There are gradations of crazy. There are types, classifications, just like anything else. There are a couple first-timers here like me. We try not to take up too much space, try to prove with our silence that we don’t belong here. There are some who have been to treatment for addiction, alcoholism, and eating disorders, and they unanimously see this as a step down the recovery institution ladder. The rest seem strangely comfortable. They have visited here or somewhere like here before. Two or three came in properly crazy, talking to themselves and smelling of urine. But now they’re cleaned up and look just like the smiling housewife who says she just needs to “reset her medications.” There are a lot of those. People who were doing fine and leading normal lives, and then they got caught up in the illusion, started believing they were indeed as normal as they looked. Janice the swimming instructor stopped taking her meds and decided to go diving while wearing a winter coat full of bricks. Steve the publicist quit drinking, got some bad advice from an AA fundamentalist who said his psych meds were drugs and needed quitting too, then Steve ended up painting his windows black and telling his wife she had to abort their baby because it was not human.
But nobody says the word “suicide.” Even the girl with bandages on her wrists doesn’t mention anything about trying to kill herself. They say things like they’re in here getting “recalibrated” or “reset,” like they’re just some malfunctioning machine that needs a reboot. Maybe it’s that simple. Someone just needs to unplug me, let me cool down for a little bit, then plug me back in, good as new. Maybe I never really wanted to die. Maybe I just needed to power off. Maybe we’re just robots who are only ever off or on, but we’re not the ones who are supposed to decide when to flip the switch.
How do I apologize to my family for trying to kill myself? How do I sit with them on my psych ward bed and convince them I won’t do it again? Every soft sound they make, every slow, deliberate movement makes me want to slap myself in the face over and over, because I can tell how hard they’re trying not to startle me, like I’m some fragile, erratic thing they can’t trust. And there are so many feelings I could be feeling, but the only one that makes any sense is embarrassment, and there is nothing glamorous about that. I am not the sexy genius whose brain is too big for this world. I am not the brilliant artist who speaks to angels. I am just a girl with a chemical imbalance and a family who’s a little scared of me, and I can’t look them in the eyes, I can’t say anything better than I’m sorry. All I can do is let my sister hold my hand like she’s been doing my whole life, and as she squeezes my fingers it is only those small bones that break, and nothing else feels anything close to what alive is supposed to feel like.