Episode 37- Meeting Eric

After the sun went down I found myself in the recreation room. The lights were off and I sat on the couch, thinking I was alone. However there was another person in the room, sitting in a chair across the way. Before long the two of us were talking. I don't know how the conversation started, but I remember it being strange. It all felt so surreal. *Eric was 28 and had tried to commit suicide. Obviously he had been unsuccessful. Eric would turn out to be a great friend to me. He had a sad story and to this day I think about him. Although he and I resided in the same town, I don't know what became of him. We shared those weeks together and he taught me a lot. But His story is his own, and because I respect him I will not share it here.

During those weeks I grew to love Eric. Kind of as a brother, and kind of as a stray puppy that you want to take home. I have more stories than I can count about Eric and me. Our adventures in the looney bin...that would make a great story in itself. In fact, I journaled details about each of the hospitalmates that I shared that time with. Each had a specific, interesting, and sad story. However, I was the only one in there who thought about drowning her newborn baby in the bath tub.

Episode- Another Round Of Hell

It was the day my life seemed to end. I was all but committed. I cried the entire way to the hospital, literally hoping to die. I was already deader than dead on the inside. I look back on this time and I wonder what it was like for Cody. He has never talked about it much, but I know he was terribly hurt by this whole nightmare. He felt powerless to save me. He couldn't save our children's mother. He couldn't help me. So he did the only thing he DID have power over. He sent me back to the hospital.

It was the same as before. The sounds, the smells, the scenery. The process was the same too. I was admitted through the ER where they evaluated me, decided almost immediately that I was a threat to myself, so within an hour I was back on the 4th floor of the hospital. The psychiatric unit. I wanted to die. But again I thought of my babies back home and I think it was the only thing keeping me alive.

This time I had a roommate. I had been lucky before that I had the room to myself. But now I shared it with a middle aged woman named Becky. I don't know the problems that Becky had, but I know she was a cutter. She had knife marks all over her body. She would sit on her bed every day rock back and forth. Sometimes she would go to group, but mostly she wouldn't.

Cody left me in my room after the hundreds of evaluations were over. As he left me I desperately wanted to run after him and plead with him to take me home. But at the same time as I watched him leave I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to hurt him like he was hurting me. I wanted to throw something at him. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to rip his heart out and make him feel what I was feeling. But instead, some drug overtook my body and I lost consciousness for a while.