Hello all. I am excited about my new blog. I do a lot of writing in my daily life most of which has been private up till now. I finally decided I would reach out and give humanity another chance. I am extremely distrustful to put it mildly, but I decided I would give it a shot.

 This past year for me has been rough. I graduated from college and moved back to my hometown for the first time since I left 6 or so years ago. And suddenly everything I had been working toward just disintegrated. I have begun to realize that there is absolutely nothing I can do with my education besides go to grad school and my grades are mediocre at best. I spent almost my entire adolescence instituionalized which I'm sure most of you can relate to and so I guess when I finally got out and made it to college I just expected to magically put that part of my life behind me. It didn't work that way. I spent a year psych ward free till I had a crisis and had to be hospitalized again twice that next year. Then I went about 3 or 4 years getting by till just this last November I got committed for an overdose that was just desperate. All of these hospitalizations resulted from losing access to healthcare in some respect. I'm poor, with no insurance and basically nothing going for me but my education. And of course, no familial support. I'm having a hard time figuring out how I will explain my gaps in achievement and employment to prospective grad schools and employers. The truth is I am deeply ashamed of my past because I was labeled "mentally ill" when I was just 11 and first hospitalized at 14. No matter what I do it seems I can't escape this label I have. And I will admit it is my label too now. I joke to friends about my craziness and they laugh with me. I act like it doesn't bother me but it does.

So now that you have some fo the history...I am having flashbacks from this experience in November. I am still not sure what happened. I had to go off the meds which got me healthier physically, I wasn't sick anymore, I had gotten really thin on the meds cause they took away my appetite and I am like 98lbs now so you know it was bad. So then I thought this is good I shouldn't be on them anyway. But then I started getting depressed slowly. The little things here and there and 6 months later it was everything I could do not to kill myself. Getting out of bed was nearly imposible. I stopped being able to work, or go to school and I was completely hopeless. And since i have been through this so many times before it makes it so much worse. I tried to get help. I didn't qualify for any assistance apparently and I just went downhill. Till one day I took a bottle of painkillers...it was almost impulsive. I knew exactly what they would do to me, but it was like in slow motion, my whole life was flashing before my eyes and I just couldn't think. And then it happened. I started hyperventilating, I couldn't breathe and I freaked. The room started spinning, I got tunnel vision and I thought I was going to die. It was in that moment I knew I had to do something, to just suck it up and call for help. So I got up the courage to do it. I couldn't drive at that point I was so sick so I called 911 dialed and hung up twice till I finally talked to the operator. I told her I couldn't breathe and they came. First the firfighters barged in took my vital signs asked questions, then the medics....I broke down and told them what happened.

 It took so much out of me to trust them. I was so scared. And the reaction I got from the medic was anger. He began yelling at me, telling me this "was not the way to do it" patting me down to make sure I didn't have a weapon and accusing me of lying to him when he discovered my cuts from self-mutilation that I hadn't told him about. He never asked about that. I wasn't even thinking about my cutting at that point. That was one of the last things on my mind. But he reacted with anger and he threatened to restrain me even though I was the most non- violent person imaginable. Anyone who knows me knows I'm about as passsive as a baby chick or slug. And when he yelled at me I started crying so hard I couldn't breathe. Tears streamed down my cheeks and all I could do was say "i'm sorry". He never acknowledged me, not once. And when he touched me I got so scared he would hurt me, right in the back of that ambulance.

 Honestly, he is probably a nice guy in real life just burned out on his job. But he sure made me feel like shit for feeling so bad. All I could do was apoligize. He made me wish I had just let myself die. It was like my whole world was closing in on me already when he got to my apartment and after that 20 min tops of interacting with him, when I was really only  just half-lucid made believe that there really was no hope. People can't be trusted. Nobody cares if you die. There isn't a point to anything. And most of all I knew in that 20 minutes that nobody understands or would ever understand. I was just a bad crazy person and I should be punished for it. And I was punished. Just like I was when I was a kid. Punished for something I can't seem to control no matter how hard I try. But the punishment is nothing compared to the judgment, in his eyes....how stupid he thought I was, he judged me harshly in that 20 minutes and essentially decided I didn't really deserve my life. And he made it explicitly clear to me through the entire ambulance ride. Obviously he did save my life, it's his job and he wanted to keep his job. But it was obvious to me he didn't like it. One guys opinion doesn't really matter all that much, but when it is combined with your parents abandoning you for all intensive purposes, suddenly the message holds a lot more weight. 

So this happened in November of last year. It all happened pretty fast really. 8hrs in the ER 3 days in the state hospital and then I was out and suddenly I qualified for health care at least for a limited time. All in all what came out of the experience was that I got healthy again pretty fast. I got on a new med that has helped me tremendously with no side effects, it's been magical. I guess what happened was they were overmedicating me for years and years sometimes pretty severely and it led to a whole host of problems for me. They labeled me with all these problems I didn't have and when they finally just started treating the depression for what it was I got much better. Friends say I am like a different person now. So ultimately I guess I have to be grateful.

 But I find myself so angry at how I was treated in my own apartment. What gives anyone the right to come into my apartment and judge me so harshly? He betrayed my trust and I am angry. At first I was just sad, but now I'm just angry. He knows nothing about me. Yet he sits there and pretends that he has me all figured out. He made a host of basic assumptions about me that were totally false. He assumed I didn't want to go to the hospital. Umm.....hello! I called EMS! Of course I wanted to go to the hospital. I was so desperate to go to the hospital I called them, that is pretty desperate since I am not easily trusting. I wouldn't call unless I had no other option. And secondly he assumed I was violent. I have never been violent ever in my life. In fact I am the girl who will sit there and let someone beat me up and not tell anyone. I would have no idea what to do with a gun and i don't even engage in verbal arguments I just walk away. I am so passive that at one point I completely went mute when I was a teenager and people actually thought I was deaf! So yeah, if he looked at me at all in the first 3 minutes of talking to me he would know I am not violent. I gave him no reason to believe I was a danger to him or anyone except of course myself. But somehow my craziness just got lumped with a propensity for violence, which is just absurd. And another obvious assumption he made about me is that I am a spoiled rich kid. That couldn't be farther from the truth. I am white yes, very blond actually, but I am 24, I completely support myself on slightly over minimum wage, have 3 roomates and literally scrape by unless I have a second job which I could only keep up for a short period. And I am nearly $10,000 in medical debt. Another dumb assumption. And another assumption that goes along with that is that he thought I had no reason to hurt myself. He kept saying "you're too young to be hurting yourself like this" "YOU NEED TO STOP THIS" (just like that too) and similar statements. Like I asked for it, like I asked to be raped for 10 years by my biological father and abandoned by my mother and then I asked for being locked up and drug up so bad I couldn't keep my eyes open. I wanted all that to happen so I could arrive at this point where I am so hopeless I feel suicidal and want to die every waking moment of my life! And what the hell does "too young" mean anyway? Like if I was 40 or 70 it would be any less tragic that I felt so bad I couldn't cope anymore? He missed the mark completely. And the part that really sucks is I can't even tell him that. So I am writing about it hoping I can get some closure. And you know what? It is helping.

The good news is I am doing so much better now. I rarely think of dying. I sleep better, I eat better and I even have some plans for my future. Crazy how much taking a tiny pill every morning changes things.

Thanks for listening guys.