I’m trying to avoid making all my blog entries be variants of “It’s going well” or “It’s going badly.” So instead, I’m going to attach a copy of the complaint form that I just mailed in to DMH.
So. Here is what happened. First, it was September 11, so every millennial in the country was probably not having a great day. A co-worker seemed off and I was worried that she was having mental health problems. It was probably projection. Either way, I was transported back to when I was presenting the way she was, specifically this one time at a fast food job when I was severely suicidal. I’m pretty sure it was a flashback because I couldn’t really differentiate between then and now. But, I overreacted to the co-worker being off and then I really hated myself for it afterward. This led my face to start crying, and I couldn’t make it stop. Which, legally, there are supposed to be two teachers for seven babies. The way this usually pans out is that it’s just me with seven babies. So I’m there trying to comfort seven screaming babies who are an average of one year old, and all definitely knew that their caretaker was completely nonfunctional, which was why they were crying. And I looked at these babies and I thought, “Who am I to be taking care of these kids? They deserve a caretaker who has their PTSD under control.” And I felt like I was being irresponsible because I couldn’t take care of these poor kids, and I hated myself for overreacting to the situation with the co-worker, and I really hated myself for having overreacted to other situations in the past. In fact, there was an overreaction episode in January where whenever I think about it, I still pretty much immediately want to kill myself. So I felt humiliated at work and I felt like I couldn’t possibly keep my job because it was a disservice to everyone. When I got coverage for my room, I left and hid behind the Xerox machine hoping my face would eventually stop crying. Which it did not, so after about an hour my boss let me pull the plug and just go home.
At that point, I assumed my job was over. Which, my job had been my primary source of social supports. I have some minimal support from my siblings, as in they occasionally click the “like” button on the relentless Facebook Messenger messages I send them. Lately, my brother has been interacting with me like I’m an actual human being and not a completely stupid waste of taxpayer dollars, which I attribute to my being employed now. If I had to go back on SSDI, I would lose my brother (which, honestly, I probably should lose my brother, but I wasn’t thinking that way at the time). I feel like pretty much any American who voted for Trump also feels that if I can’t keep a job and I have to accept social security, AKA welfare, I should commit suicide and stop being a burden on the system, because I’m not doing anything positive for society with my existence.
So, having potentially lost both my job and my stupid siblings, I fled to the only place on earth where I felt like I had a support network, which was the hospital where I resided for 14 and months and where I started this blog. I went in and told them that I was suicidal. Which, sure, probably would be cause for alarm in a perfect world, but I’ve probably walked into emergency rooms ten times in my life and told them that I had plan intent and means and they “felt comfortable sending me home” and I immediately did something life-threatening. So I had no way of knowing that this time I would be sectioned. The person who does the psych screeners came and talked to me, and asked if I felt that inpatient was necessary. I said that I honestly didn’t know, so she said we’d table it and revisit in the morning. In the morning, I felt better and was hoping they’d let me go in time to get to work. Unfortunately, I was informed that I’d been sectioned and was on a bed search and would not get to have any input at all as to where I went (usually they at least let me ask to not go to the hospital where this one nurse works who is evil as sin). Then I got sent to this random hospital on the other side of the world. I was loaded into an ambulance, where the EMT messily blew his nose and then immediately asked to take my blood pressure without using hand sanitizer or anything. I spent 45 minutes in the back of an ambulance with this dude, who had the sloppiest upper respiratory infection in the universe and kept blowing what sounded like massive amounts of snot out of his nose. Then I got to the facility referenced above. And it went downhill from there. By Tuesday night, I had the bridge picked out. It has virtually no guardrail and is easy walking distance from my home. It’s like they put it there just to decrease the surplus population. I could not call anybody or talk about what was actually going on for me, and I had no phone or access to any coping skills, so I had to just deal with this for the whole stay. It got stronger and stronger, obviously. And I get it that I can’t have priority access to the inpatient unit where I previously got help. It just sucks that I can’t. It felt like they were just completely over me and I wasn’t over them and I had nobody.
When I got out, it’s safe to say that ACCS was worried about me, but I made darned sure they didn’t have anything they could section me over. On the way home, I got a text from my boss asking when I was going to come back to work, which was the initial reason I didn’t kill myself. I got home and took a bath (I still hyperventilate when I take a shower, but weirdly a bath is fine), and called the front desk at the inpatient unit that I once called home. They were so sweet. I talked to two different nurses who I had known before, and they were both heartbroken by what I had gone through. One of them had heard of this random facility on the other side of the world and validated that, according to the reviews she had heard, it was indeed awful. It was like she had a visceral reaction in her voice when I told her where I had been. So, apparently, I am indeed loved. Somebody made the executive decision that I wasn’t going to be allowed to wait in the ER for a bed to open up and instead they were going to ship me to the Suicide Factory, but I’m really hoping it wasn’t anyone I knew. Maybe it wasn’t. Or maybe they didn’t know that that was going to happen.
So, I got my job back and the people at the old hospital still care about me. My siblings haven’t mentioned my having gone off the radar for a few days, because they are total sh*t and absolutely nothing I could ever do could convince them that my life mattered at all, but that is an ongoing issue that’s been present for a while. I really, really for sure wish my boss could have at least let me have Monday off, but I just was off from the 4th of July through Labor Day due to kidney stone complications, so it’s hard to ask for more time. Besides, am I supposed to tell her that I had PTSD flashbacks followed by an existential crisis followed by an involuntary admission to the psych hospital that I only narrowly got out of by having an embarrassingly thorough knowledge of the legal system in my state, and now need a few days to decompress from the trauma of having been trapped in an insane asylum?
(Which, as an aside, I really wouldn’t care if they wanted to call it the insane asylum still. Insane=unhealthy, and asylum=a place to go for refuge. I do have a major problem with being told that I’m in a “behavioral health” facility, as though I’m just there because I made bad choices again. Like, it would be very difficult to be any more hardworking and responsible than me and still be alive. So maybe stop treating me as though if I would just control my “behavior,” it would be completely fine for me to be having flashbacks and despair and whatever else.)
Anyway, I don’t think I’m going to get to be off on Monday. Which is too bad, because my mental health surely is questionable. In good news, I see my outpatient therapist on Mondays before work, so hopefully she can solve all this in one 45-minute session. Meanwhile, I emailed my outpatient med prescribers and let them know that I wasn’t going to do anything that the discharge summary told me to with regard to medications, and I was just going to keep taking the same things as before. If they have a problem and want to support the Suicide Factory, I will literally change prescribers.
So, wish me luck on Monday. Thankfully, my turtle is fine. On a less-positive note, I still have horrible nightmares virtually every night, which usually center around my having been negligent at work and somebody’s kid died. So at least I’m responsible? Okay yeah we all know I’m fucked.
