I was thirteen. I was unhappy. And, Christ, I was insane.
My mother agreed to help me if I were to cooperate, after confessing to her my twisted thoughts about life—how we all are smiling corpses, walking around in an endless waltz, music played by the cries of Jesus because we were such blasphemous people—and the reasons why I may be seeing colors. Warned before about those colors, I was. He told me, indistinctly as his little heart desired, "You will see the colors soon." And then was I captured in the madness of a perplex imagination created by God knows what. I cannot explain to you the colors and things that I had seen, how desolate and sordid. But how grotesque and beautiful:
A human's bloody torso, faces on walls, green people.
Chestnut Ridge was a horrid place, the rumors had said. It was a building that the crazy, dangerous people went to. But when I stepped through the glass doors, I did not see people donned in straight jackets. Nor did I see lunatics running freely through the halls with eyes all but crossed and bleeding. Everyone was proper and clean—by God, it was far worse than they said! I quickly felt out-of-place with my crimson-colored sweater, greasy hair, and tight, worn-out jeans. Compared to them, I was what you could call a definite nobody.
To put it bluntly, I looked like a skank.
My mother held tightly onto me and led me towards the lobby where I awaited mental trounce. I can still remember how frightening both of us were; her, because her daughter was admitting herself in a psychiatric hospital, and me, because I was about to allow a person to log my life from here-on-out for as long as I live, and helplessly, I was to confess all that I thought inhumanly possible.
Sitting quietly in a corner, I chose my grave quickly. It was a blue, very large chair—and I sunk deeply. My mother signed my name on the tablet and tore from it a little piece of paper that had our number on it. Honestly, I could feel my veins run so terribly cold and freeze in the mere process. I trembled. She returned to me and placed her arm about me, yet again. Did she fear that she was actually going to lose me to these people? The people that demanded money to help the bitter and the weak? The people that want nothing more than for you to trust them when they think you're absolutely crazy? It was the oxymoron of a lifetime, and I was being swallowed by it!
I asked my mother, "Will I be staying overnight here?"
"Of course not," she replied, "I wouldn't allow it. The first session will be different from the rest. They're going to try and see what's making you depressed at such a young age first. And then, they're going to help you."
So, she was saying that either way, I will not be helped for a while. I probably had some kind of unknown cancer that messed with my mind to make me come up with such exotic, hateful assumptions (and it's odd that I did, in fact, have cancer at that time, just not mentally!). All that I wanted was to be helped; I wanted to know why I desired to die with a pile of blood surrounding my body! I passionately wished to discover why I took that flawlessly sharp razor over my arm and made so many scars that bled for years, it felt! I just wanted to find out why I am still alive after being so undeserving, especially with the consequences of losing all my dear sanity.
Still, as I sat and waited for my number to be called, I felt I was going to scream. Not because I was risking my internal thoughts to be exposed on national television, it seemed, but because I could hear a little boy cry faintly. Soon, the bellow increased in sound until it was located directly behind me. My ears danced. He was squealing to the top of his lungs, pleading, "Stop touching me! Give me back my shoes! Stop touching me! I don't want to stay here!" However, when I turned around to see the red-haired boy, he was not being touched at all. And he was wearing shoes. His parents, I assumed, were standing behind him as he merely walked the hallway down towards a separate corridor. The motherly figure was severely crying, and the father had never been so pale.
And I muttered under my breath, "Oh my God," just before my number was called.
Her name was Erin. Erin Henderson, I hope I remember correctly. She was very tall, very thin, and very beautiful. Even though she had a large chin and mouth, and eyes that pierced into your body like a pair of innocent bullets, hidden behind thick-framed, brown glasses, she was kind and flawless. When my mother and I entered her room, she told me to sit down at the chair. The chair that had the box of tissues nearest it and a disposal bin just inches from it. Another woman, Indonesian with fat legs, stood in a corner and pressed a clipboard to her chest. She was, what I later learned, the supervisor. According to Chestnut Ridge, she was the queen bee.
They asked me of my name. Simply, I told them, "My name is Amber Dawn Kennedy." And then the two ladies asked me of my age. "I am thirteen." And then they asked me where I was from. "I am from Hundred, West Virginia." And then, finally, they asked me why I had been questioned as a patient. I took in a deep breath and admitted, "I am an unhappy girl with the obsession of mutilating myself and assuming that dead people walk the earth." Both of the professionals' jaws dropped, and Erin cleared her throat brusquely. The foreign lady blinked wildly and continued to write down everything that I said—I bet she was impressed. Because I was.
My mother interrupted, "My daughter, she is a writer. Sometimes she says things that are way out of proportion." Her forehead was sweaty; I had embarrassed her.
I smiled pathetically and giggled.
"Okay," Erin said, "now tell us what makes you unhappy, Amber."
Where should I begin? I didn't even give myself the time to confess because I had already bowed down to the sobs burning inside of me and relinquished tears of black and white. My heart ceased to beat as I told them my entire childhood, my craziest infatuations, and my miserable propensities. I swear, after each sentence, I applied the tissue to my cheeks, even knowing that it was far too saturated to hold anymore melancholy. My mother handed me a fresh disposable, but I refused. In conclusion, I had unraveled my deepest secrets and felt so bad about it. The fact that I easily revealed such revolting things made me shudder. I was told that I would feel so very much better after putting down the weight suffocating me, but dear God, I have never felt more asphyxiated in my life!
Erin reached out to grasp my trembling hand, "Nice to meet you, Amber. I cannot wait to begin session with you in two weeks."
When I left that secluded room, I took the box of tissues with me.
As I went back to Chestnut Ridge two weeks later from that unbearable day, I entered that building through those glass doors as I did before. My eyes were bloodshot due to lack of sleep, my arms were bloodshot due to recent defacement, and my voice was bloodshot due to purging. Bulimia was not something I was proud of, but when you shoved food down your poisonous throat constantly, you'd consider, too! Erin properly greeted me as I entered into her personal space—she did not even question why I had looked so terrible, so pale and so sweaty. Thankfully, my mother was not to attend the sessions between Erin and me once they were established. That was the greatest rule of them all.
"Amber," she softly stated, putting her clipboard down and staring directly into my forbidden eyes, "what would you like to talk about today?"
It took more than ten sessions before I even engaged a conversation with the young girl. Usually I just sat there, and thinking about all that I desired to confess, I was invulnerably forced to shed a load of tears. These tears were different than the many others I released; these ones were the happy kinds. Me—I was happy within the vivid pessimistic regulations of life! Erin tried every way to interest me in unloading my life, and my most favorite way was when she told me such matters and used things we young adults like to call bad words. But the most she pushed out of me, in result of that, was just a laugh that lasted but a second and a smile that never appeared again. Heart aching, it was, just to be part of something so hideously dejected.
Erin became my best friend within a year and a half.
She was even my look-to after I got a memorable phone call from a friend. She had news that I could not believe; Marcus Miller certainly did not commit suicide! However, that was exactly what he did. I told my mother without a single tear in my eye, for crying at this moment would be a disgrace—and later, proven as my current bad cases of denial. When I threw myself in my room, I quickly searched through one of my blazer pockets to find her medical card, the one with her name, email, and phone number to call in case of an emergency. As I dialed the number, the tears plummeted from my cheeks and dripped into my cordless phone. Erin answered within three rings, "Hello?" I couldn't say anything at first. There wasn't anything to say. All she could hear was me screaming to the top of my lungs, tears ripping from my eyes, and somehow, Erin knew it was me. "Amber, calm down. What's wrong?"
"My friend killed himself; my Sephiroth, he's gone! And I don't know what to do. My best friend was his girlfriend, and I'm so very afraid that she is going to go with him." I choked, "If she goes, I'm next."
She didn't even pretend that we were in confession. Erin just told me to cry.
But then a month later, I had received some more shocking news. The one day that I was so thrilled to tell her that I met somebody special, and that I so very wanted to spend the rest of my life with this young man, she sits me down in her office and has tears covering every single bit of her cheeks and face and large chin. I felt that burning lump raise in my throat, nearly imploding my esophagus. Erin took off her glasses and set them on her desk. I cringed, sensing my internal urge to cut and purge and lie awake at night after it had been scared away by her most respectful, admiring words.
Apathetically, I questioned her actions, "Why did you tell me to sit? You never tell me to sit." My pale fists clenched so tightly that I could already experience my nails drilling through my palm and back out near my white knuckles, "Why are you crying? Tell me, Erin." Blood peeled through the opening wound.
"This job, here at Chestnut Ridge, was just a stand-in until I was assigned to a place much closer to my home."
Then why the fuck did they assign you to me!
I threw my broken, beaten, black heart down on the flawless carpet and hoped that in all mercy left inside of me it was going to leave a stain of blood for her to clean up when she left, and I stormed out of that ghastly madhouse of a room. Everyone's vision transfixed on my runaway self while I darted down every single corridor until I met back with my mother. The moment that she had seen tears in my eyes and realized that I had trouble breathing, she knew Erin had done something wrong. She had done something so wrong as to endanger the life of an innocent girl.
"We're done," I slurred to my mother, "and I want to go home."
"Okay, Amber." Of course, my mother did not care. She was heartless.
However, it was promised that I have one last meeting with Erin before she left. Unfortunately for my mother, she could not take me to my last appointment due to her own for a new job. As a bank teller. My aunt offered to take me back into Morgantown. On the way, she kept pushing for answers to why I was seeing a psychiatrist. She seriously wanted to know what had I so tangled up inside of my own mind that I felt suffocated all of the time.
I could have just bluntly said, "My father abandoned me, my uncle raped me, my mother thinks I'm the spawn of Satan, and I'm struggling with anorexia." But I didn't. I was certainly content talking about high school, my writing, and her bar skills.
I wasn't being rude, but I couldn't help but to fall asleep mid-conversation. My head bobbled up and down until she screeched madly into the parking lot. The headache after that dramatic experience stayed with me for weeks.
Erin waited for me. She was still crying.
Before I even went into session with her, I pulled out a white and red rose from behind my back (magically from the power of Kroger!) and tried my best to smile behind the glass vase. Honestly, I am sure that every bit of my smile looked ridiculous and cricked, but Erin did not care. She instantaneously thanked me for the flowers and poked them. Did she assume them to be fake? My aunt pulled out my fresh digital camera and told us to smile. The picture was put on a memory chip that was left behind in that crazy lobby that was picked up by a random patient and was never seen again. Of course, I did not know of this depressing detail until I went home to upload the fascinating photograph, and when it did not detect the device, I screamed with deliberate fury.
Our meeting was much different than the previous ones. Erin held me close to her when I lunged at her for a soft embrace. And I could feel her fragile body tremble under my arms; not because we were leaving each other, but because she could feel my bleeding cuts soak into her back. She was appalled that I had taken a razor to my arm in the bathroom the second that I walked through the glass doors. Only Erin could understand why, though. Finally I had enough time to tell her that I met someone special. That his name was Jason and he was my everything. "What a lucky guy," she said. "He must be handsome."
"Actually," I humorously alleged, "he's concerned about his weight and wears glasses. But I've never been the shallow type."
And after Erin, there was Lisa.
Promised by the supervisor, she told me that a young girl by the name of Lisa McCay would take over all of Erin's patients. It then occurred to me that I wasn't Erin's only patient, that she could have been more attached to some other psycho than me! Lisa was gorgeous, with black hair, large pale eyes, and freckles. She had the tendency to drink only diet drinks and smack her lips together after doing so. When I walked through those glass doors that day, I was scared. I could actually admit that I was terrified to meet her. My mother kept comforting me, telling me that I was going to do fine and that Lisa was going to like me.
"She's going to hate me," I cried. "Why does everyone always hate me?"
"Erin told me that you were her favorite patient. I hope that I can say the same." Lisa was amazingly addictive! She was constantly offering me candy during out first meeting, and she was much more interesting in my writing than Erin was. Though, she did not have the same type of digging-through-Amber's-mind-and-pulling-out-the-good-details. Lisa had to really try, almost to an excruciating finish, before I told her anything. Usually I would read to her little bits of pieces and unfinished statements from my journal and that was it. We never had a connection.
The first subject was my father. I told her, "Last Friday, at the homecoming football game, my father decided to show up. I could see him from the corner of my eye, stumbling effortlessly near the sidelines because he was totally intoxicated. While the color guard members and I were asking if people would buy tickets for our autumn basket, I didn't realize he shifted his position towards the other side of the field. We accidentally ran into him. He slurred some nonsense, about how I should call him and see him sometime. But all that I wanted to do was run. And I did. I took off running and locked myself in the concession stand bathroom until my aunt found me."
"And why do you dislike your father?"
"Oh, I don't dislike him. I loathe him with every nerve in my body."
"Why, Amber?" she leaned towards me, "Did something happen?"
My heavy-lined eyes glared, "Of course something happened. He beat me and my mother on a nightly basis and then abandoned me in court. But, he doesn't think that he's done anything wrong." I rolled my eyes, "Bastard."
Lisa quickly removed that subject from our conversations because it only led to me getting physical on one of her tablets and breaking it over my knee. She had nowhere else to go, nothing left to do with me. I truly tried to engage some sort of talking with her, but it only brought out unknown rage inside of me. Once, together, we made a list of reasons why I shouldn't cut and/or starve myself. The only answer that candidly meant anything was distracting myself. By distraction in all means, I took it upon myself and created another list while I sat at home with a knife nearest to guide me. And the only answer that candidly meant anything that time was destroying the lists and burn any remains.
After a few months, she recommended that I be put on medication. A sweet, little pill called fluoxotine. Lisa was at a dead-end with my anorexia and cutting; she thought that she had surely nowhere else to go than to force me on a little pill that would control my every reaction, my every emotion until it disintegrated and dissolved inside of my churning blood. My actual doctor, a black, good-looking man by the name of Kirk Ramsay was to be taking care of me medically. He had labs done every meeting, to keep track of my weight. And there was an annual checking-the-arms-to-find-any-cuts sort-of thing. The first time that I revealed my arms, that previous night I took a naughty punishment upon myself. Of course the time that I did the worst damage was when I showed him my mangled limbs. Kirk actually gasped, and he ordered me to push down my arm warmer immediately afterwards. While he was getting my blood pressure and temperature, Kirk would ask me about my writing.
We got in deep.
Sort-of like an obsession, but I wouldn't admit it back then.
Ironically, when he was my age, he wrote a novel about a thieving cult, too! It was insanely awkward. Kirk gladly read my first novel and gave me such positive feedback. He told me, what he liked most, was the fact that I had a gang of very humorous characters. And he was truly amazed to find out that these characters weren't fictional. Oh, they were as non-fiction as Alice. I enjoyed seeing him either before or after my confessionals with Lisa, but on some days, I just wanted to shrivel up into a little bug and have someone squish me.
I desired to have a multi-hued Converse worn by Dominic Howard to descend to crush my brittle body. The pill was immediately controlling me; one of the side-effects was muscular spasms, and let me tell you, I could not stop smiling for hours at a time. Kirk laughed when I told him this. But I didn't. I was too worried that I would be joining Marcus, since a result of his medication was, indeed, his suicide.
He did a bad thing, though. He kept from both me and my mother my weight conditioning. Finally, he had set both of us down, his heavy pin twirling between his fingers, and told us, "Amber has lost thirty pounds." Thirty pounds, my word! I wasn't even considered heavy thirty pounds in the past, for I only weighed 115. But now, I had been balancing on the edge of real anorexia. Debating my condition, Kirk thoroughly asked himself what to do with me. Was I to be admitted as a cutter now, or was my anorexia more dangerous? He even inquired, "Do you force yourself to get sick after meals?"
I felt strong by saying, "No, because I no longer have a gag reflex." Smiling, I held up a finger, "But I do like to drink coffee."
"All of the time," my mother added.
So there was the problem. Since I did not eat anything, and all I did was drink coffee, the caffeinated beverage poisoned my mind into thinking that I actually had some sort of edible substance in my stomach, but in reality, it was just the caffeine from coffee. I did not think there was a problem. I never felt like I had to pass out, and it had been since forever when I last tried to purge. Coffee gave me the adequate energy to succeed in my writing. Where was it now? My mother reached over to steal my Starbucks venti container and dropped it in the trash. I felt like whimpering.
Incredibly embarrassing when, on a day that I could have done without it, I had to strip down to my bra and panties. "For thorough examination," the assistant told me. Both Lisa and the nurse examined my body for valid malfunctions, as in cutting or lumps. I never questioned why they searched for lumps. They did this process without my permission even, and I had never felt so ridiculed in my life. Nobody was listening to me anymore. Now that I was marked down as a crazy, starving, cutting girl, they would not take my word. Apparently to them, everything that I told them was a lie. I could not bare the truth; but I could, and I was. I was not about to lose to professionals just because they think they know everything.
However, this sense of betrayal and sudden violation of my privacy drove me mad. It drove me insanely wild. In the months following the last of my 'thorough examination,' I attempted suicide two different times. The first time was a fluke—a mere accident, I lie—when I made the rainbow with various prescription and over-the-counter medications and chased them down with a Bud Light. The second time, one in which I could have easily done more effort, I took a nice, little, calm, soothing bubble bath. The moment that I was bored with my music and singing, I took apart a cheap razor and drew a sleek, simplistic line over my wrist. Before long, the water was dyed pink and I was soaking in my own blood. I lost one pints of blood by the time I was rushed to the hospital, and the wretched scar still remains.
It's a little bold of me to say that I broke the law three times before I turned the legal age, since the doctors made sure to announce to me every single time I was carried into their arms, "It's against the law to take your own life. You do understand this, right?"
Kirk and Lisa were my worst enemies now.
Lisa turned out to be exactly like Erin. One evening when I entered her office—the one that smelled of blueberries all of the time—she told me to sit down. Even before I approached the chair, I just stood. I looked her directly in the eye with a significant dazzle and breathed, "No." She was shot aback but regained her posture and reached for my hand. I pulled it away. I took a step backwards, hands shaking and my knees buckling, "You're not leaving me, too." Lisa just kept telling me to sit down. Maybe if I didn't, it would break the spell and she'd end up staying with me! Her eyes filled up with tears. I did not feel sorry for her.
She put her face into her palms and cried, "I'm pregnant and they want me out of here due to maternity leave convention. And we all discussed your stipulation, Amber. We think you are well enough to be without therapy."
"No, I am not!"
Like I had a choice to keep her with me. I understood that she was pregnant, but to automatically assume my emotional state was okay, it hurt. Lisa kept pressing me to talk, for it was our last session together, but I had nothing left to say. My mind was suffocating, my heart was breaking, and my hands were trembling. I never shed a tear for her. She gave me this really long, impressive speech about how these sorts of things makes a person stronger, but how could I get that strong when I am already so very weak? Just thinking about it, my body weakens and I feel as if I am going to pass out. I truly was not ready for this. When my hand reached for the door handle, it was really weird to know that this was going to be the last time I was to touch it. Lisa applied her hands on my shoulders, "You can do this."
I stuttered, "Wh-whatever."
Kirk was very happy to know that I was also being put off medication. When was this decided? He filed my information in a special black folder, "You have gained almost half of your weight back, and you haven't performed any cutting in two months." I gagged. "You okay?" I choked and gagged again. "Amber, are you going to get sick?" It was an ugly thing, the substances and liquids that exerted themselves from my body and into the closest trash can. My nerves rushed wildly until they forced my lunch to pour back out of my body. Now surely that was enough proof to let me stay! Kirk patted my back and my mother held back my long, dark hair, "You'll be fine. I know it."
I just vomited without self-doing. Of course I wasn't going to be fine!
So, I left that mental institution with nothing going for me. Even though I entered with thirty more pounds and my arms more sliced and diced, I was departing the way that a person should not. Erin would have treated me better; she would have made me stay in her arms like I was supposed to. My mother signed me out in the lobby, and I stood in a corner. There was another garbage can beside of me, but I was not about to vomit again. The gagging in my esophagus continued. All I could do to keep the food and acid down was constant swallowing. Eventually, my mouth was utterly dry and I was sick and tired of the taste of my own saliva.
A young man, one that would be identified as an emo, decided to stand next to me. He flipped his black hair back and then looked at me, so seductive and traumatizing that I could feel my body grow catatonic. Then his smooth voice patted against my cheek, "You want to cry, don't you?"
I smirked and averted my framed vision, "It's none of your business."
"I don't care." The guy folded his arms, "First time is always the worst here."
"You've no idea what you're talking about." I turned to him and glared at him the most horrid, spectacular way that I thought I could and belted, "I've been attending this place since I was thirteen. And now that I am finished, I've nothing left to do. You might as well tell me to go jump off a bridge. It'd be the best bandwagon of my life if you were to join me!" Clenching my teeth, swearing that they all broke and I chewed on the sharp remains; I whisked beyond the teenaged drama king and gained posture back at my mother's side. My mother placed her arm around me as we disappeared through those glass doors. The aroma of all the new furniture faded, and I was finally content when I did not hear that little boy's desperate pleas.
But I have to admit, that was probably the best experience of my life. Just to say that I went to therapy and conquered myself within those secluded rooms—sacrificing my arms and body—was a treat. A bittersweet candy that I constantly fed to my friends and family. Even though fluoxotine tasted more like rubber when it dissolved inside of my mouth, it made it better for me. It allowed me to change every single part about me for some time and experience what it was like to present myself as a happy person, and see the results of how other people treated me. Kirk was sure that he'd see my novels on a best-seller shelf, and both Lisa and Erin were convinced that I was one of the most mature young girls they've met. But I was so much more.
Did I waste nearly four years of my life at that place?
Food appealed to me again; and razors were the most despicable things. I had won!
And now I finally have enough nerve to say:
I am eighteen. And I am happy.
Right?