Day 26
Mom turns to look at me just as I start protesting, “Mom, please, this is crazy.”
Mom looks me dead in the eyes, “you’ve been acting pretty crazy lately, Bethany.” Then she turns to Mrs. Boswell, “what are you suggesting I do exactly?”
“Well she’s a minor so you can have her committed even against her will.”
“Committed?” my mom asks her eyes suddenly wide.
“Mrs. Langley, Bethany has a serious problem-”
“I do not!” I shout but she just ignores me.
“And it’s not one that simple love will cure. I suggest that Bethany be committed to a psychiatric facility. There’s one in the area that specializes in eating disorders…” she goes on to tell Mom all about the positives of having me locked up. I just watch Mom’s face trying desperately to see what her reaction will be but she stands stone still except for pushing Caty’s hand away when she tries to eat her hair.
“And you think this will help her?” she asks after a pause.
“Mom, you can’t really send me away!” I shriek so loudly that a nurse walking by pulls back the curtain and tells me to watch the volume.
“Honey,” my mom reaches out and touches my shoulder, “we’re all worried about you. You haven’t eaten dinner with us in nearly a week. You’re not going to heal without proper nutrition. I think this is the best thing for you.”
This can’t be happening. I glare at Mom for betraying me. How could she do that? I’m not crazy. I’m just upset about my leg and Juliard pulling my scholarship, that’s all. I don’t have an eating disorder.
Mrs. Boswell breathes a sigh of what I assume is relief. I glare at her now. There is no reason to be happy about the current situation. “I’ll have the social worker here at the hospital call to make sure there’s a bed open. The treatment is in-patient so you will want to pack a bag of clothes for her to take. The typical stay is about seven to ten days, though sometimes its longer for patients with an eating disorder.”
Mom nods. I bury my head in my hands and try not to cry. Seriously, what are they doing to me?
I end up sitting there for a little over two hours while the hospital psychologist calls the local hospital to find me a bed. Mom runs home to pack a bag of clothes. Mrs. Boswell told her that none of them could have ties because they don’t allow anything rope like in the hospital for fear of suicides. I’m not suicidal so I think this is utterly ridiculous but nobody asks my opinion.
When Mom returns she’s allowed to drive to me to the hospital. At check-in they ask me a zillion different questions. Have you ever done drugs? No. Do you experience sights or sounds that no one else sees or hears? No. Do you perform ritualistic behaviors to keep ‘bad things’ from happening? No. Do you have self harm thoughts? No. Do you have thoughts of harming others? No. Do you have a history of an eating disorder? I pause for a moment before responding simply, “apparently.”
Once I’ve been checked in I’m lead to “the quiet room.” The quiet room means that you’re locked in a room with only a Bible and some coloring materials. You’re isolated from everyone except for meals when you have to come out. They monitor how much you eat and if you don’t eat at least three quarters of the meal they provide then they make you drink a nutrition shake.
The quiet room is boring. I don’t really read the Bible much and it’s not exactly fun reading material so for the most part I just ignore it. Instead I lay on the bed and color. But coloring gets old really fast too. I’m not even allowed to attend group therapy sessions. At dinner I refuse to eat. They can’t shove the food down my throat after all. They tell me that the sooner I start eating, the sooner I’ll be allowed out of the quiet room and eventually out of the hospital.
I believe them but I still don’t want to eat. They don’t let you use the bathroom for two hours after eating so that everything gets digested. Otherwise I’d just throw it up. I compromise by drinking the entire shake they give me. Then I return to the quiet room, settle in for the night, and cry myself to sleep.
March 17th, -0- total days till graduation, -0- days left of school
It doesn’t take me long to decide that I’d rather eat then be locked in the quiet room. On my fourth day in the hospital they let me out of the quiet room because I’m being “agreeable.” I get to meet all of the other patients. Some of them are psychotic crazy; they talk to people that aren’t there and start screaming for no reason. One girl got upset about God only knows what and started throwing the furniture in her room. They ended up locking her in a different quiet room and putting her in a straight jacket. You could hear her screaming in there from down the hall. I avoid the crazies as much as possible.
Next are the involuntary depressed patients. They all tried to commit suicide one way or the other. I don’t think the hospital fixes most of them. Rather they spend all their energy acting like their fine so they can be released. One girl I talk to has been in the hospital twelve times in the past year. She keeps trying to commit suicide and her parents always find her in the nick of time. This time she tried drinking bleach. Before coming to the psych hospital she had to have her stomach pumped in the emergency room.
Then there are the depressed people that checked themselves in. Those people genuinely want help. They’re the people that go to group therapy and actually talk about their problems. I like listening to their stories and privately laughing on the inside. Their mommy and daddy problems are so screwed up its ridiculous.
The last group is my group; the “ED” patients. I laughed at that because that makes it sound like we have erectile dysfunction. The eating disorder patients spend most of their time talking to each other, comparing notes on how they got away with it for so long. I guess I’m a little behind them because I didn’t admit I had anorexia until I came here. Most of these girls admitted it way beforehand.
It’s lonely in the quiet room. You’re not allowed to make or receive any phone calls. But today is visiting day. I’m hoping Mom or Dad can make it but I doubt they will. I tried calling but Audrie answered the phone and wouldn’t give it to anyone else in the family so I wasted my daily phone call and didn’t even find out if they were coming to visit. When visiting hours arrive people start flowing in. I sit by the door and wait for someone to walk through for me. But half an hour into visiting hours no one’s arrived so I wander back to my room and lay down.
Not long after there’s a call from the nurses’ station telling me I have a visitor. I run out into the hallways and look for Mom or Dad but I don’t see them. I walk to the nurses’ station to ask who’s visiting. The nurse points to Alex. Alex?
“Um… hi?” I say walking over to where she’s sitting.
“Hey, thought you could use some company. I know it gets pretty lonely in this place.”
“How did you even know I was here?” I ask sitting down beside her.
“When you didn’t show up at school I figured something was up. I called your house and your mom told me that you were here. She said that it was so nice of me to be concerned about you and did I know when visiting hours were? I took that as they weren’t going visit you so I decided to drop by.”
I stare at her blankly, “but we’re not even friends,” I finally say.
Alex starts to laugh, “you don’t fuck around do you? Do you always say whatever’s on your mind? Must be nice.” Then she turns to me, “why the hell not?”
“Why the hell not, what?”
“Why aren’t we friends?”
I shrug, “we have nothing in common.”
“Sure we do. We’re both passionate artists.”
I can’t seem to figure this girl out. “You want to be friends?” I ask cautiously.
“Hell, why not; seems like we’re both lacking in that department. And I’m guessing that you’re not going to tell your prima ballerina friends about this little visit to the psych ward. You need someone to talk to and I get what you’re going through.”
“You have anorexia?”
She shakes her head. “Well okay maybe I don’t understand everything but I know what it feels like when people call you crazy and lock you away.”
“I’m not crazy,” I say louder then what is necessary.
Alex smiles, “I didn’t call you crazy. I said they are calling you crazy.”
We sit in silence for a minute. “So what were you in here for?”
Alex sighs and sits back in her chair, crossing her legs in the process. “Well the first time I was in for attempting suicide. I took a bunch of pills. Anything I could find; everything from a bottle of Tylenol to a bottle of Vicodin. But my parents found me and brought me to the emergency room. I was throwing up everywhere but after they pumped my stomach they sent me here.”
“And the second time?” I’m seriously shocked that she’s sharing all this with me but I’m kind of glad that she’s opening up at the same time.
“Well I’m bipolar,” she tells me. “And I was having an out of control manic episode. I spent tons of money that I didn’t have, I slept with a bunch of guys that I didn’t even like; I just wanted the sex. I wasn’t sleeping and after a bit I started hallucinating. Mom decided that I would be safer in the hospital.” She starts laughing, “even in the hospital though I tried seducing one of the male nurses.”
That makes me laugh too.
When we’ve stopped laughing she asks, “so you’re in for anorexia?”
I nod.
“You know it’s good that you’re getting help.”
“I don’t want help.”
“But you need it right? That’s how I was anyway.”
I study her for a moment. “Yeah, I guess,” I respond tentatively.
“It’s lonely isn’t it?”
“Isn’t what?”
“Being an artist. When you’re the best at what you do I mean. It’s lonely at the top.”
“You think you’re the best painter?” I ask her skeptically.
“Well, at least at our school. I wouldn’t compare my work to Renoir or Dali, but yeah, I think I’m pretty good. Don’t you consider yourself the best ballerina around? You got into Juliard didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Where did you get accepted?”
“I didn’t apply to anywhere.”
My head snaps around to face her, “why not?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t see the point.”
I want to ask more but I don’t want to push her too hard. This is a new, different Alex I’m seeing. And I could use a friend that I’m not always competing with. We spend the next hour having regular girl talk. Alex doesn’t seem nearly as weird to me as she did before this visit. It’s like now that I understand some of what she’s been through, I get why she acts the way she does. Visiting hours end sooner then I’d like them to. Neither one of us know exactly what to do when we say goodbye. We’re not good enough friends to hug but no goodbye seems wrong too. Alex decides to go for a handshake. I smirk but hold my hand out too.
“Let me know if your parents can’t visit this weekend. I’ll come and keep you company again.” Then one of the nurses ushers her down the hall and out the door.
March 18th, -0- total days till graduation, -0- days left of school
Psychologists always want to talk about what led you to develop an eating disorder. I think that’s stupid because I don’t have body issues the way the rest of these girls do. They try to convince me that I’ve suffered with anorexia for a long time but I immediately argued that I wasn’t suffering. If I hadn’t maintained my size I wouldn’t be able to dance. So then they clutch onto that; well why are you willing to sacrifice your health for ballet? Simple: it’s my life. Without ballet I have nothing.
Then they try to argue that I have family and friends that love me, which I already know my family loves me so they’re not making any progress by bringing up this point. I’m clearly not explaining myself well enough because my thinking makes complete sense. I know it does. But these whack jobs don’t even listen when I try to explain. Finally I give up and stop arguing. They tell me if I keep fighting therapy I won’t get out anytime soon but their version of therapy isn’t doing any good.
Maybe I should take a page from the book of the involuntary depressed patients and just go along with whatever they say to get out of here fast. But my mom says that the whole family wants me back, healthy and happy. I’m trying to get healthy but I literally have to force myself not to gag when I put food in my mouth. It’s like my mind is forcing my body not to want food and I’m not sure how to overcome that.
I tried bringing that up with the psychologist but they seemed to think I was making it up. He said that my body should want the food and I consciously decide to gag to convince my body not to want the food. He claims that’s a mechanism that I’ve used for so long that I might not even realize that I’m still making that decision. While that kinda made sense it didn’t help me with my problem at all, so I’m not sure what good it did to discuss it with him anyway. Even so, he thanked me for bringing my problem to him.
Despite all the gagging, I am managing to finish at least half of my food at every meal. One of the nurses congratulates me on my progress. I think that’s kind of sick, that consuming three to four hundred calories is progress but I just smile and thank her.
I miss home a lot. I call them and this time Mom answers. She says she’s going to come visit Sunday then passes the phone to Dad. He tells me that they all want me to get well and come home soon. I promise him I’ll try. Then he passes the phone to Jessie and on it goes. I end up talking to everyone except Audrie and Caty since they’re already in bed by the time I call.
“We miss you,” my mom says when the phone is handed back to her.
“I miss you too. It’s lonely here.” Alex’s words echo through my head as I say that and I smile.
After we both say our I love you’s I hang up. One of the other girls on the ward is waiting to use the phone. I know she’s one of the paranoid ones so I walk away quickly so she won’t think I’m trying to listen in on her conversation.