[LiteraryLark]

Usually in the few months prior to the date I was hospitalized, I have a lot of flashbacks. There was another member here who was playing a "do you recall" in the coffeehouse and I got triggered, so I thought I'd post this here and not ruin the game...

This is more of a place for me to talk about my experiences...I've found that overtime, I remember less and less.

There are some intense scenes in my story. Not sure what yet, but I talk about self-harm and possible rape and some things I've witnessed in the hospital that were traumatizing for me.

If I were to meet myself 8 years ago...

It'd be 2011, my senior year in high school. Within the first few weeks I told my grandma I was so confident with myself that I expect to get all A's, even though I was chronically an all D's and F student. I'd be still obsessed with someone who was not only a gay male but into hard drugs and I would follow him around the school hoping he'd fall in love with me. I was self-harming frequently and had thoughts of suicide, but at the same time I'd be extremely energetic and happy when I'm around my friends. I fought a lot with my parents and would break things. In January I went to the mall to buy $60-80 worth of cigars, texting my dad about rituals, and my dad thought I sounded so strange he asked me where I was. He found me in the wedding registry of Macy's picking out ribbons with an employee who looked very confused. He took me to the hospital with me happily following him along as he took me to the ER. The next parts I have trouble recalling. My mind snapped. I showed the nurse a magazine with an elderly woman on the cover and told her that "I want to be that lady who comes over on holidays with a box of homemade cookies". My mind slipped further and further into insanity. I told the nurse I was Hermione Granger and my dad was Professor Dumbledore and my mom was Professor McGonnagal and my neighbors were the Weasleys and that I went to a muggle school and I was the only wizard at this school. She asked me what I wanted and I told her I wanted "pumpkin juice". I went up to a security guard and asked if I should call him "Mr. Security Guard" or "Professor Security Guard". He rolled his eyes at me. I waved him goodbye as I was carted into an ambulance, and oddly enough I would meet him again after months later I fainted and was brought into the ER and I waved at him again as I was carted in, and he was shocked that I remembered him. Then my life was changed forever. I was laying in the ambulance and told the EMT that she looked very pretty, then I blacked out. I woke up as I was carted into the teen psych unit. Even though I was 18, my parents begged the nurses to take me to a teen facility. I remember the hallucinations of psychedelic bugs crawling on me and telling myself that it was all in my head, I remember sneaking out of my room and knowing I was hallucinating, "fingerpainted" on the mural that was there, then being sent back to my room. I sat by the light and told myself "The bugs aren't real, go away, the bugs aren't real, go away." I went to bed when the bugs went away. The next thing I remembered, I opened my eyes, and a male nurse was sitting on the edge of my bed in a chair. I watched him. I didn't say anything, but he laughed at me and grinned at me, and not in a polite way, in a hungry way. Like Kill Bill's "My name is Buck and I came here to F---" kind of grin. Then I blacked out. I woke up the next morning to needle pricking. The nurses were drawing blood or something (and by god NONE of them throughout my three week stay knew how to draw blood). I looked around and saw that male nurse again. I SCREAMED and SCREAMED and SCREAMED. "HE DRUGGED ME! HE DRUGGED ME! HE DRUGGED ME!" is all I could scream, only because I couldn't accuse him of rape because I didn't remember anything happen. The only logical I thought I had was in my dad's voice, "Are you sore? Are you sore? What do I remember?" I was not sore, and all I could remember was him being the only nurse, a male nurse, alone in an 18 year old females room, laughing and grinning at me when I was sleeping before and not saying anything then, then blacking out. I couldn't remember what happened then, and I can't remember now. Maybe nothing happened. Maybe I said something funny, or he made a joke I didn't get. I don't remember it then, and I don't remember it now, I don't even remember his face anymore, just that he had blonde hair. I used to be able to remember most of my stay, now I only remember fragments. My parents told me when they came to visit at dinner time, I'd take my food, mash it all together, sprinkle benefiber all over it, and eat it all at once all mashed together. My parents told me I'd collect tons of pictures of dogs and would give them piles and piles of photos and magazines for no reason which they ended up giving back to the psych unit. I remember receiving the card from the yearbook crew. I couldn't read, but I understood what it was and I started bawling. My parents told me I'd call everyday begging them to take me home. I only remember the one time calling them in desperation after a little boy with a crippling disease fell out of his wheelchair and he began screaming that he wanted to die, I was so scared so I called my parents and told them I had to come home now. I remember thinking I controlled what food we had, because we'd have slips of paper "reviewing" the food and requests we wanted, and I'd always right things down like "tacos and pie", "Chinese and pie", "Mexican and pie" and a lot of the time they'd get me that food for everybody and they always gave me pie and told me they would get the leftover pie at the geriatric care ward and bring it for me. I remember on my last night, a nurse brought a guitar and played and I thought to myself, "Oh darn, if I knew he'd be playing a guitar I wouldn't have asked to go home....I kinda like it here" and there were times after the hospitalization when I'd feel like giving up and committing myself to the hospital or some group home because I didn't feel like I could care for myself anymore. I remember the monk that prayed with us. I remember the therapy dogs. I remember a vivid moment when I came into my room (which now that I think about it, wasn't my room at all), and saw piles of clothes stacked on the shelves and I was confused. At one point shortly after I heard an Eminem song played on the radio in the unit and thought my mom played this song for me and put the clothes in "my room" to make me feel like home, so I went to an instructor teaching drama or something to a group of teens and thanked them for telling my mom to make me feel like home and started crying, and then the instructor seemed to understand with a nod and had the others surround me in an "open hug" where I was hugged without contact and I was very scared at first but understood the gesture and just stood there nervously shivering while they hugged me. I remember having to go to the bathroom at dinner and went to one bathroom and was stopped because that bathroom was exclusively for the girls with the eating disorders. I remember the "Order of the Pheonix", and as I explained to my dad he later thought I was imagining things until he saw what I saw and agreed. There was a balcony by the dining area where there was a garden and a basketball hoop and over the balcony you'd look down and see a creepy, dirty alley with very expensive, nice-looking cars and I thought that was so odd that nice cars would be parked in a creepy alley.

My laptop battery is running low and I'm not sure I'll make it to the charger in time, but those were some of my experiences on January 9th, 2011.

[LiteraryLark]

My favorite thing to eat and drink at the ward was apple pie and silk soy milk. I’ve never had any non-dairy milk before and to this day I prefer silk soy milk over regular milk. I gained about 20-30 pounds in my three week stay. I was so underweight when i arrived that the nurses asked if I had an eating disorder. I still kick myself for not watching my weight. In about three years of HEAVY meds I gained almost 100 pounds.

I remember my parents and I sitting at a “what the hell is bipolar” meeting and they stupidly ask if I need a disability placard for driving. They also asked if my zombification is a permanent state of being. I was seriously zombified for about a year and a half. I couldn’t control my facial features, my mouth was always hanging open and I drooled a lot. My mom would have to wipe my face a lot when we went out to eat.

On the ride home from the hospital, I kept telling my dad how pretty the red stop signs were.

My dad always tells the story of the time we went out to a place where you pick your own toppings on a hamburger and he told me I stared at the toppings like it was mindblowing.

Choosing if I wanted fries or a salad was an overwhelming ordeal

[LiteraryLark]

I remember my grandparents visiting. My brother I think only came once. He took one look at me and began sobbing. I remember feeling numb to this and couldn’t understand why he was crying. The last time I saw my brother recently he told me he was angry with me at the time because he couldn’t understand what was wrong with me and he wanted me to come home and get better.

[LiteraryLark]

This little boy in the wheelchair I talked about, he's the only "teen" I remember most vividly out of everyone else, although now I can't remember what he looked like. I remember he was about 10-11 ish and we were sitting in some meeting and he told us that he has a crippling terminal disease that not only keeps him wheelchair-bound, but the doctors said he wouldn't make it to 17. He'd be about 17 today. :_(

Please don't let these memories eat away at you, though I completely understand the need to get them out. Some memories need to be let out, and perhaps then gathered and locked up in a steel box and permanently stored in the archives to collect dust.

I have memories not that different than yours. I also have periods I can't remember at all (bipolar blackouts). I've asked my husband to tell me what happened during periods that I don't remember, but he has always refused to. I wonder if that's a bad thing or a good thing.

[Wild Coyote]

I am super glad you've felt like you can share here!

I am sorry for all you have been through!

I was going to suggest an action like BirdDancer has mentioned.
I am suggesting you print out your posts of your traumatic memories and burn them; yet, maybe do so only after you are done processing them. This is something I do now and then. I have a ritual for doing this; it's like a mini-funeral for the memories as I "lay then to rest."

You are a very creative person. I am sure you can think up a way to do something similar if you'd find it helpful.

I am hopeful for your healing.

Thanks so much for sharing!


WC

[Moose72]

I dont know that ive had any "bipolar blackouts". But waking up in a new place would be unsettling for sure.