I laid on my cot in the fetal position facing the wall. I prayed that they would leave me alone if they thought I was asleep. I didn’t move, I barely breathed. I ached with a wanting to go home, but that was impossible. Everything felt impossible.
Just hours before I had been at the end of my rope. My world had crashed around me. Everything that had felt certain about life had erupted into chaos, and I just couldn’t take anymore of it. I had been texting my best friend, and I told her as much. The mental and emotional battle couldn’t continue. I couldn’t continue. The struggle couldn’t go on. I couldn’t go on. The pain had to end. I had to end.
To this day I don’t know what happened in my mind to make this all seem like the right path forward… the only path forward. But it did. And I acted on it. I knew, suddenly, that I really was in a position to take my own life. It wasn’t theory anymore. It wasn’t some fantasy out on the edges of my consciousness. It was real. And it was happening. And I was scared. I picked up my phone, and I texted my best friend again. I told her what I had done.
She came, of course. Who wouldn’t? And she brought help with her. A reasonable reaction. But it undid me. That help that she brought also happened to be our boss, and I realized in that moment that my cover was blown wide open. That perfect mask of mine had fallen away. It was out now that I had come unhinged, that I could no longer cope with the hand life had dealt to me.
You see, I had come to a point in life where I didn’t know how to answer the question “Who am I?” I knew only what mask I needed to fit into place based on the circumstance. I knew what mask to wear at work. What mask to wear at home with my roommate. What mask to wear when I was out with friends. But none of them felt real. None of them felt like the raw depression that gnawed at my heart day in and day out. None of them felt like the despair and hopelessness that ached within my chest. None of them hurt like that. In my masks I could smile, even laugh. I could adapt to any given situation and thrive in it, never letting on that I was slowly dying inside. But when my best friend showed up, and when our boss showed up with her, those masks evaporated like the morning dew. All that was left was a hollowed out figure of a human.
They called the Crisis Hotline. I begged them not to, but they (thankfully) didn’t listen to anything I had to say on that matter. They were instructed to take me to the Crisis Stabilization Unit. I had feared this would be their instruction, and I am ashamed to say that I threw a bit of a tantrum about the matter. I cried. Begged. Tried negotiating. Telling them I was fine now. I even got angry and told them off. I tried everything I could think of to keep me out of having to go to the CSU, but after hours negotiating with me and letting me sob and fuss, my friends took me by the hand and they led me to the car to drive me to the CSU.
We sat for hours in the lobby waiting for the next crisis worker to come to the facility. We talked, and I slowly regained my composure. By the time the crisis worker came, I had put my shattered masks back together again, and so when she asked me what I was feeling, what I was planning, what I had done… I lied.
Yes, I know it’s wrong. My Momma taught me to always tell the truth. But I was scared, and I was proud. The combination meant that I would do anything, say anything, even tell bold-faced lies, to keep myself safe. At least, my definition of safe.
I told the crisis worker that I had thought about suicide but hadn’t planned anything. She finished her assessment, and returned me to my friends in the lobby. I was certain I was going to be going home, that my masks had fooled yet another person into thinking that I was someone I was not. But my friends intervened yet again.
They showed the crisis worker the text I had sent, the one confessing that I had indeed made an attempt on my life. My masks were slipping out of my hands again, and I could feel the growing terror in my throat as I choked back a sob. I just wanted to go home and go to sleep. I believed if I could just “sleep it off” I would be fine in the morning. But going home was now not an option.
The crisis worker gently but firmly told me I had a choice to make. Either voluntarily stay at the CSU, or be taken involuntarily to the hospital. The idea of forcibly going to the hospital scared me even more than the sterile walls of the CSU did, so I did the only thing I felt like I could. I stayed. I signed over my phone and wallet, my jewelry and belongings, even my clothes. I donned the hospital-green scrubs all patients were required to wear. I said goodbye to my friends, and was directed to the room in which I lay curled into the fetal position facing the wall.
A single tear rolled down the bridge of my nose to fall onto the pillow. My roommate snored quietly in the cot next to me, and I tried not to let the growing sob in my chest shake its way out into the room.
Perhaps it is an understandable place to have an existential crisis. I spent the first day and a half literally shaking from the overwhelming fear of it all, so much so that one nurse thought that I was experiencing side effects of detoxing while I was there. The fear was all-consuming. I was convinced that I had lost my grip on myself, that “Kaitlyn” was gone. Or worse, that there was nothing there to begin with and the hollowness I felt in my chest was reality.
Who am I? Was there even an answer to that question?
I began to reshape my worldview in the CSU. Where I had believed that I was special, or at least desired to be special, I recognized, perhaps for the first time, that I wasn’t special at all. (And yes this was as depressive of a thought as you might imagine.) I realized, as I wore the same green scrubs as everyone else, that I was just another person. Those scrubs served as an equalizer. They wiped away individuality. “Specialness” was stripped away. I felt that I was just another crazed human kept within those walls in the attempt to keep me safe from the thing with me all the time… myself. I felt ugly. Disgusting. Worthless. And I was ashamed. I was convinced I had reached the low of my life, and I couldn’t imagine it getting any better. I couldn’t imagine being anyone special anymore.
I just reread that paragraph and I am struck by the agony there and the misconceptions I had of what kind of person goes to the CSU. It’s sad to admit, but I believed that we, each one of us in those green scrubs, were “less than.” We had each in some way gone too far off the mark of what society wanted from us and what was healthy for ourselves.
I spent three days in those damned green scrubs. I spent three days allowing them to redefine me. I spent three days thinking less and less of myself. When three days were over, I left the CSU. But the questions I asked there lingered long after those three days. I continued asking the question “Who am I?” and I continued to come up short in being able to answer. Just like that first night in the CSU, I would isolate myself in my room, curl up in the fetal position, and allow slow tears to roll freely from my eyes.
I want so badly to conclude this story with a “happily ever after.” I want to wrap it up with a nice platitude and allow the tension to dissolve. But I don’t believe that’s what’s most helpful in telling a story of disorientation. Instead, I will leave the tension alone. I will leave you with the image of my arms wrapped around my knees, as if I could hold myself together that way. I will leave you with the feeling of puffy, red-rimmed eyes and wet cheeks. I will leave you with the reality that suffering happens, and sometimes when we ask questions of our own souls we come up short of answering.