A Time For Change

Okay, all the accustions were right. Things hadn't been going so well for me lately. So far I'd been hospitalized in psychiatric hospitals five times in my stay at Dameon Center Residential Treatment Program for teens with emotional and mental illnesses. The staff was having to restrain me (hold me in physical "theraputic" hold facedown on the floor until I was no longer a safety risk to myself or others), I was on the lowest level I could possibly be at in the level system that they had here at the program, and I hadn't been allowed off the program grounds for home visits or anything else; in over two months.

Life sucked. Still, how could they be sitting here telling me that I probably wouldn't be abe to go home after I was discharged from here? What did they mean we had to start looking at other programs for me to go to once I left Dameon Center? I wanted to go home. This was not fair. This was all wrong.

"You've been with us for almost ten months," my therapist Christi was saying, "this is only a twelve to eighteen month program, we have to be ready for the future, and it looks like for you to be able to function, your future needs to include another program. Probably one that's locked."

"It's not fair," I protested, my brain still trying to process the horrible information that I'd be away from everything I loved even longer. "I don't want to be locked up anymore."

"Well you're not locked up yet, this program has an open door policy."

Yeah right, I thought to myself. It has open doors but if you go through those nice open doors without permission from staff then they'll either tackle you down to the ground and hold you there until you promise to come back inside and go straight to your room, or they'll physically drag you to the "time out" room had have you sit in there for half an hour with them in the doorway so you can't escape. Sometimes they just follow you if you go through the doors, and then if you go to far, or too fast they'll call the police on you and have the police either take you back to the program or to the hospital.

"We'll have you visit the program before you go to it, and we'll make sure the place is a good fit for you," continued Christi.

My mom who was sitting on the same couch as me in Christi's big spacious office, was rubbing my back, but when I looked over at her face, there were tears streaming down it. My dad's eyes were watery too.

I wanted to shake them and scream questions in their faces, "Don't you want me home? Don't you love me? Why are you doing this to me?" But in my rational side of my brain that they did want me home, and they did love me, and they just wanted me safe.

See that was the worst part, I knew that I probably wouldn't be able to be safe at home, and that I probably did need another treatment program. I knew all that, and that's what really killed me.

I looked away from my parent's tear streaked faces. It was too much. I couldn't stand it when they cried, it felt like it was my fault they were crying, and I couldn't stand feeling responsible for such pain. What made it even worse was the fact that they were grown ups. Grown ups aren't supposed to cry, they're supposed to be strong. It scared me when I saw the weaker and vulnerable sides of the people supposed to be taking care of me.

Christi was still talking but I couldn't hear her anymore, my thoughts and feelings were being too loud inside of me. I stared at my big toe, that i was wiggling around in my pink sandal, stared at Christi's certificates on her wall, I stared at my knee that was bony and scrawny from years of an eating disorder. I stared at anything as long as I could keep the tears pooling in my eyes from falling. I hadnt cried once since I had started hearing the voices that talked to me but no one else. I hadn't cried since Uncle Joe sexually abused me. I hadn't cried when I was in my first hospital at the age of ten. I hadn't cried when they shove tubes up my nose to foce feed me, I hadn't cried when they locked me in that awful windowless room known as the Quiet room. I hadn't cried when they restrained me, or when they sent me here to Dameon Center. It had been years since I'd last cried, I wasn't going to cry now.

It was all too much though. Clenching my jaw to hold back my tears I muttered out that I to go to the bathroom.

Once I was out of that office, I bolted down the stairs and out the door. I was all the way downtown when I realized what I was doing. I was using the same old tools I always used to deal with problems, I was running away from them, avoiding them, instead of battling them head on. It hadn't ever helped me. Look where it had gotten me. I stood in the middle of down town twirling in a little bewildered circle, not sure what to do.

It had started to rain and I was getting soaked and cold. I don't know how long I stood there, outside CVS, wondering what to do, but I was soaked through to my underwear when I saw one of the program's vans pull up accompanied by a police car.

My first urge was to bolt again, but I stood there shaking instead reminding myself that I needed a new way of dealing, of coping. The old way had failed ne to many times.

The police officer jumped out of the cruiser, and a staff jumped out of the van.

"You better grab her quick," Jim, the staff advised the officer. "She'll take off on you and hurt herself."

The police officer grabbed my upper arm in a death grip, and Jim latched on to the other side of me.

"How are we going to do this?" Jim asked me. "Can we take you back to the program, or do you need to be evauated at the ER."

Through my chattering teeth and shivering body I whispered.

"Please, I want to go back to Dameon Center. I want things to change, I want to change."

Then as the two muscular men led me into the back of the van and chld locked the doors, I began to cry for the first time in five and a half years.