Personal Narrative: A Personal Experience In A Psychiatric Hospital

In October of my freshman year, I was admitted into a psychiatric hospital for one week. The events that led up to this are long and many in number, so much so that to explain it all fully would require forty more pages and essay submissions, something neither you nor I have time for. They don't matter any way. What matters is that I was there, along with seven other perfect strangers who would later become the greatest people I had ever had the blessing of meeting and yet destined to never see again.
I was admitted into Springwood Hospital on October 31. The main unit for adult patience, I imagine, was something straight out of Girl, Interrupted, complete with Whoopie Goldberg nurses and cliche yellowing wallpaper. However, a minor at the

time, I was submitted into a smaller, more age appropriate unit for young teenagers. It had four rooms, each containing two beds and security cameras in every possible corner.
The only things that made me more uncomfortable than Big Brother's constant watch, were the people I was seeking treatment with.
There was Abby, my roommate, who was only a few months younger than me.

She had strawberry blonde hair, dull and lifeless blue eyes, and had tried to overdose on sleeping pills the night before. There was Aaron, a seventeen-year old with moppy black hair and an a-symmetrical smile who had raging anxiety issues stemming from a troubled household. And then, there was Lliam. When I first met him, he never spoke a word and every single patient was terrified of him. There were others too, all who had issues so different and vast that no one could keep track.
And you know what I kept telling myself that first night, when we gathered to have our first 'group secession'? I kept thinking, over and over, how I didn't belong here. How, yes I had issues, but I wasn't like them, I wasn't that bad. I was just this little girl from the suburbs; nothing about me matched up with anyone of these seven people, not in looks or personality and especially not in life experience.
But then came the dreaded moment when I was suppose to speak. Like everyone else, our counselor was expecting me to explain what landed me with the rest of the lot. And I told myself to keep it together, to be matter of fact and, to above all, not

cry.
And I totally failed.
By the time I had finished, my throat was sore and my eyes itchy. The rest of the cession was a tense and awkward blur until we lined up for dinner and I knew, even if I had wanted to make any friends, it wasn't going to happen now. Pain, though universally felt, is avoided at all cost, which is why I had expected everyone to shy away from me.
Again, I had thought.
But while I reflected on this, Aaron had moved next to me in line and, while reaching across to put some fries on his tray, asked "What did your mom look like?"
I was caught off guard, stunned, but still replied that she looked something like me, more or less. Blonde hair, blue eyes, just a smaller nose and pointed chin.
"Was she beautiful?"
I nodded. We kept going down the line together, picking out what we wanted to eat. Like most teenage boys, his tray was nearly too full to put on any more, yet he kept finding new ways.
"It's good, you know, to talk about her."
"Huh?"
"Your mom, " he clarified, "It's good to talk about who she was, you know?

You remember the things she did, the way she talked, the way she looked. It helps you focus on the good things about her, and not how you lost her."
I stared at him for awhile, unsure what to say. Why was he telling me this? Why was this kid, who's past in no way resembled mine, interested in helping me with my third year of grieving? For a few moments I suspected in him what I had seen in everyone else for the past three years who tried to talk to me about my mother. I thought he was trying to get a reaction out of me, to see if he could get me cry again. But then he smiled at me, a big goofy grin that was able to wipe out the suspicion in my mind.
It dawned on me, then and there, that Aaron had seen in me the same pain he had felt all his life. No, he had never lost his mother, but he knew what sadness was, the kind of sadness that leaves you breathless and unable to do anything but lay, helpless and hopeless, in bed. Our stories were so different, but our emotions were exactly same. We all felt, deep down, that there were so many battles being fought in our heads that we didn't think we had a chance of winning,
at least not by

ourselves.