This is my story and I am going to lose it soon.

content note: psychiatric abuse, mentions of self harm

I don't know how to fight the system but I want to shut it down, make it stop. I would love to know a better way. I'm pissed off about it with a burning passion whenever I can believe it wasn't my fault. And it wasn't. I was a kid. 

Attention and connection are basic human needs. This is the story of how I learned it isn't ok to want those things or ask for help. (It should be ok. It isn't safe)

I have been in the psychiatric system since before I knew what mental health was. We exhausted all the holistic stuff when I was a kid. Valerian tea and tart cherry juice didn't fix my sleep issues and a vitamin cocktail and being banned from eating gluten or dairy didn't cure the autism that professionals had been saying I had but not actually diagnosing me with since I was 7 or maybe earlier. I'm told neurofeedback helped my behavior a bit but I only remember headaches and silly animations. My mom says the therapist I saw when I was 10 was the first to recommend me for residential treatment. (This is foreshadowing.)

I say the diet and vitamins didn't really help. They were still arguably some of the best treatment I got. When I was 14 or 15 I got my first "real medicine". Prozac not only didn't help, but it made my depression worse and gave me restless legs syndrome. (Every SSRI, SNRI, and antipsychotic gives me restless legs syndrome, except Latuda, which gave me full blown akathisia. Gabapentin helps but it's more pills. Lithium gave me hypothyroidism.) I was prescribed it at IOP and partial. They said I wasn't trying to get better so I stopped trying to get better. Things ramped up. I tried to kill myself. I didn't have a plan for what to do if I lived. That wasn't supposed to happen. I panicked and I texted the crisis text line. They told me to go to the hospital. I said no. In the time between the night and the morning the cops arrived at my legal address telling my dad I might not be alive. (Never trust the hotlines. I wish I knew that.)

I was in the hospital for 3 months that time. At the medical hospital they helpfully explained that I could go to the psych hospital voluntarily or involuntarily. I chose voluntarily and I was too afraid to fully appreciate the irony. 3 months was very long- most people stayed a week or 2. People who wanted help were kicked out. They were called attention seeking. I had a friend who was a teen mom of a toddler in a horrific abusive relationship. They told her she wasn't in acute enough danger because she told them she needed help to stay alive. She was there for a week. (I can't articulate the lesson but that's another thing I wish I understood.)

I have too many stories. I don't know what to say about these places because it was my whole life. It was where I lived. I learned a lot of card games and bad acronyms for DBT skills. Every day people had crisises, were restrained and sedated, screaming and crying and punching and harming. It never stopped being terrifying but it became normal. We were checked on every 15 minutes except when someone was throwing the chairs that were filled with sand to prevent that very thing and all the staff were busy. 

I went to partial again. Different kinds of treatment mark the time in my life. I learned that shallow cuts are attention seeking so I started digging through the fat in my limbs. I tried to die more times. I must be invincible. The next hospitalization was a month and a half, then 7 months of residential. 

At the hospital I managed to follow the rules. I hid and cried and shut down and internalized. At residential you can't follow the rules however hard you try. I lost points for attention seeking if I cried or hyperventilated or hurt myself where staff could see. I lost points if I tried to get out of their line of sight. I lost points for isolating if I didn't talk to anyone and I lost points for passing notes when I wanted to communicate and couldn't speak and I lost points for gossiping or forbidden topics or speaking negatively about the facility if I actually talked to my friends. I got restrained and refocused (can't talk to anyone or leave your room for a day). A staff member made a joke about sexual assault while restraining me. I spent at least 3 months, probably more, on precautions where nothing is allowed in your room and you're watched every second. They technically don't look at you in the bathroom but you can't close the door either. I kept peeing my pants because I was afraid to ask to be supervised in the bathroom. Usually not enough that anyone saw but I was still smelly and uncomfortable. Someone was restrained every day. Once we all had to step over a girl in the hallway. (I wish I fought back more. I should have bitten that woman more than once. I wish I stood up for my friends and the other kids)

My life was a blur of treatment. Now my life is empty. I have "late regression/catatonia type breakdown in autism". Apparently it's a trauma response. It's been almost a year since I could speak. I sometimes lose the ability to move, to different degrees. I seem way more disabled than I was. I can't go places and do things. I spend a lot of time in bed. When I can move I have horrible meltdowns like I hadn't had since I was a kid. If I go back to inpatient I won't be a calm internalizer anymore and I will be physically hurt on a daily basis. Everyone except the safe part of my family thinks I'm faking. Attention seeking. It isn't real catatonia but it's related to it and I still have treatment resistant depression so I'm going to get ECT in a few weeks. I'm terrified. I found this project researching all the bad things that can happen with it. I don't want to do it but it is supposed to be one of the last options. I don't want to live like this anymore. My favorite musical is next to normal. Diana gets ECT and loses 19 years of her memory. I am 19 years old. This is my story and I am going to lose it soon. You can have it.