"WHY ARE YOU HOME SO LATE?" a familiar voice slurred.
"I had to clean up at the pool," I responded calmly, feeling myself shrink with fear as I carefully and quietly tip-toed to my room. I loved my mother with all of my heart, but when she drank, she was no longer my mother. It all started when Dad left us, and she just wanted to forget. Then it spun out of control and I was caught in the middle of the epic battle between her and the bottle, which she always lost.
I huddled in the familiar corner and waited, shivering, for the storm to pass, which it only did when the monster finally blacked out. When I thought it was safe, I peeked my head out of my room cautiously and saw her frame on the floor, still. Sneaking out from my fortress of safety, I went to go check on her, but saw in horror that she was facedown. I turned her over only to find that she had been in a small puddle of her own vomit. Horrified, I grabbed the phone and dialed 911, hands shaking fervently though I tried my best to calm them.
"Hello, 911, what is your emergency?"
"Yes, hello. I…um," I began, voice cracking and shaking and face feeling hot and wet from tears.
"Try your best to remain calm, miss."
"M-my mom, see, she's, um, a drinker and she, um, she, um, she, um, she d-drank a lo-ot to-to-to-tonight."
"Okay, yes. Go on."
"I, she, well… She passed out and I-I went to go-o che-e-e-eck on h-her and sh-she's…"
"Mhm."
"She's passed-d out a-and I d-d-d-don't know if sh-she's still a-a-a-a-alive bec-c-cause she was i-in he-er own v-v-vomi-it," I finally sobbed out, stuttering and spluttering.
"Alright. And what's your location?"
"I'm at the h-h-house. It's 41 C-cana-ary Ro-ad."
"Okay. You're doing a great job. Help is on the way. Stay on the line. How much did she drink tonight?"
"U-um… I d-d-dunno 'c-c-cause I we-ent right-t to my r-room, but-t I thi-ink a-a b-b-bottle o-of te-quila?"
"Okay. How often does this happen?"
"E-every ni-ight-t-t."
"Is your mother enrolled in an addiction recovery program?"
"No. She-e's no-ot an addict-t! Sh-she can s-stop whenever she wants-s-s!" I screamed, and hung up the phone, slamming it on the ground. It shattered into a million tiny shards and I saw my reflection in the shiny plastic.
I cried on the ground and hit the broken phone with my fist over and over and over until I heard a loud knock on the door. This made my cry out in agony. I didn't want people to see me like this, or her. I didn't want them to see us. But this just prompted them to break down the door. Suddenly people flooded into the main room and everything was a blur of people and shouting. People surrounded my mother and put her on a gurney and people surrounded me and picked me up. I kicked and screamed and scratched.
"DON'T TAKE ME! PLEASE DON'T TAKE US! PLEASE DON'T! STOP! PLEASE STOP! I WANT TO DIE."
They put me on a gurney too and strapped my down to it so I couldn't move. I flailed and spat at anyone who got near me, but eventually I got sleepy. Everything faded to black, and everything was slow again. The last things I heard were the frantic loud shouts of the EMTs as I began to cry anew.
"Please," I whispered, "I don't want to go to sleep. I don't want to have the nightmares. Please."
Obviously they didn't listen, because when I woke up, I was in a hospital. I could tell because everything was white. Even though my vision was blurry and my ears were still ringing, I could hear the steady beep of the heart monitor and see the vague outline of the IV next to me. There was a button in my lap that said "CALL" in big letters on it and I decided to press it. That would be the right thing to do. But when I looked down at my hands, I saw they were all bandaged up and looked like small clubs at the end of my arms. Distressed, I tried desperately to undo the bandaging, but it didn't work and it only hurt a lot, which caused me to let out a small whimper of pain. Nevertheless, I used my club hand to hit the call button and a nurse came around the corner, all smiles.
"Hello, miss. How are you feeling?"
"Dizzy."
"That's normal. It'll wear off with the sedative."
"Let me out. I'm okay now, I promise."
"Not so fast. You had a full force mental breakdown last night. You're on lock down until we can assure that you're not a danger to yourself or others."
"I'm not, okay? Just let me go!" I started to raise my voice, which prompted the nurse to give me a warning look. In my rage, though, I began to hit the various machines around me. The nurse gave a deep 'I hate my job' sigh and refastened the restraints around my ankles, wrists, hips, and forehead. In my frustration, I gave a loud, frustrated scream that must have echoed around the entire hospital. She got a syringe from a nearby cabinet and put it right next to the IV tube.
"Just a little bit to make you calm down a bit, okay? Just a bit."
"NO! NO! NO! NOOOOO!" I screamed like a banshee and thrashed a bit disputed the restraints, but again the fading feeling came over me and I fell back into unconsciousness.
When I came to again, I angrily called, "NURSE!" and the same nurse came to attend to me, though she looked less than thrilled this time.
"Are you ready to be let out of your restraints now?"
I nodded.
"You can't thrash or try to hurt yourself."
I nodded again. Reluctantly, she let me free and the first thing I did was to bend all my joints, relishing the freedom. Then I crossed my arms over my chest.
"Christa."
"Who?"
"Christa."
"You want to see someone?"
I nodded and said, "Christa."
"Well I'm sorry but you're not cleared for visitors yet."
I furrowed my eyebrows at the nurse before turned my head away, refusing to talk to her if I couldn't see Christa.
A second passed. A minute passed. An hour passed. A day passed. A week passed. Nothing changed. I got to privilege to leave my bed and walk around the hospital with my IV in tow. Nothing changed. I got to eat real food. Nothing changed. During my time at the hospital, I learned that I was in the psych ward, and that I would have to see the hospital therapist and psychiatrist if I ever wanted to leave. So I did. And I learned that I was severely depressed. And I learned that I had anxiety. And I learned that I was an extremely broken person. And I had to take antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, but they had to get my dose up to that of a full-grown elephant because I kept developing a tolerance. And I also learned that I had insomnia, and I had to take depressants for that, which didn't make much sense to me.
I wasn't allowed to be around anything I could hurt myself with. No cords, no sharp things, no especially hard things. They ground up my pills and mixed them with water so I couldn't choke myself on them. My existence was characterized by endless hours upon hours of watching the same feel-good movies, reading the same feel-good books, talking to the same fakely cheerful people and others in the psych ward with their demons and dark clouds following them relentlessly. In the infinite time I had to think in, I came to the conclusion that if I wasn't crazy going in, I was surely crazy having been there. I was surely driven mad by the endless white walls, by the unidentifiable slop that was served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, by the medications upon medications that made all my feelings muddy and bland. Eventually, as my depression worsened in the prison of nothingness, they informed me that a female staff member would have to watch me shower to make sure I didn't kill myself in there. I wasn't thrilled, but it all seemed so surreal. I took showers with a stranger watching, I watched movies with a stranger watching, I ate with a stranger watching, I urinated and excreted with a stranger watching. Often I wondered how I got into that rhythm, and, after a while, I couldn't remember.
When, after an eternity of floating around inconsequentially in the white land of blank stares and medicated haze, I was told that I was cleared to leave, I almost didn't believe them. But I didn't smile, I didn't laugh. Instead, I only nodded, took my personal effects and the medication they'd prescribed to me that my medical insurance would probably pay for, and left. I still wore the shapeless white shirt, white pants, and white treaded socks that the hospital had given me to wear as I walked around town carrying my sack of things that belonged to me. I realized as I wandered that I had nowhere to go. Not the place I'd slept before, I couldn't go back there. And then where else was there? I didn't have a home, I didn't have a family. I had nothing but the bag of things that belonged to me. I looked at that bag of things and threw it in the trash. I didn't need those things. So I just walked around town in my hospital garb. Nothing belonged to me, I didn't belong to anything. In a way, it was a peaceful existence. Peaceful and empty, yet loud and full. I found a small wooded area and figured that was as good as any place for me to be. I sat down at the base of a tree and leaned against the broad trunk. I closed my eyes, for the first time not afraid to sleep. In the days before, I'd learned that my bleary waking existence was just as scary as my bleary resting existence. Everything had melted into the same thing. Nothing mattered, and everything was too complicated, yet painfully simple.
Suddenly, a voice cut through my existential crisis blur.
"Ymir? Is that you?"