Throwaway because nobody knows. And I don't want them finding out through Reddit.
When I was 16 I attempted suicide and ended up in an inpatient ward. I stayed there for a month. I walked in hating the world. I resisted everything and everyone. I was given an empty room with two beds and a promise of a future roommate. I slept fitfully, because I had hoped I'd be sleeping eternally and I was alive and that didn't sit well with me. When I woke up I was fed and told to join the group. 5 other girls and 1 guy, all there for fucked up reasons. One girl's ("Erin") parents dropped her off there, she was perfectly normal and healthy, but her parents claimed that there was something wrong and wouldn't pick her up from the hospital or call her or anything and from what Erin told me over the next few weeks had gone AWOL when the hospital tried to find them. The boy, 15, refused to speak about why he was there, but ended up becoming a great guy to go to for some fun. Me? I had to say why I was there, and I told them why I shouldn't be. I was supposed to be dead and the world was still supposed to be turning. One girl, Alexis, asked me if she could hug me, and when I said no she did it anyway. I hated her for it.
That day, my first roommate, "Dana," came. She was still high on whatever combination of drugs she was on and had tried to kill herself on, so she was going to be rehabilitated in the same place I slept. You know what? Whatever. She introduced herself as a drug addict and said "I'm gonna miss sex the most." She was 16, just like me. She said great, we'd get along just fine. Initially I was happy for some company, because compared to her I had no life experience. We made small talk the first night, I told her I had no sexual experience and didn't really plan on it for a while, since I didn't really care at that point. She asked if I was "asexual or some shit." I said, "Nah, it's just not important to me right now." I was smart. I was missing school. Dana came over and sat next to me and put her hand on my shoulder. "Sex is important to me." I couldn't fucking believe it, 24 hours before I had been merely contemplating suicide and now I was talking to a crazy chick named Dana who valued sex and drugs. Dana tried to kiss me, I pushed her away and tried to explain that I was into guys, not other girls, but she said that I had to open my mind and I was saying no and one thing led to another and the nurses wouldn't come and help because all they heard was laughing, Dana's laughing, as she showed me sexual things and told me why sex should be important to me. She then left me and fell asleep for the rest of the night and I went to go tell my nurse and she told me to go to bed, she'd help me in the morning with whatever it was. I tried when they checked my vitals the next morning, I begged them to listen and they told me to go eat the breakfast I had ordered for myself.
I wanted to cry. Nobody would listen to me because a girl couldn't sexually assault another girl. I tried to tell the other inpatients and only Alexis seemed to really believe me, but I still didn't like her because she had hugged me the day before. We got put into our therapy groups and my doctors didn't believe me, either, so I just dropped it.
Over the next week I tried desperately to not live in the same room as Dana but nobody would listen to me, until a weekend nurse seemed to listen to the fact that Dana had dropped a deuce without flushing multiple times and finally moved her to a single room. I was relieved but I still hadn't slept. My doctors told my parents that I was just getting used to living here, and that I was taking longer than usual. That first weekend I watched a movie called The Trevor Project, and Alexis sat down with me halfway through and we ended up sobbing together at the end. That's when we became friends. I told her what was going on and she listened; she told me that she was abused at home and that's why she was in the ward. She was having a hard time, too. She told me that the level of hate I had toward people was astonishing, and that she didn't hate anyone. That was a strange concept to me at the time. She told me that she didn't hate anyone, but she hated that there were starving children in Africa and that there was somebody out there suffering like she did and that they weren't getting help for it. But she expressed no hate for her parents, just sadness that they were so mean to her. If anything, she made them sad and angry and mean because she had been born and ruined their lives. It was her burden to carry. I didn't know how to help her and I couldn't.
So I had a friend in Alexis, and Erin grew on me, too. The boy, Steven, left after two weeks and I let him hug me goodbye. The same day the doctors told my parents that I was finally making some progress.
So began week three. Alexis and I became inseparable and she began to encourage me to be positive. She helped me avoid Dana. When I was angry about a drawing that I had done because it sucked, she told me the good parts. She never asked for anything in return and I never gave it to her. Now my new roommate came, "Bella," and she seemed normal. She said she was at the ward because she had attempted suicide. She slept at night and didn't do anything with me much at all. I didn't mind. I wanted sleep. I still slept badly because of Dana but I was able to rest my eyes a bit on the first night with Bella. The second night was the worst, though. I was exhausted, so I fell asleep after Bella and I played a game with plastic spoons. I woke up to her screaming like a banshee. I looked over and thought that it might be night terrors, but she flung herself out of bed and grabbed a plastic spoon off the side table and ran toward me. She grabbed my arm and proceeded to break the spoon on it with the force she used to slam it down. It was now a sharp point and she used it to try to cut my arm, which she was mildly successful at and managed to draw blood. A nurse ripped her off of me and another nurse started trying to calm me down. I was sobbing. Bella was escorted out of the room, and I was given Steven's old single room for the rest of the time. I didn't sleep well at all after that.
I started to be nice just to cooperate with my doctors so they'd let me leave. Until my first family visit, where they let me go down to the cafeteria with my parents and my brother. I was so fucking scared of everyone doing real world shit and I was afraid of families looking normal and I was afraid of the cashier and my parents eventually took me back to the ward and told me to keep getting better. They came every day after that and took me down to the cafeteria so I could get used to it again.
Every weekend, Alexis and I watched a movie. We'd watch it right before bed and go to bed and wake up in the morning and talk about it over breakfast. One weekend, after we watched our movie, she didn't wake up early enough for breakfast. And she didn't come out after that, either. I asked a nurse to go check on her and the nurse did, and all of a sudden there was a fucking code blue and my world, so precariously balanced on Alexis's good-natured positivity, came crashing down. And my best friend in the ward eventually got wheeled out on her stretcher bed and all I could see were her feet, and then I realized it was because they had found a sheet to cover her.
My last week in the ward was bleak, and I told the doctors that I was grieving but I'd be okay, even though I wasn't. I knew enough that my life was misfortunate enough that if I tried suicide again I definitely wouldn't be successful and I'd be in the ward longer.
After a long month in the ward I was let out. I wore street clothes again and I felt them against my body and I didn't like it, the cloth was different and so was I.
I wasn't the innocent smart kid after all. I was fucking ruined and I still am.