Entry 2: January 2, Two Years Since the Last Cut (Part 1: The rest will be posted tomorrow)

As the title implies, today is the day that I cut myself for the last time— two years ago. As this is such an important milestone, that is not what I am going to talk about today. I’m going to take a break from my eighth grade self, and fast forward to Christmas Break 2015.

I came home from Cedar Falls on the 18^th of December; as a lot of you know, my parents are in the process of getting divorced, so I had a schedule set out for when I was going to stay at my mom’s house and when I was going to stay at my dad’s house. Well, for the first few days, it was my mom’s turn and everything was going great… until… my siblings started getting a bit hostile, and my mom took their side, or so this is how it seemed to me. I almost understand this, because I don’t live at my mom’s house full time, no one is used to having me there.

The teasing started and it seemed harmless, until one night my sister had some friends over and her and my youngest brother told me they wished a bus would hit me while I was driving. Now, at first I laughed with them… but I went down to my room and started crying. I couldn’t believe my siblings wanted a real life bus to actually hit me while I was driving. So I started to get hurt by this statement, which caused me to become defensive.

My brothers had friends spend the night that night, and I wasn’t scheduled for work until the afternoon. I remember waking up, and going upstairs to see a huge mess of blankets and pillows everywhere. I asked my brothers and their friends to clean them up, because I knew I would have gotten in trouble if I saw the mess and didn’t clean it up.

They cleaned it up after some arguing with me, and I went to get dressed for work! I went to work and everything was great; I was laughing with my co-workers and getting our stuff done and having a good time. I was doing great emotionally at that point! I was so happy and I was excited to go home and tell everyone about my day.

I got home, and boy was I wrong. I believe I got home around 5pm, maybe 5:30pm and went down stairs to get dressed in my comfy close when my mother came down and started inquiring about the morning when I asked the children to clean up their mess. She started getting very aggressively defensive and it was so upsetting that I had such a huge panic attack I started packing my stuff, I decided I was going to my dad’s house and I was leaving right now. She guilted me into staying at home and I was so pissed, hurt, upset, panicked and so angry I became irrational, I became unpredictable.

I packed my backpack with coloring books, markers, paper, notebooks, my computer, earphones, computer charger, phone charger, blanket, pillows and slippers. There was one more item I placed in my backpack and that was my bag full of medications. I got into a different room in the basement and barricaded the door; I put chairs and boxes in front of it, and exercise equipment. There was no way anyone was coming in or I was going out. I got out all of my different meds that I would take at night time, so around five-six bottles and put them on the counter. I was only going to take a few, I just wanted to fall asleep and not wake up for a long while. Well, here comes my favorite person banging on the door and forcing me to open it.

So what did Jules do? I had another panic attack—but this time, it wasn’t me acting, it wasn’t me making the decisions, it wasn’t me talking or moving or taking the pills. It was like I lost touch with myself; I was watching someone else do these things. It wasn’t me. I was so scared, but I couldn’t do anything.

The only thing we knew what to do was to take the pills. There was no other option. I attempted suicide and got pretty damn close. 

Like I said it was as if I was watching someone else do these crazy things, and all of a sudden they poured bottle after bottle of pills down my throat. They were going crazy and kept taking pills, kept throwing them down my throat- there must have been over seventy pills that were taken that night. Finally I actually started writing a suicide note… but at this point I had found a knife and it was next to me so in order to open the door I had to quick hide the knife and move all of the items I had thrown in front of the door! My mom kept banging and banging and so I let her in and she was standing there and started SCREAMING at me, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Why are you in here? Why are you scaring your brother? Vinnie was so worried about you he came up and got me. What are you doing?!” All I said was, “You better call an ambulance I just took a shit ton of pills.” She sprinted upstairs and so I grabbed the bottle of ibuprofen I had in the basement and swallowed even more pills.

There is my brother, standing in the doorway, asking if I was okay. I said, “Look Vinnie, I’m getting hit by the bus right now. Isn’t this what you wanted? You’re going to watch me die.” He looks at me, and broke down he says, “Ju Ju no I don’t want you to die! You can’t die!!!” and he lays on his belly and cries hysterically so I tell him to come here and he lays with me on my lap crying onto my shirt and putting his little head on my shoulders. He keeps kissing me and telling me he doesn’t want me to die and that he loves me so so so much. When my mom comes down to take me to the hospital, Vinnie* helps me walk up the stairs and helps put my coat and shoes on.

My mom forces me into the car, and takes my phone. She tells me not to turn it off because she wants to look through it. But I do turn it off, and they, Sam and my mom, yell at me to get the code to get into it and I said, “No way. Through my dead body.” And then snickered a bit. All the way to the hospital I felt like I was flying, like my head was as light as a feather and my arms were tingly and I felt so weird. The whole entire time we were in the car I got yelled at, even though my mom says, “This isn’t my yelling voice.” I heard things* like, “What were you doing? Why would you ruin our Christmas like this? Are you trying to get back at me? I never did anything to you but if you want to blame me for all of your problems then that’s fine blame me. Why would you do this to your family? You do know I’m putting you inpatient in the hospital. You are so stupid for doing this! It was so stupid! “

When we got to the hospital, and I saw my dad and then it all became a blur. I remember getting into a wheel chair and having a nurse push me to a triage room, and she was going so fast I was giggling and everyone was like, “What the hell?” They transferred me from the wheelchair to the stretcher/bed after taking off my clothes, putting on a gown, hooking me up to a million wires, putting needles into me in all different places. Then I fell asleep.

I woke up in the Critical Intensive Care Unit, with all of these machines still on me. The nurses kept taking blood and putting needles and IVs into me and I still felt very weird. I was able to start talking to the nurses and getting out what happened and they were very kind. My overnight nurse was named Stacy and my day nurse was named Renae*. Overnight I remember praying to God and asking him to keep me safe and to let whatever happens to happen. Stacey kept helping me, and she kept me safe throughout the night; I remember specifically her coming in and telling me that my liver has suffered immensely, so they were going to put me on this medicine to help “buffer” my liver.

Which meant she had to start another drip IV, another nurse came in and the both of them were trying to stick me with the IV but no veins were willing to get poked; I was poked about seven times. After praying, and praying, and saying Hail Marys and Our Fathers, I finally got a sign from God that I was meant to stay on this earth. I puked up a shit ton of stuff which I believe helped immensely in my journey to health.

In the morning, bright and early, a lot of stuff kept happening but it was all so surreal to me. I don’t remember much about the rest of that day but I do remember that I was healthy enough to get out of bed and walk around with Renae and my sister Franny, my sister who kept visiting me. Later that afternoon I was able to meet with a psychiatrist and we decided that I was going to be transferred up to the adult mental health unit.

I was admitted to the unit on December 23^rd, I thought it was going to be a stereotypical adult unit with a bunch of certifiable old men and women. But boy was I wrong; I met some very nice people there who I am lucky to call some of my best of friends. I spent my Christmas in the hospital with these friends and with the other patients. We watched a lot of Christmas movies, played a lot of games, colored a lot of pictures, put together some puzzles, and went to the bowling alley in the rec room.

It’s a really hard thing to explain, but over the six days I spent in the hospital I learned so much from all of the other patients and staff. It was my first time in the adult unit and the fifth time I was in the hospital for mental health; after being so close to death, so close to being taken over by my mental illnesses that they almost killed me. Christmas this year was a very different experience, but I did spend it with the people I love, my heart was warm, my celebration was interesting and exciting.

*Vinnie: My life saver

*Things: Up to different interpretations. Those are the words I heard.

*Renae: and Stacey were amazing nurses. Seriously heroes don't wear capes, they wear scrubs.