My first time

"You become your environment, and you become what you are expected to be...I  went in well and turned ill overnight."

-Norah Vincent (Voluntary Madness)

(sometime during my first hospital stay)

Ok let's get back on track here. I started this blog to post word vomit about my sickness and hospital stays, my journey into insanity and back again and I haven't been writing like I thought I would. But I'm having one of those nights where I can't sleep and my head is racing with thoughts, basically writing one of these things itself so I thought I better take advantage of it tonight.

May 10th 2002 and it started like this.....

I had been abusing some sleeping medication for a little while now, not excessively but abusing none the less and this night I took 1 or 2 pills before taking a shower. I got a little woozy in the shower and for some reason I can't recall I decided after dressing that I would cut my wrist. Not suicide cut but because of the sleeping pills my motor skills were impaired and I cut myself much worse than I indented and because I was high and not thinking right I decided to show the deep gash with little balls of fat peeking out, to my younger siblings....bad idea...really stupid. I scared the shit out of them, obviously and this was the final straw with my parent's. They tried themselves, unsuccessfully to talk me into going to the hospital and then got me to talk to some guy on a suicide hot line or something. Which was horrible for me because I did not want to go to the hospital but I'm the type who pretty much always tells people what they want to hear. So I got talked into it pretty fast. They said it was just for one night to talk to my doctor and figure out a different medication situation for me to try....blah blah blah. But it turned into 3 weeks.

I spent the first night in emergency still naively thinking it was just for one night. After the horrible night there I was lead up to "crazy ward" and shown my bed. I told them I wasn't staying and they informed me, that yes I was....And the crying began.

After that stay at the Hospital I came home a different person. I feel like the Tessa that went in, didn't come back. She died. The drugs, the treatment, the whole environment swallowed her up. I was told I was sick and I became sick.