, and I do see people sometimes. I’m using my coping skills daily, but I don’t need to use them every second of the day like I did when I first got home.

My therapist says this is the kind of trauma that can be treated by experiencing awe as often as you can. Today it rained and then poured (but no old men snored), with winds violently rocking the trees outside my window in a way that made me stop and stare. And it always works. We’ve known for forever that awe is a good feeling. It has just now been proven scientifically to help the brain overcome trauma (mental health is physical health: your brain controls your body, your body can heal your brain).

Sometimes I use water to find awe: imagining where it has been in its life, going back and back and back through time, and how it got to my faucet and will run down my drain to continue its cycle of life. Sometimes I use Youtube videos about consciousness, the universe, multi-verse, or infinity. I highly recommend the Kurzgesagt channel’s videos for mind-blowing topics like these. Sometimes I hold the worked-flint tool I found, made by a Native American far in the past. I turn it over and over in my hand, imagining its creation and many uses. I ponder the person who put so much work into creating it. Where they lived. Who they loved. What they liked to eat. What made them happy. What made them cry.

Using awe, deep breathing, mindfulness, proper eating (low blood sugar causes episodes, among other mental/physical issues), consciously conserving my spoons (read spoon theory here), limiting stimulation, and getting good sleep, and using my support system, I’m starting to feel better. For my spots of grief and anger I cry or yell and then reach out to someone in my support system. Family and friends have been an invaluable resource. My doctor and I are in close contact (if you ever have the option to use MyChart, it can revolutionize your care. You can message your doctor directly and get a response from them within two days. You can also see them over Zoom through MyChart. Do not pass up this opportunity if it is handed to you). My therapist and I are continuing our work together weekly, and I’m being unabashedly candid on social media and Patreon about my struggles, because people keep reaching out to say it helps them. I’m maintaining the personal boundaries on my time that I need to keep in order to keep all my progress going. I can’t give out spoons willy-nilly right now. They’re a much more limited resource than I’m used to, and I can’t do everything in a day that I normally would. Today, for example, I have told my friends that they won’t hear from me much, and they respect that. I’m so grateful that they do.

I’m coming to terms with the idea that I may need to go there again, be escorted to the hospital against my will, see that bench and table and weep, and there should be no shame in that. I’ve still learned what I’ve learned. I’ve still helped people. I’m still fighting, and my illness still has not taken me out.

Carl Sagan once said something completely unrelated to my situation, but the phrase has been ringing in my mind this week as if he said it to me, personally. In my mind, it’s about me, my illness, and my future. He said:

“A still more glorious dawn awaits:

Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise.

A morning filled with 400 billion suns;

The rising of the Milky Way”

—

Nothing can stop the sunrise. Nothing can halt those 400 billion suns from hurtling through space, dragging their unimaginable number of planets behind them at the pace of the expansion of the universe. Nothing can reverse the arrow of time.

Time moves us forward from moment to moment, never backward. No matter how many times I see that bench, it is never actually being “back here”. It is simply “here again”. Again is forward. I am moving ever forward.

My illness can never actually drag me backward. It doesn’t have the power, nor the right. I will continue to learn and grow no matter what I do. I will keep learning as surely as the sun will rise, and one of many things I’ve learned from this hospitalization is that seeing that table and bench is not a mark of failure. It is only a passing of time. It is a tic mark in my growth and the expansion of my Self and story. It is the present, and may be the future. But a truth I hold onto in every episode is that no matter how far away I go, I always come back. And I believe that as surely as I believe in the coming dawn.

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I’d only been on the Intensive Care Patients’ ward for five minutes before I accidentally made an enemy of a hostile schizophrenic woman who presented the possibility of danger.

I wasn’t wrong.

The primary purpose of the Intensive Care Patients’ ward is to prevent harm to self or others. If you’re dangerous, ICP is your destination. Everyone you meet there is having serious problems. No generic depression/anxiety/suicidal thoughts. That’s for the Adult Ward, where people are nurtured and have therapy groups, exercise time, art therapy, walks outside, and even access to vending machines. ICP is for danger. Psychosis: hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia. Intellectual disabilities with violent tendencies. Nasty drug detox. Violence. Manic episodes. Unmanageable or problematic symptoms that were scary enough for someone who loves you to give up trying to help you themselves.

At first, I thought the woman was cogent and I listened patiently and attentively to her clumsily try to explain how the ward worked She loosely did so in between fits of telling me about how her mother was murdered and she wasn’t allowed to testify at the trial, but that if she did testify, she would be in witness protection but maybe the judge had an agenda already and if anyone knew she was here, she’d be hunted down by her mother’s killer…

I listened. I was lost and helpless in a foreign land, and I didn’t have a clue how this place functioned. I was desperate to know how to get the things I needed, like my glasses and a cup of water. No one had explained the rules to me and none of the staff looked my way when I waited politely at the staff window. It would take me a few hours to realize that we were all considered so far gone that no one should bother caring for us outside of providing strong medication and preventing us from harming ourselves. And even in that regard, they failed. I stopped a fellow patient/friend from banging his head against our single Plexiglass window much more often than the staff.

This rambling woman was friendly and called me “sweetie”, right up until after she asked me to read the clock and tell her what time it was. Boy, did I fail that test! I couldn’t make it out clearly without my glasses, and whether I was correct or not, I’ll never know. Either way, my answer made her furious and distrustful, because it told her I was one of “them” who were pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes by setting all the clocks wrong for some evil reason. She told me never to talk to her or even look at her ever again.

And lucky me; her bedroom was next door to mine.

I could hear her talking outside my bedroom every time I awkwardly wheeled my oversized, semi-broken wheelchair from the Providence ER into my ICP room and closed the door. She would talk to whoever passed by (and possibly sometimes no one) about how I was “one of the evil ones” and that I was not to be trusted. That I was only pretending to be sweet, that it was all an act. That I didn’t need the wheelchair or my glasses. I was pretending. I was one of “them.” I was “in on the plan” and I was dangerous. I could hear every word through the door, and my hands continually shook from a conflict that I wasn’t even participating in.

I could only handle it for about fifteen minutes. I somehow caught the eye of my shift nurse, which was lucky. In ICP, we were assigned a different nurse at each shift, and I rarely knew who mine was. If you asked someone for something, they often tell you to ask your nurse. Depending what you ask for, sometimes the nurse would say to ask the doctor. The doctor once said ask your caseworker. Your caseworker says ask the technician. The tech says ask your nurse. But by then you have a different nurse whose name you don’t know. The buck was constantly passed. I had two bad scrapes on my thigh from a fall into lawn equipment, about half a centimeter thick and three inches long, that, no matter how many people I asked, never did get disinfected or bandaged. I tried my best. I treated it myself when I got home. By then, it was red, swollen, and tender.

I told my nurse about having made an accidental enemy and not being able to handle conflict, showing him that my hands were already shaking. He said he’d move me to a bedroom down the hall and across the ward so that I didn’t have to ever see her again. I wasn’t trying to, but that was how I Karened my way into getting a better room with no roommate. I’d spoken to the manager. I was able to see the humor in that moment.

On our Lost Cause Ward, the nurses stayed busy on computers and tried their best not to make eye contact so that we wouldn’t ask for anything. We would ask anyway, just kind of rudely shouting our needs through the staff-room window to request a 90s-era cordless phone or another cup of decaf coffee. I’m afraid that the staff actually believed they were doing a good job, forever on their computers and phones or shooting the shit with each other. I assume their work was crucial sometimes, but I’m glad I never found out what it was that they spent all day doing; I don’t want to know what I was less important than.

We were allowed one luxury: one cup of decaf coffee per hour, which they faithfully provided. It was the main act of care they provided, and the main marking of the passage of time. Time was cups of coffee in between meals. That’s how I knew what time it was. Eating and drinking. Essential functions. They at least made sure we did that. Sleeping is essential, too, but all of us were so heavily medicated that sleep happened several times of day and posed no concern. No one stayed awake, not even my manic self.

In between cups of coffee and diabetic-menu meals, I took my naps. They turned my meds schedule upside down, so I was taking an extremely sedative antipsychotic called Zyprexa (my favorite ever, but read this article before thinking about asking your doctor for it) at 7 in the morning, with breakfast. I’d get woken up between 5AM and 6AM to have my vitals and blood sugar taken. In normal life, if I have to get up that early, I’m going to have bad symptoms that day. That happened every day. So I’d get up at 5 and stay up to eat breakfast at 7 and then go back to sleep until lunch. No therapy. No activities. Sleep, eat, sleep, eat, talk to my new friends, eat, talk to friends more, make obligatory phone calls with the ancient cordless phones to comfort my parents and outside friends, read, sleep. No cell phones were allowed for patients in the hospital on either ward. They tell you to write down phone numbers on your hand or memorize them before you’re admitted. You’re not allowed to bring anything onto the ward with you when you’re admitted. Family can send you items like clothes and books once you’re in.

My first night there, after I’d been moved across the ward, everyone could hear the Time Lady (I had to make up a name to call her because she refused to tell me what hers was) on the other side of the ward, screaming and yelling obscenities, making loud banging noises, clearly having a violent psychotic episode. It was upsettingly loud and sounded out of control. There were four of us sitting at a table in our common area at that moment, and every one of us was silent, holding stock still like spooked deer. The long, antiseptic hallway between the two sides of Intensive Care echoed and amplified her screaming. We heard yelling, some banging sounds, and the kinds of words that typically accompany hateful violence. A nurse came out to tell us that we were safe, that Security was on the way and not to worry. The four of us in the common area all sat silent with our heads bowed.  We listened in unison until all the noise was gone, and when it was quiet again, none of us moved from our frozen poses. No one spoke. We were afraid of that woman. And security. That was a pall that hung over us: a fear that we may be next if we got too upset. That sounds extreme, but we were all in extreme places, mentally and physically.

The staff in ICP were all polite and kind, but I think the patients there were all just considered too broken to be helped. None of us were human enough to register as people in their neurotypical, jaded eyes, and you could hear it in their voices. We were addressed like developmentally disabled children, and most of the things we said were dismissed out of hand. They didn’t see us as adults with the potential to get better. It has made me cry many times, thinking about all the “lost causes” that pass through that ward, full of decaf coffee, empty of hope, desperate to get better and aching for relief that, ultimately, probably wouldn’t come without the right drug or possibly a gunshot to the head. In my time there, I was the only person who got better enough to be transferred to the Adult Ward. Everyone else was left to deteriorate in an environment that provided no opportunities for healing.

It’s likely I’ll never meet those people again. I’ll never find out how they did after they got out.

I was friends with all my fellow patients (about 6 people) during the four days in ICP and then friends with ten more people in my three days in the Adult Ward. In the Adult Ward, we were given wonderful care, mostly by the same exact staff that dismissed our words in Intensive Care. People on the Adult Ward are the ones who get better. But the Adult Ward is another article.

James was the smartest. He was only 20, and that broke my damn heart. I was hospitalized for the first time when I was 19, and I know how much pain and bullshit he’s going to have to live through in order to get to a place that’s past being stuck in constant pain. Watching his face when I met him, his eyes staring down at his dinner tray, I have never seen a human being in that much pain. I remember my best friend’s mother’s face the day of her daughter’s death, and James’s pain surpassed it. I told him I’d never seen someone in so much pain before. He said “No… normal pain.” Someday he’ll recognize how much stronger he is than most people, but measuring against my own experience, it may take him 16 years (yes, I’m now 16 bipolar-years-old). Until then, he’ll wonder why he’s so much weaker than everyone else. I saw James in an episode one night and it triggered me, thinking about my whole journey with the pain of mental illness and how he had that whole journey of pain ahead of him. He was pacing and crying and ranting, and had four staff members surrounding him, making sure he was safe and ready to restrain him if necessary. I came and sat next to them so I could hear what he was saying. I don’t remember any of it, but I was crying and it hurt my heart so much that I got up and tried to hug him. Two staff members gently grabbed me and moved me into a different room. One nurse stayed with me while I cried. I’ll call her Lynn. Real names for patients, fake names for staff. She talked to me and said a bunch of uneducated and largely unhelpful things to calm me down while I was crying, and she listened to me when I spoke and tried her best to respond with her very little knowledge of mental illness. I was really grateful. Her words weren’t helpful at all, but the compassion behind them did help me. And of course it did. Sometimes all I need is for someone to offer help. I don’t actually need specific help. I just need the gesture that someone wants to help. Lynn was the one staff member on ICP who did offer me emotional support. She had a big heart and wasn’t blinded by disillusionment. She also later sought me out on the Adult Ward to check in. She said she was proud of me. It was infantilizing, but I still appreciated it.

Later, James and I were awkward with one another, but we reconnected at breakfast the next morning.

Edmond was young, too. Only 23. He wore a doo-rag on his hair and a sheet on his back and around his shoulders, with a knot tied across his chest. It looked like a superhero’s cape. That was endearing to me from the moment I met him. Unfortunately, I think he was just cold from some kind of metabolic disorder that was not being addressed. He was very, very thin and had a history of meth abuse and diabetes. At meals, he would eat what was on his tray and then ask people if they were going to finish things, and sneak extra food while the staff wasn’t looking. Sneaking or trading food was not allowed. He had very high blood sugar and got insulin shots sometimes, but he was never full. He would finish his dinner and then parts of other people’s meals, until we all caught wise and realized letting him have extra food was causing him to need insulin. He’d take his last bite of dinner and say “Three hours til snack.” We’d finish snack and he’d say “Eleven hours til breakfast”. He complained of being hungry constantly, and would get angry and bang his head against the window when he got frustrated about being hungry and not having access to food. I don’t really know any specifics on why he was there. He had a little bit of intellectual disability and of course, the expression of self-harm, but he said he’d never gotten a mental illness diagnosis.

Frank was older then I by about 10 years. He normally lived in a nursing home, and was severely intellectually disabled. His speech was slow and close to monotone. He was frequently confused and would ask the same question over and over again until he understood the answer. He was missing several teeth. He wore the same outfit every day, solid red from head to toe. He had admitted himself to voluntarily and was very confused by the process of releasing himself. He wasn’t offered much help with that, probably because the staff thought he should stay. Frank told me that he had admitted himself because he was having strong suicidal and homicidal thoughts. He wanted to kill people in his nursing home. But I was never afraid of him; he was just a very confused person in a lot of pain who had reached out for help, probably for the umpteenth time in his life, and was receiving none.

By now, I’m sure you can see the pattern of despair and love and pain and helplessness that I felt while I was in ICP.

Tiffany was in her 50s and had kids and grandkids, but she looked my age or younger (I’m 33 and she didn’t have any grey hair). She presented very much like a transgender man to me, and maybe she would have identified that way if that had become an open part of our culture when she was still a kid. She was easy to talk to and pretty educated. I don’t know why she was there. Her behavior seemed absolutely normal and stable. She consistently hit on a shy guy named Johnny, who in turn consistently hit on me. He was always telling me to smile. He seemed kind and sad and not too bright, so I didn’t chastise him for it. He didn’t deserve to be chastised. He was very nice. And I’ve never met his demons.

Carlos stayed mostly in his room, and he was the first of us to get out. We all got misty eyed saying goodbye to him, and seeing him walk through that door into freedom made a powerful feeling in my chest, like a column of calm stone. I didn’t even really know him. But his success was symbolic of the potential each of us had.

Last was David. He could do simple tasks when prompted, like sitting down to eat a meal (albeit with his hands) or taking his meds. He talked and sang to himself in a soothing, rhythmic way as he walked around the ward all day. Sometimes you could make out the words he was singing. He had a nice voice.  I remember “Medicaid comes to mediquaid” and “seven nine four four nine seven” His toenails were painfully overgrown, and he wore hospital gowns with cotton shorts on underneath, holding up the waistband with one hand while he paced. He was never a threat or a nuisance. He was David, doing the things that David does, and he wasn’t unhappy. He was just extremely different from average, and his world was separate from mine. I’m sure he lived In Care somewhere. At least I hope he did. And who knows, maybe they’ll find good meds for him. But there are worse ways to spend a life than walking and singing all day.

He, like all of us, is a valid and inherently worthy human being. I hate that ICP did so little for the most vulnerable patients in that hospital, and it seems especially unfair that the less-sick people get more complete treatment, when we didn’t get any at all. We got tables bolted to the floor and plastic chairs with rounded edges that were too heavy to throw or kick over. We got fluorescent lighting and white walls. Decaf coffee. 4 minutes with the doctor each morning. Meals. Meds.

But don’t worry, folks. The trajectory of this story is about to improve. In my next article, I’ll talk about the redemption I got in the Adult unit, where I was treated like – guess what – an adult. Kind of.

My stay in the hospital was very recent and intense and I want to clearly communicate all of it. I really want everyone to have the insight my experience may provide, and I’m currently seeking to be understood by my friends and family. But I’m not quite well yet, and writing about all this is exhausting. So I’m going to break up my 7 days in DePaul into a few different articles so that I don’t wear myself down by reliving it all at once. I hope you’ll stay tuned.

Please consider signing up on Patreon ($3 a month, easy sign-up, and it all goes to me) or consider donating a few dollars to my “tip jar” at Paypal.me/goldfishpainter. Times are tough right now, and my third attempt at getting my food stamps back has failed. I’ll just have to try again, but in the meantime, my parents are doing their best to pay for my groceries, and they have limited means right now themselves. I don’t want to beg, but if you’ve got two or three dollars you can spare, it would make a big difference to me. Small things add up.

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