Lying is Only a Sin if You Get Caught

“I need to go to a hospital.” is easier to say than “I’m losing my grip on reality.” It’s actionable, simple to understand, and lacks hesitation. However it does beg the question, why? And really, how do you describe it? The feeling that if you reached up you could peel back a corner of the sky like double sided tape. The hour long showers where sometimes you forget your name. Or the eighteen voice memos you have saved on your phone, where you whisper your desire to die like you’re already at the funeral.

It’s a nice day outside, actually, when I try to explain myself. We sit on the porch together, my dad and his girlfriend drinking sauvignon blanc unaware that yesterday I spent fifteen minutes looking up what the best thing to drink is before you overdose. My tongue is dead weight in my mouth, and I can’t seem to get it to cooperate. Instead I start to cry.

In the distance, I hear myself say, “I want to kill myself.” and my dad asking me if life is really all that terrible. Does he not do enough for me? Am I not grateful? It is an uphill battle from here. Because when you’re mentally ill and you need help, not only do you need to gain the courage to ask for it, but you need the moxie to prove you deserve it, too.

Suicide is sticky. Once you’ve said the word, there’s no taking it back. For how long, they ask, have I wanted this. I reply, “A few months now. It’s getting worse.”

I don’t mention the cravings in middle or high school. It doesn’t matter now. And then the penultimate question, “You know I love you, right?” Which is to say, “Isn’t my love enough to keep you alive?” And while the answer to the first is yes, the answer to the second is no. It will never be enough.

Just looking at the shiny blue convertible my dad purchased as his midlife crisis pisses me off, but when he decides that it’s the best vehicle to drive me to the hospital in, I don’t say a word. I haven’t said anything substantial in a while anyway. I wasted all my words on a voice recording no one will ever hear. Instead I slide onto the cream leather seats and let him pick the music. I’m staring at my hands when he asks me, “What will you do if they say there’s nothing wrong with you?” And I respond the only way I know how. “Then I’ll kill myself.” He stares right through me, and for a fleeting moment I wish he would look long enough so we would crash.

I decline to allow my dad to follow me into the triage room. There’s something embarrassing about this, like I’m weak, like I’m broken. In any case, this is something I do alone. It’s all very clinical, this process. I leave behind my soft sweatpants and fuzzy socks for paper scrubs and socks with grips on the bottom. My dad comes in to say goodbye. He asks me again, “Is this really what you want?” I can tell it’s breaking his heart to see me like this, but then I remember–

He’s screaming up the stairs, taking them three at a time, my name like blood, over and over again. He’s slamming open my door and shaking me all over. It’s something I’ll never forget, this look on his face, fresh panic and old laugh lines. When he realizes I’m awake, he sits on my bed with me and holds me, just for a little while. “The school called me,” he says. “They said you were gone, Ed, what happened?” Your courage is a small coal that you kept swallowing. So I do it, I swallow the coal, and I say,

“Yes. I’ll be okay Dad. I love you.” And he leaves. The room they lead me to has a rounded piece of furniture that somewhat resembles a chair, a bed that looks more like a massage table, and a tv bolted to the wall with a plexiglass covering. The bulb above me is bolted to the ceiling as well, dead flies bunched up under the stream of light. The doorknob is sloped, and there’s a large gap under the door the size of my fist.

After I’m changed, someone comes in and takes my vital signs, I sign a bunch of paperwork, and answer a lot of questions about my physical health. They tell me a psychiatrist will be in to see me soon, but by the time that they manage to make an appearance I’ve ripped off my hospital bracelet and started coloring on my gown with half a red crayon I found under the bed.

He’s asking me the questions I knew would come, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Before I know it, I’m floating toward the ceiling, investigating the cheap panels they have up here. I’m still answering the questions, somehow–I’ve always been a great multitasker.

“I read that paper I had you fill out for me earlier, Ed. You wrote that you have been thinking about hurting yourself every day. Can you tell me more about that?” But what more is there to say? When I’m in a car, I want it to crash. When I’m at home, I think about the knife block in the kitchen. When I drive past the river, I think of the non-action required to let myself drown inside of it. I’m eighteen, Doctor, I could just buy a gun. I’ve picked out a spot, deep in the woods behind my childhood home, the first and last place I’ll feel unsafe.

Instead I tell him about my birthday coming up, the way that the fear creeps in. I wasn’t meant to make it this far. I’m living on borrowed time, and God wants it back. But this isn’t enough for him. “Do you want to commit suicide right now? Do you have a plan?” I rocket back into my body with a speed that makes my teeth rattle. I’m in a room meant to stop me from committing suicide in it, so no, I don’t have a plan. Instead of saying that I go quiet, but he takes that as dissent and starts telling me that he doesn’t think I’m a real danger to myself.

There’s a maelstrom inside of me that’s gone electric. Angry isn’t a good enough word to describe it. There is no more drinking of their acid, there is no more apathy shell. The words come out of me at a high volume and for once I don’t stop them.

“I swear to God, you better put me in a fucking room before I kill myself right in front of you, I don’t care what I have to do to make it happen,” I say more and more, holding my life hostage. Begging someone to care that my life is ending and I’m watching it in slow motion. It feels like devastation.

After this moment, time is a blister. I lay in the bed for hours, mindlessly watching Bolt on the shitty tv in my room. I use the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and stare at my own reflection. It’s distorted in the mirror, which is cracked and has another layer of plexiglass over it. I don’t recognize myself, and every sensation is muted, I’m walking in a dreamland. Someone down the hall is screaming, but I just shuffle back to my room with the door ajar, ignoring the police running down the hallway and the beeping coming from the adjacent rooms.

I don’t take in much after the paramedics show up and strap me into the stretcher. I’m being moved to an inpatient facility, I know that much, but everything has taken on an unreal quality. The next thing I remember is standing in the shower room at the hospital, holding a pair of leggings and the long sleeve that I’m going to be living in for the next week. The tiles and walls are gray, and everything is sloped– the showerhead, the door handle, even the accessibility rails. I briefly consider killing myself, how long it would take for someone to notice, but I would have to put some serious effort into thinking up a plan and I just don’t have the energy for that at this point. So I shower, one step at a time.

The time I spend inside this hospital passes. The doctors put me on a lot of medication– some good, some bad. I’m woken up every hour by a nurse opening the door, shining a flashlight on our faces to see that we are still alive, and then closing the door again. It reminds me too much of–

–a hundred nights, sleeping in the basement and listening closely for heavy footfalls on the stairs. Miranda Lambert is leaking through the door until it swings open to reveal Mom, red bandana and knee brace on, humming with no room to breathe. She flips on the light switch and I squint in the sudden brightness, checking the time on my phone; two o’clock in the morning. She starts tearing through my closet with a vengeance, succumbing to the Ritalin rush. There is no stopping her now, so I just know–

I’m awake all night.

Some of the medication that they put me on is good for me, lowers my anxiety and the shaking and the never ending rush of thoughts, but none of it seems to end the disconnect that exists between me and my body. I can’t seem to come back to it. I count the objects around me, categorize them by color, shape, sound, I distinguish my position in space, I name the streets I grew up on, I ground myself, over and over again. But it doesn’t seem to matter, and I’ve convinced myself it’s not working because I’m not real. In my weakest moments I think, If I say something, they’re going to notice, and then someone’s going to come after me. I can feel my mind sliding, but I just can’t bring myself to care.

Slowly, the people that I’ve come to know in the hospital get discharged. More people come in. There is a never ending rotation of people needing help. The new group who come in are more likely to be on Suboxone than Wellbutrin, though. They remind me more of my mother than of myself. I want to leave too. I’m feeling less like I want to commit suicide and more like I don’t exist, which is good enough for me, so I start to smile more, I attend groups, I tell my doctor I’m feeling better.

On my last night in the hospital, a woman who’s detoxing comes over to me and strikes up a conversation on a couch. She wants to know how I got better, she says. I just look so happy. I give her my best smile and for once, tell the truth. I lean in close, so that I can smell her sweat and her God-awful coffee breath. “I lie.”