Is it the truth or a dare?

 I hoped that the paramedics put a bucket next to me, as I began to gag.  I am unsure if vomit was really produced or if my mind wanted a physical connection to the incident at hand.  How could this have happened to me?

Then I realized I had put my father, who had experienced this from his own mother and brother, through the same pain he was accustomed to.  I was the reason he was now crying beside me.  My sorrows and pain were not alone, as I had thought. 

Even with my eyes closed, I felt the bright lights beaming down on me sharply.  I sensed nervousness with all of my unanswered questions.  I heard the sirens louder than my own thoughts and I felt the movement of the ambulance beneath the stretcher I laid on. 

While I was on the stretcher, I noticed the lack of movement I was capable of.  My arms and legs were tied down and I was strapped in like an animal in a cage.  This is what I envisioned a cage was like for a human, of course they were not going to throw me in a cage and haul me away from my old deceased life but rather throw me on a bed type thing and make it seem a little better than a cage.

As I was wheeled into the hospital, I felt people staring and whispering as I passed.  The lights seemed brighter in here; I thought to myself “Should I open my eyes so that all of these inconsiderate people know I am not dead. The room was quiet and cold.  The lights were bright and the voices were no longer murmurs but loud pronounced discussions.

My father was already in the room, answering question about me that I was capable of answering myself.  My emotions raged as I realized that no matter how hard I try to get attention, it would always be given to someone else. 

Boy was I wrong thinking that.  My attention was coming and much more than I ever imagined but it was too late to turn around then.  I was delivered to my first cage and there I would be until moved somewhere else.  My own body and mind was placed into someone else’s hands.

 My eyes slowly opened, quickly feeling bright lights and noticing many nurses surrounding me.  On this note, I knew it was too late to shut my eyes again, no matter how hard I wanted to.  The smell of the bleak white room was too typical and resembled many hospital rooms that I saw in movies.

Once my father left the room, I started answering all of his questions. Only one person was surrounding me for the first time in awhile, so I felt comfortable answering his personal questions. But little did I know while I was answering his questions, a nurse walked in and began to jab me with needles.  The needles purpose was to keep me from getting more dehydrated.  But unfortunately, now the nurse could hear this personal conversation.

After hours of being in this hospital, I realized I could go home after this visit but instead I was going to be put somewhere completely different then my home.  I was going to go to a mental institution.  I was going somewhere new now, I was being sent to a mental hospital in Virginia.  No one asked if I wanted to go – but according to state law, I had to.

After long hours spent at the hospital, I was wheeled away on a stretcher and put into an ambulance, where my dreams ran wild as I slept.  The ride felt like hours, even with my mind closed down for sleep.  Those hours when you are asleep that typically feel fast, did not feel that way anymore.  Once I arrived, still in my hospital gown, I was escorted up to the adolescent unit of Dominion Hospital.  I lost my right to walk alone; taking your own life comes with way more consequences than I would have guessed.