MEMOIR OF THE SPLINTERED

TEN

BPD affects 20% of patients admitted to psychiatric hospitals.

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From feeling the strangest sense of peace to the most intense fear, I experienced a giant range of emotions while I was in a psychiatric hospital.

It was the summer of 2016, when I was eighteen-years old. Freshly graduated from high school and preparing for college, I faced a variety of stressors. Not only did I constantly feel discomfort with my myself (which I didn't recognize at the time as dysphoria), but I also felt the pressure of deciding what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I didn't even know who I was; how was I supposed to know what field I wanted to be in for the rest of my life?

To save up money for a used car, I got a job at a local deli near the end of my senior year. It added a bit of extra stress, trying to balance the last month of school with working. On top of that, my internal anxiety was running at a new high. As I started getting prepared for college, I became increasingly aware of how detached from myself I felt. Everything felt too overwhelming, and it was getting hard to handle.

That's when I experienced the dissociative episode at work, where I ended up hurting myself with a box cutter. After calling my mom, she alerted my psychiatrist who was very alarmed by that episode. He had me admitted to a psychiatric facility where they could monitor those episodes and figure out what was going on with me.

I was terrified. Being sent to a place I had only heard rumors about in middle school and high school. In my mind, only crazy people went there. And I wasn't crazy... right?

When I arrived, they took all of my personal belongings. I wasn't allowed to have anything I could use to hurt myself, which included my favorite blanket and concealer. They performed a physical assessment, noting where any scars or injuries were. I guess to monitor if any new injuries were showing up during my stay.

Everything there felt... cold. White walls, white flooring, small beds with thin blankets. None of my own possessions to help me feel more comfortable.

I was there for five days. Our days followed a pretty basic routine. Breakfast, individual activities, outside time, lunch, group therapy, group activities, dinner, visiting hours, bedtime. It was a routine I got the hang of pretty quickly, but I didn't like participating. Mainly because I was the youngest one in the adult unit, at only eighteen-years-old.

I tried to stay positive and make the most of my time there, but sometimes... I just couldn't. I would break down, sobbing over how badly I wanted to go home. I was given new medication that was supposed to keep me calm, but made me feel extremely sick.

Every patient was assigned to a psychiatrist that we saw every other day. To this day, I still don't understand how a psychiatrist who saw me twice felt like she knew me enough to give me a diagnosis.

Borderline Personality Disorder.

I didn't understand what that meant, and the psychiatrist didn't do a great job of explaining it. It sucked having a label slapped on my file when I knew nothing about it.

After five days, I was finally deemed stable enough to go home. Once I was home, the reality of how lonely and trapped I felt there really settled in. Since then, I've been scared of being sent back. I keep information from my doctors, in fear that I'll end up going back.

And I don't want to go back.

Please don't send me back.