I was left alone in my room for about half an hour to get “acclimated”. That made it sound like I was a fish just purchased from the pet store and left to sit in its plastic bag in the tank to adjust to the water temperature. A fitting metaphor I suppose considering the tank like class walls of the nurses station. Eventually one of the nurses came in to tell me that group was in session and it would be “wonderful if I would come out and meet everyone”
I didn’t want to move. I just wanted to stay on the hard uncomfortable bed and curl in on myself. Curl up so small that maybe I could just disappear. The nurse gave me a few more minutes before coming back and insisting that it would do me good to join group. She looked at me pointedly until at last I caved and climbed out of bed and followed her meekly to the sitting room. The room had several battered old couches and chairs, which held about fifteen patients in total. As well as about three nurses including the male nurse who had let me keep my bear. A fairly even mix of men and women the group ranged in age from about fourteen to eighty and seemed to hold all walks of life. The youngest was a sullen girl curled up in a baggy sweatshirt, which dwarfed her frail frame. When I walked in the doctor leading the group was asking her why she hadn’t eaten any dinner tonight. I gave her a look that I hoped she saw the empathy in. In remission from anorexia myself I recognized the angry look she gave the doctor in response.
The nurse seated me in a folding chair between two patients slightly older than myself, perhaps in their mid twenties. The girl on my right was attractive with a spiky black pixy cut and purple-rimmed glasses and rainbow painted fingernails. I like her immediately. On my left was a guy with his ginger hair shaved close in a buzz cut. He was wearing a t-shirt with a monster truck on it. He gave me a friendly grin and said “sweet hair” in the most stereotypical stoner voice ever. Directly across from me were two other boys about my age. One with heavy lidded eyes and shaggy hair and the other who had his arm bandaged and looked tense.
“Everybody this is Christa” the nurse introduced me to the group.
“Hi Christa” came the lazy reply from several corners of the room. Most of the inmates just stared blankly.
“Tell us about yourself Christa,” the doctor asked in a cheery voice as fake as her platinum hair.
“What about me?” I asked blankly. Did they want to know why I was here? The details of how I had tried to off myself? What that the sort of thing you talked about at group therapy sessions?
“Well I see you have interesting hair, why don’t you tell us about that?”
“Oh this?” I said in mock surprise, “Oh I was just born with it this color. Natural pink head. We’re rare.” The earned me a snicker from my neighbors on both sides as well as a sly grin from the boy with the bandaged arm.
“Ha ha,” the doctor laughed weakly. “You are a student right Christa?”
“Yes I go to Columbia College in Chicago” I replied.
“That’s an art school right? Tom goes to The Art Institute of Chicago don’t you Tom?” she nodded at the boy across from me who mumbled “yeah”, while uneasily fiddling with a loose end of his bandage.
“Tom’s a painter. What do you go to school for Christa?”
“I’m a fiction writing major”
“You like books?”
“Yes” I said flatly.
“What are some of your favorite books”?
“Umm I really like Victorian era literature.”
“Do you like history?”
“Yes” I wondered how any of this was supposed to be helping me feel not suicidal. If anything this game of 20 questions made me want to slit my wrists. Ohh bad taste thinking that, I reprimanded myself when I met eyes with the boy across from me.
“What are you interested in about history?”
“Well I was just reading a book about Bethlehem Hospital in London. You know, Bedlam Lunatic Asylum. But the nurses took it away from me. They said it wasn’t “appropriate reading”. Although actually to me it seemed totally appropriate in a way. “
That did it. The girl next to me snorted back laughter. Tom cracked a more open grin. And even the male nurse who had been kind to me coughed back a chuckle. The doctor fixed me with a calculating look and jotted something down in the notebook she held in her lap.
“You have bipolar disorder, right Christa?”
“Yes.” I answered.
“And you are here because you made a suicide attempt isn’t that right?”
I nodded.
“Will you tell us about that?”
Ahh now she was getting to it.
“I took an overdose of Aspirin.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I think we already established that I was making a suicide attempt” is what I thought. But what I said was.
“I was sick of it”
“Sick of what Christa?”
“All of it”
All of it.
sounds familiar...
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