I.

I have a recurring dream that goes like this: first shot, the absence of light. Cut to hospital corridors tinted peach at dusk, abandoned wards, the sun’s last rays flickering like a dying flame. Pan left along the windowed expanse: Manhattan’s inky skyline, the Hudson River, cherry trees unfurled and shaking. Cut. I enter with only my hands, outstretched, to guide me. Walk for years. Long shot: a bed-bound man. I can never see his face because he’s too far away, or because my eyes are closed. Maybe those reasons are one and the same. Monitors beep in the distance. Zoom out. The scene is filtered in the glow of evening light.

II.

Here’s the funny thing about myopia: it obscures in more ways than one. When I put on glasses for the first time, what stunned me wasn’t my sudden clarity of vision but the past ignorance this implied. How had I gone so many years without discovering my nearsightedness? Habituation no doubt played a role. I came to squint reflexively, accept blurred lines on the chalkboard as a matter of course—in short, I normalized an unclear world.

III.

I’ve struggled with social anxiety for as long as I can remember. Most people experience it at some point in their lives, but mine was debilitating. While pleasantries slipped off others’ tongues, I always seemed to botch them with my glassy smile and cluttered speech. My awkwardness turned me into a slightly robotic figure, skittish, the sort of person who only drew attention through absence.

Why? It’s become a well-worn exercise—probing my past in search of understanding. To this day, I have no satisfying answer. And in any case, an answer hardly would have changed my reality. It’s exhausting to live the way I did, perpetually on the lookout for exits, unable to uncage myself from overanalysis and self-recrimination. The problem with misery is that you think it’ll never end. This myopia is paradoxically the source of its power: it builds you up even as it wears you down, situating your feelings and impressions at the center of everything and erasing what lies on the periphery. It’s one of the many cruel tricks of mental illness.

The problem with misery is that you think it’ll never end.
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To self-pity is to condition your sense of self on suffering, is to smash the best parts of yourself and clutch at the pieces. A friend of mine, speaking of his problems, once said: I’m not special. I’ll get through it like everyone else. And though I was incredulous at the time, he’s right.

I don’t mean to suggest that your troubles are insignificant if someone else has it worse. Unhappiness isn’t zero-sum, but the danger lies precisely in misery’s lack of bounds, its recursive nature. To justify its existence, you necessarily replay past humiliations and excavate old wounds. As a high school student, I’d think—almost as a mantra—I’m so, so alone. I thought about sitting alone at lunch day in and day out, emerging from the most trivial social situations flushed and overwhelmed, overinterpreting even the smallest acts of kindness. I thought about unironically googling “how to be less awkward.” I thought about these indignities and grew increasingly ashamed. Misery thinks only of itself. Misery wages a war of attrition, and the enemy is yourself.  

IV.

Shortly after my 18th birthday, the doctors said there might be something wrong with my heart. I don’t remember ever having been so afraid. Well, that’s not entirely right. There was one other time. Eight years old, visiting my great-grandfather in a nursing facility for the chronically ill. I still remember the welcome sign: COLER-GOLDWATER, block letters separated by a garish red heart. How my great-grandfather’s room had overlooked the Hudson River, Manhattan’s outline straining through the fog. There were elderly people, which was to be expected in a place like that, but some were only children. And it was the children from whom I averted my eyes. I’d understood, even then, that they would live out the rest of their days among the aged and the dying and the unbearably beautiful cherry trees. So it wasn’t the patients I feared, but the flimsiness of the human body. How it breaks down and ultimately betrays you.  

V.

Ten years after setting foot in Coler-Goldwater, I faced a health scare of my own. To have social anxiety is to be continually let down by the body. Certain tics—twitching hands, a propensity to cut myself off in the middle of sentences—reveal my discomfort. But when the root cause is psychological, there’s always some way to make it stop.

Controlling the body is a question of controlling the mind, however difficult that may be; convince yourself it’s fine, you’re safe, and you can still the tremor in your voice.

To have social anxiety is to be continually let down by the body.
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Physical health is a different matter altogether. If there was indeed a problem, I could hardly tell my heart to fix itself. My primary care physician had referred me to a cardiologist, who ran a battery of tests. For a three-week period, I could do nothing but wait. I was scared of my helplessness and appalled by how oblivious I’d been. In my relentless misery, I’d failed to see just how lucky I’d been to be physically healthy, surrounded by people who cared. I’d taken my health, my family and my friends for granted, tarnished what should have been the best years of my life.

While waiting for the results, I made vows on conditionals: if I’m okay, I’ll never be afraid again. Which is to say: I’d stop sending phone calls to voicemail, start looking people in the eye, listen to my therapist, subject myself to the mortifying process of understanding and being understood. I’d try, really try this time.

VI.

The hospital where I got my cardiac MRI was a worn, stately building with ivy creeping up its facade. Two technologists asked what I was there for, and I said a heart murmur, feeling strangely disconnected from the weight of those words. “It might be benign,” said the taller one: a laughably anodyne remark. I smiled, bobbed my head. They inserted an IV into my right arm, gave me earplugs and a set of headphones for music. “We’re going to take over your body,” they said. It was meant to be light-hearted, but there was an undeniable truth somewhere amid the levity. Inside a hospital, you forfeit all control: it’s the ultimate form of surrender, of letting go. And maybe that’s what spooked me at Coler-Goldwater all those years ago, even more than the prospect of frailty and decline. I’d never learned how to let go of anything. If given a choice between holding on and letting go, I invariably chose the former, even if that meant pain, even if that meant pyrrhic victory.

One of the technologists slid me into the tube, enclosed me in a semicircle of white, whiteness that just went on and on. I kept a tight rein on my thoughts, cleared my mind until it was blank as snow, because if I considered the possibilities I’d be going down a path from which I might never return. Breathe in, try not to worry, breathe out, hold your breath as directed. The technologists circled the machine like vultures. At some point I lost track of the eighties songs blaring through the headphones and let the clattering sounds from the MRI become white noise, signifying nothing.

VII.

A few weeks later, I returned to the cardiologist, hands folded nervously in my lap. When he entered the room, he smiled, and that’s all I could fixate on. He said something about a perfect heart, and I wanted to nod blithely, hold his patronizing kindness at arm’s length, but teared up instead. Until that moment, I’d put my life on hold. It had been—if not a still, at least slow-motion. I’d lost interest in concepts as tenuous as the future. Because what if I never got there? Why invest in uncertain days? Now I could hit play at last.

VIII.

Coler-Goldwater Hospital, that specter of my childhood, exists no more. A college campus has risen in its place, and people who know nothing of its past will trod those tree-lined lanes. A photographer deemed the complex historically significant before its demolishment, captured photo after photo of those haunting halls. Sometimes I click through each image and wonder if there was a lesson to be learned.

I’d lost interest in concepts as tenuous as the future.
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It really is easy to forget. I’m now a sophomore in college, and the fear of that summer—as well as the promises I made to myself—are but a memory. A lot has happened in the two years since then. I’ve switched majors, backpacked a part of the Appalachian trail, taken a liking to coffee, met people who care for me far more than I once cared for myself. I’m more open about my anxiety. I tell myself it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and some days, I almost believe it. There’s a line from a French documentary that goes something like this: I can’t see very clearly, but I see. And I do, I finally do. The sun rises and sets; the days grow shorter and longer and shorter again; the leaves change color, wither, and die. And through it all, I’m still here. What else is there to be grateful for?

Some things remain the same: I still worry too much, fume over petty slights, pretend not to see people in passing because I don’t quite know what to say. But I’m no longer as distrustful of sentiment, no longer as scornful of hope—now I believe that everything will somehow be okay, that the world will carry me along instead of passing me by. And so, when I want to do nothing but hole up in my room, I put on my sneakers and go to the gym, or reach out to a friend, or walk downtown and take in all the beauty there is to see. There’s no time to dwell.

I used to go on long walks when I was pregnant. I’d lace up my snow boots and zip my barely-fitting winter coat over my belly and just walk for hours around the neighborhood. I loved it. I loved how I waddled, my hips expanding to accommodate the baby’s drop. I loved how my stomach strained the zipper, pocket seams bursting, as if even my clothes were excited with anticipation about my daughter’s arrival. I loved how strangers smiled and asked when I was due and told me, “Congratulations!”

I loved being a pregnant person.

It felt easy to be a “good” pregnant person. Yes, the details were hard – a screenshot of safe fish to eat lived on my phone, consulted before every sushi order that always ended in California rolls anyway; I sat on an inflatable birthing ball at work to try to encourage the baby to go into proper head-down position; I didn’t sleep on my back; I learned infant CPR; we squirreled away money for future childcare.

But overall, I was lucky. For me, moving through the world as a pregnant woman was simple. I felt so sure of my choices, so sure I was doing it right. It was the first time in my whole life I felt truly at home with my identity, that I wholly embodied within what was being projected outwardly. It was the first time I felt confident in myself.

Motherhood is not like that. Motherhood has shaken my confidence to the core, chiseled away my decision-making skills, left me puddled and wobbly. Things that had once seemed stupidly obvious stop me in my tracks. I spend a ridiculous amount of time standing in the grocery store, paralyzed at the thought of choosing the wrong baby water. I agonize over what is the proper type of onesie to put her in (Fleece? Cotton? Flannel?). Old episodes of ER play in the background as she cluster feeds and my mind hums with screen time recommendations.

Everything, every choice, every decision, every moment, is heavy with consequence.

My daughter sleeps in her bassinet next to me. I lay in bed, having checked to make sure she’s breathing. Once. Twice. Three times already. I close my eyes, satisfied.

She shifts.

Don’t do it, I reprimand myself in my head. She’s fine. Don’t do it. She just moved a little. Don’t do it. Embarrassingly, she has not one but two life-detecting monitors (a motion sensor pad under her mattress that came with the video monitor, and a Snuza clipped on her diaper that is supposed to beep should she stop breathing.) Don’t do it. Neither is going off. Don’t do it. She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine…

I lift my head, scootch to the side of the bed, peer over. I check on her. I watch her diaphragm move up and down. I make sure her nose and mouth are clear of anything that has the minuscule chance of blocking her airway (the sleeve of her onesie positioned in a one in a million chance in the throes of her sleep, the fitted sheet somehow coming up from the secure hugging of the mattress corner and tangled over her face in her tossing…) She is fine. I pull the covers up, I close my eyes, I wait for sleep.

She shifts again.

Motherhood has shaken my confidence to the core, chiseled away my decision-making skills, left me puddled and wobbly.
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I don’t want to be this mother. Double-checking, triple-checking that the car seat is clicked in properly (did I hear two clicks? I don’t know. Do it again). Nerves frayed after a bad night of sleep (why did I rock her to sleep, she will never learn to sleep on her own, I’ve ruined her sleep habits forever and committed my husband and me to a lifetime of interrupted nights, 2 a.m. wake ups). Thoughts from long ago, news stories of dangers lurking in every corner fill my head (infants accidentally left in hot cars, dead after their first day at daycare, stabbed by the nanny…).

I’m sorry, I didn’t get it, I want to say to the mothers of eons past. I used to think, “Why is it so hard? Why are you so worried? If your baby is hungry, she will eat. Tired, she will sleep. What are you fretting, obsessing, agonizing about?” I’m sorry I didn’t understand until now.

The love for my daughter took time to come in. We don’t talk about that much, but maybe we should, the assurance offered to new moms that their breast milk may take time to come alongside a “don’t worry, that love everyone talks about, it will come too.” It snuck up on me, weeks after she arrived, but when it came it was enough to stop the world. I would lay in bed after a middle of the night feeding and listen to her shallow breaths, listen to my husband’s deep slumber beside me, everyone at peace, and I would think if the world had to end, please God let it be now because there would never be anything more perfect than this moment.

I’m sorry, I didn’t understand how your child is everything and nothing all at once. Like Sandra Cisneros describes in her short story Eleven, how when you’re eleven you’re not just eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. My daughter is everything right now in the moment, but she is also nothing but potential, events yet experienced, lessons yet learned, a life yet lived.

It’s here where the anxiety nestles itself, feeds off itself, this crux of past and future.

The heat rattles to life and fills my New York City apartment with an oppressive warmth. Is she too hot in her swaddle? “Cold babies cry, hot babies die.” Pinterest notifications illuminate my phone during nighttime feedings, alerting me to pins I might like: “5 Hidden SIDS Risks” and “Newborn Safety Checklist.” Clickbait promising to make me a better mother lures me in.

“It’s because you click on them,” my husband says as I show him the ad for the weighted sleep sack that promises three more hours of sleep in just three nights, the gripe water that cures colic and stops crying, the teas and bars and cookies that will boost my dwindling supply of milk. “It’s targeting you because it wants you to buy things.”

But it doesn’t feel that way. I don’t feel targeted; I feel like I’m being sent clues to a puzzle. That writhing, wailing newborn you can’t figure out? We know how to fix it–here’s why your baby isn’t sleeping; here’s why your baby isn’t eating; here’s why your baby won’t stop crying, here’s what you’re doing wrong. You’re doing it wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I feel like a good mom only when I’m not responsible for her. When she is with Grandma or Dad I wash and change her crib sheets. I scrub her clothes free of spit-up stains. I sanitize her bottles and pacifiers. I organize her toys. I buy more formula. I tick off all the things she needs, stay on top of the concrete, hard details of keeping her alive and happy. But she always comes back, and with her the unknowns.

But are they unknowns, or are they just things I haven’t learned? How could I live with myself knowing the information was out there that could’ve saved us both and I was too lazy to click it? That the research existed but I was too tired to read and evaluate it thoroughly? That I was too overwhelmed, it was four in the morning, I’d been up half the night, I knew the recommendations of flat on her back in her own space but I just needed to sleep so I put her in the swing, in the bed, in my arms, as I rocked her, rocked her, rocked her, my eyes snapping open in panic after dozing off, dawn light teasing the corners of the window.

The model of motherhood is there, it’s right there, I shout in my own head. In millions of mothers doing it right, doing it better.

My daughter raised the stakes too high in a game I don’t have the constitution to play. Thoughts of being younger, begging and begging to watch a scary movie and then huddling by a nightlight, every night for weeks, both terrified and ashamed, in equal measure, of the fear I’d brought on myself.

You wanted this, prayed and pleaded and cried each month when one line appeared instead of two.

Now she’s here. You protect her. You keep her safe.

She would never exist again. This soul made of stardust. It would never form again.

It’s maddening, it’s exhausting, it feels viscerally unfair, being forced to exist like this: repeating the same mundane steps of caring for a newborn over and over, the numbing repetitiveness sliced sharp with the knowledge that if you don’t do the steps right, if you let your guard down for a moment, if you lose focus on the task at hand, if you take your eye off the ball…like the bright yellow posters in factories warning workers of the dangers on the assembly line that do nothing to break through the haze of monotony until an accident shocks everyone awake again.

We know how to fix it–here’s why your baby isn’t sleeping; here’s why your baby isn’t eating; here’s why your baby won’t stop crying, here’s what you’re doing wrong.
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My daughter grows. She reaches developmental milestones. At five months she scoots forward on her knees and elbows in a combat crawl and I lay out circus-colored safety mats to cushion the hardwood. At seven months, I turn around to see she’s pulled herself up on the side of her crib — that night we drop her mattress to the lowest setting. Now, at nine months, the mats have been replaced with carpet because she cruises along any furniture she can reach, legs shaking when she lets go to test her limits. She gobbles down the food we put on her highchair tray, bits of cheese and mashed banana and bread balled as small as my fingers can make it.

The old fears lessen their grip around my heart but instead settle like a cold in my bones, and are replaced with new fears that cause the blood to rush in my ears each time she stumbles while she learns to walk or chokes as she learns to eat. I doubt they’ll ever go away completely. This is parenting, I think, your breath always one moment away from being knocked out of you.  

A grape not cut small enough. A dresser not properly secured.

My mind remembers, listening to a news brief when I was so young I was standing on a chair to reach something in the kitchen cabinets. The grandmother had wanted to surprise her infant grandchild with a stuffed bunny for Easter. She put it in the crib next to the girl while she slept. The tape holding the wrapping paper somehow came unstuck, the paper somehow covered her mouth and nose in the night.

Everything would be nothing.

I raise my head, peak over the side of the crib. Check to make sure my daughter is still breathing.

CW: Self-harm, cutting

A year ago, I stood in my kitchen and called my friend Liz to tell her I had not hurt myself in a year. It was a realization that had dawned on me earlier in the day, and I needed to share the news. Liz told me she was proud.

It had been a rough week, preceded by a rough month, and I had a long history of reacting poorly to emotional stress. My friends almost expected I would self-harm. I almost expected as much as well. I had been a cutter most of my life. It started in elementary school when I would scratch red claw marks into my hands and arms as punishment for egregious sins, like missing the bus or getting a C- on a math test. In high school, I graduated to sharp objects like knitting needles and steak knives. By college, I routinely used the X-acto knife I bought for an art seminar to leave brutal, bloody cuts on my arms. The scars are still there, thin white lines that ensure my mental health history is unconcealable. While I could never hide the self-harm, this also meant no one could ignore it. My friends were always incredibly supportive and, that night, Liz’s pride was the small victory I needed.

“Erin,” Liz said, “That’s amazing.”

And I felt amazing, for a bit, but later reflected on how I had treated myself that week. My internal monologue was a vicious, abusive cycle where I constantly reminded myself of my empirical lack of worth. I spent two hours a day at the gym, engaging in vigorous aerobic activity with the elliptical’s incline and resistance maxed out, and ate almost nothing. It was part punitive—a way of hurting myself for perceived sloth—but also impulsive; I felt a need to be in physical pain, one I could not control.

I did not cut myself, but was it fair to say I had not hurt myself? Without the physical marks, no one was aware anything was amiss. My self-harm had not gone away. It had become invisible.

I often feel trapped in a loop in which one form of self-harm usurps another, cycling through negative behaviors without real improvement. I do not understand what drives this desire to hurt myself. The why of self-harm is a question often asked, but the why of any psychiatric condition is multi-faceted and often unclear. With self-harm, the normal level of scientific ambiguity is magnified by the fact that self-harm has only very recently been studied as a disorder in its own right. Once seen only as a symptom of other disorders, Non-Suicidal Self Injury (NSSI) entered into the DSM in 2013 as a topic for “further study” after research took off in the early 2000s. The International Society for Self Harm was formed in 2006 to foster more communication and collaboration among professionals who studied self-harm.

“NSSI serves a function for the individual,” said psychologist Lori Hilt, an Associate Professor at Lawrence University who has researched self-harm. “Self-punishment is one function, and it’s also commonly used to decrease acute negative effect (e.g., anxiety).”

As for whether it’s common for self-harm to take other forms, Hilt told me the behavior is frequently comorbid with other maladaptive behaviors.

Without the physical marks, no one was aware anything was amiss. My self-harm had not gone away. It had become invisible.
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“There are many other behaviors that might be able to serve similar functions,” she said, “For example, binging, purging, and other eating disorder-type symptoms often co-occur with NSSI. Other indirect forms of self-harm include substance use and risky sexual behavior. These self-harming behaviors…may serve similar functions for the individual.”

But what are those functions, exactly? I have been suicidal before and, while I no longer actively feel those emotions, I can explain them retroactively. I cannot do the same when it comes to self-harm. Cutting feels like it was something that happened to me rather than something I did.  

Joan Didion once wrote, regarding her daughter’s alcoholism, not even doctors can argue alcohol is not an incredibly powerful anti-anxiety agent. Didion was not advocating for heavy drinking, but trying to show readers how addiction happens. I sometimes walk people down a similar path when explaining why I cut. The main reason I kept up with it for so long was that it worked so well at curbing my anxiety. It provided me the same instantaneous anxiety relief some find in alcohol. Self-harm can simultaneously occur with various substance abuse disorders and Hilt told me some research does indicate self-injurious acts can release feel good chemicals in the brain like endogenous opiates.

“This is part of the body’s natural response to pain/injury, but it can be positively reinforcing,” she said, “Regarding anxiety relief, what is most likely going on is a shift in attention from the feeling of anxiety to the present-moment experience of pain, seeing blood, etc. This shift to something concrete is probably what takes away the feelings of anxiety temporarily.”

The period when my cutting stopped coincided with positive changes in my life. I got out of a toxic relationship. I started taking mood stabilizers. I tried to adopt a healthier diet. Hilt mentioned that self-harm is common in individuals who lack other coping skills and therefore turn to quick fixes to handle stress. I would like to think I discovered long term fixes preferable to the immediate release of drawing blood, but part of me wonders if I’ve ever actually stopped self-harming.

Around the time I stopped cutting, I began going to the gym six days a week. Exercise no doubt has a litany of benefits, but for a time my workout routine was obsessive. I worked out almost three hours a day while eating less than 1,200 calories. I once passed out in the locker room after a particularly brutal session. I wasn’t cutting, but I was hurting myself. People just overlooked as much and, in fact, often complimented me on my dedication.

Did the mood stabilizers and lifestyle changes improved my mental health or did I simply trade one form of self-harm for a more socially acceptable variety?

Cutting feels like it was something that happened to me rather than something I did.
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I should prefer my self-harm is invisible as it’s so stigmatized. People are willing to accept my bipolar disorder and anxiety are beyond my control, but rarely extend any sympathy towards cutting. I once had an ex-boyfriend smack his hand against a desk while screaming cutting was a choice. At an office job, a manager once suggested our publication write a list called “Best Songs To Cut Yourself To.” These reactions stem from the same notion self-harm is a self-indulgent, easily controlled behavior worthy of both scorn and ridicule.

Invisibility protects me from stigma. It does not, however, protect me from myself.

We want the narrative of mental illness to follow a trajectory that ends in cure, but not every story is one of triumph. Many end with ambiguity, partial victories, and ongoing struggles others do not always see.

I do think I am getting better, but progress is slow-going and marked by setbacks and hurdles. Hilt told me the most effective treatments for self-harm involve teaching better coping skills and I am taking active steps—therapy, mindfulness, positive self-talk—to do just that. But I still routinely indulge in emotional self-abuse via a nasty internal monologue. I still do not like myself on many days.

While my scars are now faded, this does not indicate unambiguous triumph. As further research illuminates causes and searches for effective treatment, myself and many others—visible marks or not—struggle each day with the seemingly endless internal urge to hurt ourselves.  

I was in the Petco wrapping up my purchase of cat supplies with my mother who had come to visit from out of town. We were heading over to the machine to inscribe the name “JELLO” and a phone number on the tag when I got the call. Jello, the little tortoiseshell cat that I’d been approved to adopt and take home the next day, who had spent seven years in a hoarder’s home and now could finally come home with me, was “very sick” and might well die. My world, already chaotic from a sudden move from the Atlanta area to Washington, D.C., a new job, and rats in my ancient apartment building, shattered.

A few days later, my mother went home to Georgia.

I fell into a major depression, as I had many times before in my life — I have a history of such episodes — but this time was the worst yet. I was already frayed by the move, the rats, and adjusting to a full-time job. I began thinking about all the knives in the kitchen — frequently — and burst into tears every time I looked at the corner with all the stuff that was supposed to be Jello’s.

We Need A Review Site For Psychiatric Hospitals — So I Built One

I biked to the cat shelter to visit her, but I wasn’t allowed to because they didn’t know what she had. On the way home, I almost biked into traffic. I had a complete breakdown at work the next week, sobbing into the phone to a friend that nothing was working and there was no one to help me be safe — my friends thought I might die.

My workplace helped me hail a cab to take me to a hospital.

The cab took me to George Washington University Hospital’s ER, where I waited for some time to be admitted to the ER. Finally, upon being processed, they handed me a new outfit. The gown was too big and paper thin. Even amid mental agony, I worried about it slipping down my shoulders. The emergency room was too bright and blurry through my tears. I was asked to tell my story over and over again — I muttered my misery to two psychiatrists, two nurses, a host of medical students at the university hospital, and finally, a social worker. None of them seemed to coordinate with each other. The nurses drew blood and did other tests. I was crying off and on; I didn’t have my headphones. It was loud and confusing. I wanted to die even more now that I was here and couldn’t go back. The social worker complimented me on the butterflies I had drawn on myself using my highlighter and ballpoint pen instead of stabbing myself with the pen.

Police officers and EMTs bustled about, occasionally bringing someone in. One of them appeared to be a homeless man. The police went through his belongings and pulled out discharge papers from his recent visit to the same hospital; they sneered and laughed. I grew paranoid that my story was making people laugh.

I wrote down people’s phone numbers on the sheet of paper they gave me, and clung to it like a lifeline before they took my phone.

They whisked me in a wheelchair up to the sixth floor after hours of waiting. The ward doors read “FLIGHT RISK — KEEP DOORS LOCKED.” The nurse deposited me on the ward, where another nurse with a computer asked, “Is this your first time in the system?”

I cried. They handed me a cup of water, my usual medication, and two additional ones — an anti-anxiety medication and a sleep aid, both to make me stop bawling. I felt I was part of a machine that processed patients and spit them back out; some experienced resultant trauma from the stay, while others bore shattered self-esteem and dignity. Very few “recovered.”

I slept most of the next day.

One of the therapists really wanted me to go to groups, where patients participated in staff-led activities. I found them boring and unhelpful. Most patients seemed to go only to pass the time. My psychiatrist saw me for a total of 30 minutes in three days and four nights.

I watched as another patient laid down on the floor — they picked him up, medicated him, and made awful noises of pity. “Poor thing,” I heard them say, “we just found him lying there in the day room.” I met with a therapist sometimes — who liked to talk about my caffeine intake and my trouble sleeping.

My roommate had kids. She liked watching the sun set in the sky out the window, over a bustling city as busy and bright as the emergency room, a city that we watched from the inside.

My psychiatrist saw me for a total of 30 minutes in three days and four nights.
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Breakfast was at a scheduled time. So was lunch. So was dinner. They took the phones away during group sessions, presumably to encourage us to go to groups. There were only two phones. I spent most of my time calling friends. I am not sure others were so lucky. Doors to your room got opened by nurses every 10 or 15 minutes.

It was very clear who was and was not a person, and who had control. We were flight risks in skid-proof socks and scrubs; not people, but DSM labels.

They called me “vibrant and passionate” when I got frustrated at one of their mental health resource recommendations — the group in question supported a rights-restricting bill, H.R. 2646, the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act.” This bill has recently passed out of committee and is on the House floor, poised to cut funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) housing programs.

It would also increase institutionalization and forced treatment through court systems, with states given a financial incentive to do so. Disability rights groups and LGBTQ+ groups alike have condemned the bill. The psychiatrist told me later that he at least agreed the bill needed significant revision.

Eventually they discharged me with referrals. I had simply waited until I felt less like wanting to die to push for leaving. Nothing they had done had helped with that.

I still have echoes of being an unperson.

There is an urge to repeat the not-so-distant past that is in living memory, a perfect storm aimed at people with mental illness: the resurgence of state mental institutions. This damaging momentum comes in all kinds of forms, from University of Pennsylvania ethicists to psychiatrists in the New York Times. The Times even recently published a “A Room for Debate” debating whether we needed “asylums” again for the mentally ill — without having a single person with mental illness write for it.

I still have echoes of being an unperson.
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There is no fundamental problem with hospitals and institutions, but instead a complicated and interrelated web of failings. They’re not comfortable enough, the staff do not treat patients as people; these entities exercise total control and ultimately become custodial, often trapping people in a cycle of neglect or mismanagement for their entire lives. They are a dumping ground for America’s unwanted; the abuse within hospital and institution walls was and is rampant. (Read “Behind Locked Doors — Institutional Sexual Abuse” by Maureen Crossmaker for more chilling insights into this phenomenon.)

Is there a set of serious problems facing American people with mental illness? Yes. But the solution is not more beds in psych wards. The solution is not more “asylums.” The solution is not H.R. 2646, which would limit what little community funding there is and strip protections and rights for the purpose of easily forcing treatment and institutionalization.

The solution is to fight to deliver the funding for community living promised in the Kennedy administration that never came — particularly in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination. The solution is funding peer-respite centers, 24-hour drop-in centers, and community-based programs such as Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) housing programs (and restructure those to provide more immediate assistance), and to provide support of our choosing if needed.

Funding is an ongoing concern — and tangible hurdle — but according to research by Disability Rights Washington, funding would stem from freed resources from the closure of state institutions; legislation could be fought for to allocate this funding toward peer resources and SAMSHA.

Ultimately, the solution is both simple and humane: Treat the mentally ill as people with agency, allowing us to direct our services, even if we need supports to do that. The solution is not to rip us away from everything we know when things go badly, but to surround us with community and the people we care for most.

All illustrations: Flickr/Josep Novellas