content warning: talk of suicide. please read at your own discretion.
As the sun began to set, I would trek across town to my third shift gas station cashier job. I’d enjoy the views as I went, appreciating the glow of the evening sky before I was condemned to ten hours of fluorescent lights. The shift would start busy enough– some people stopped by for an evening soda after work, others to grab a pack of cigarettes or snack before they went to their own third shift job. Teenagers would stock up on junk and candy on their way to their friends’ houses to spend Friday night as teenagers should. Some of my customers were in between bar hops, the smell of their beer breath would remind me of my dad as I rang up their lottery tickets and cigarettes. Migrant workers from the hotel across the street would come in looking for cerveza, but I’d have to point them down the road to the tienda roja, also known as Speedway. In between customers, I’d step outside for a smoke myself, sometimes stopping to chat with the next one before they entered the store.
When I started nursing school, it didn’t make sense for me to work at a gas station anymore. I wanted to get experience in something healthcare related. I began working nights at the assisted living facility in town. It’s a step down from a nursing home. Elderly folks move in when they need extra help but not necessarily 24/7 caregiving. I was a glorified housekeeper, cleaning the bathrooms, doing laundry, and vacuuming the night away while an interesting podcast or audiobook played in one of my headphones. I had a pager on my belt loop, and it would buzz and sing when one of my residents pressed their call light. The room number would flash across the screen, and I would make my way to their room to ascertain what they needed. Most often, it was help to the bathroom or just a listening ear. In the early morning hours, I had a list of residents that needed help getting their TED hose on or morning medication reminders. In between tasks, I’d sit outside in the darkness, puffing a cigarette to kill the time.
When I’d get home in the morning, I’d ensure my black out curtains were pulled taut, not letting even a drop of light in. From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., I’d sleep. Once awake, I wasn’t eager to start the day. I’d drag myself out of bed for some coffee and conversation with my boyfriend. If he wasn’t home, getting out of bed was next to impossible. I could sleep entire days away if I let myself. A lot of the time, I did.
As a child, I was perpetually tired. When my mom entered my room to wake me at 6:45 a.m., I would moan and groan before quickly falling back to sleep. It usually took her at least three attempts before I would finally manage to throw on clothes that were hopefully clean and run out the door, just in time to catch the bus at 7:15 a.m. Every morning, we were given 20 minutes at the beginning of the day to read. Depending on the teacher, I would often be able to use it as nap time instead. I would then take advantage of any downtime throughout the day to lay my head on the desk and doze for a few minutes. Upon returning home from school, I’d promptly hop into bed, sleeping until dinner time, and if I was lucky, I would wake up to a meal more substantial than ramen noodles. After dinner time, I’d shower and you guessed it, go back to bed. Much of my life passed by in this manner.
One day, on the way home from somewhere, I told my mom that I thought I might be depressed.
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” was her response.
In 2011, I was in 7th grade when my grandma died during my spring break. I found out from a phone call from my dad just before I was called back to get my HPV vaccination. Before the nurse even had the needle out, I was crying. The nurse seemed taken aback, and my mom had to explain that I was crying from bad news, not a fear of the shot. Tears continued to roll down my face, distracting me from the pain of the injection. I then went to spend the night with my dad, who had been drinking since midday. As the sun went down, his thoughts got darker. He began to talk about joining his mother. I called my mom, afraid of what he meant. They exchanged words that I don’t remember as I grabbed my belongings and hopped into my mom’s car. A few days later, it was pouring down rain as we made our way to my grandma’s funeral.
My dad cried the entire time, a steady stream that was punctuated by occasional sobs and cries as a line of people, paying their respects, came to hug him one by one.
Later that year, my mom divorced my step dad, moving back in with an ex-husband, which resulted in my moving from one school district to another. In September, my best friend from the previous school was hit by a car. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and was in a comatose state for a few weeks. The day after the accident, I begged my mom to stay home from school. She insisted that I had to go. A few of my classmates had heard the news, and as soon as I walked in for the day, I was asked how I was. I couldn’t contain the fear and tears. I was escorted to the school counsellor’s office. She listened attentively, validating my feelings. After that day, I would find a reason to talk to her daily.
I began to isolate myself. I would sit alone at lunch. I would sit, picking at my meal, hoping someone would approach me, asking what was wrong. No one ever did.
During one of our daily sessions, I mentioned to the counsellor that I had been thinking about what it would be like to end things. Alarm bells immediately began ringing, I could see it in the way she looked at me. She reminded me that she was there for me, but that there were some things that could not stay between just the two of us. This was one of them. She called my mom and suggested that I be taken to the ER and admitted into an inpatient psychiatric unit.
When I was inpatient, people paid attention to me. They cared what I had to say. There was a heavy focus on what was wrong with me, what they could fix with medication and therapy, but beyond that, I felt like I was being seen for the first time in my life. Thus began the two years of my life spent in and out of these units. Eventually, they told my mom that the short-term inpatient wasn’t doing much for me. They recommended a residential facility for a longer stay.
The first time I walked into the group therapy room, I immediately was taken aback by a girl named Autumn, whose arms were covered from wrist to shoulder in wounds. They varied in healing stages, some actively oozing blood, while others were scabbed over and nearly scarred. It frightened me to my core. I suddenly felt as if I had made a grave mistake. That night, a fight broke out between Patricia and Simone. The girls pulled each others’ hair, called each other names, and Simone punched Patricia squarely in the mouth. A message was called out on the PA system overhead, and staff members from other parts of the facility filed into our unit, promptly pinning the girls to the ground as they squirmed and fought. Each of them received a shot of medication in the glute muscles, and once their fighting subsided, were escorted to their rooms.
Events like these were every day occurrences. Whether it was in-fighting, or girls hurting themselves until they got pinned down. It was pure chaos. There was bullying. Patricia took her own underwear, writing Mikayla’s name in them, and ran around the unit showing everyone how Mikayla wore granny panties. One girl took a shit on the communal bathroom floor. The bathroom was closed, the poop being left there until whoever had done it admitted to it so they could be the one to clean it. We were lined up and brought into a conference room one by one, where they asked us if we knew anything about the mystery pooper.
Later that night, I got out of bed to ask for a snack. I saw Patricia in the bathroom, scrubbing poop from the floor.
After about 5 weeks, I was in a meeting with my therapist. She told me she was concerned that I wasn’t making very good progress. Before going to this place, I was told it would last 6 weeks. In this meeting, my therapist told me that if I didn’t get better soon, she wouldn’t be surprised if I had to stay there for 6 months.
I told her I’d rather die.
She laughed, unsure if I was joking.
That night, at med pass, as Nurse Jason gathered my evening medications, I saw my opportunity. A full bottle of pills sat on the med cart. He was distracted, making sure he got all of my meds right. I grabbed the bottle, swiftly opened the lid and poured the entire bottle into my mouth before anyone could react. Jason shoved the med cart out of the door way, tackling me to the ground, and attempted to pry my mouth open. Like a pit bull, latched onto their prey, my jaw was locked tight. I clenched my eyes shut as well, and waited for the darkness to overtake me.
I remember the staff members escorting the rest of the girls to their room. I remember them gathering the pills that had fallen to the floor, counting them to ascertain how many I had taken. It was determined that I’d likely managed to swallow 27 lamotrigine pills, which is a mood stabilizing medication used in managing mood disorders as well as epilepsy. I remember them googling “lamotrigine overdose” before deciding to call me an ambulance.
I have pieces of memory from the next week.
Feeling like my skin was on fire. Itching uncontrollably.
Fighting off staff members of the hospital, telling them that no one can touch me until my mom and grandma get there.
The person I was fighting off replying, “I am your grandma!” and suddenly foe became friend.
Violently vomiting as my mom held the emesis basin.
Asking my mom to get me a McFlurry from the McDonald’s on the first floor of Riley Children’s Hospital.
Sobbing uncontrollably when she told me no.
Slowly, coming to. Putting pieces together. Eventually, I was medically cleared, but I still had to receive psychiatric help. I was transferred to a different hospital in Indianapolis that had a psych unit. There, I spent five days.
The psychiatrist asked me if I had a history of blacking out when emotionally worked up. When I told him that I didn’t, he said that it wasn’t very common for lamotrigine to cause patients to black out.
How many times were those patients taking 27 at one time?
At the end of my stay, it was decided that I was no longer a threat to myself or others. I was to be sent home with my mother. About a month later was the car wreck that led to another residential facility. This one was further north, and thankfully, a bit less chaotic. More structured. I spent about 8 months there, trying to figure out how to get back to a place where I could at least try to be a kid again.
The rest of my childhood was spent caring for my alcoholic father, who would wake me up in the early hours of the morning, after he returned home from the bar. I’d pick him up off the floor or join him at the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes with him as he lamented the entirety of his life.
After he passed out, I’d walk the neighborhood, reveling in the peace of night time in a small town. The warmth of summer nights still soothes me to this day.
After finishing high school, I decided quite suddenly that college wasn’t for me. I had no other plans for my life, but I couldn’t fathom spending my entire life in school just to then work a job that didn’t care about me until I died. There was an immense pressure to have it all figured out. To know exactly how I wanted to spend the rest of my life and then pursue it. I felt trapped by inevitability. I wanted to take my life into my own hands, even if that meant taking my life. It was different from the impulsivity of my earlier teenage years. It was more pervasive. It was a constant noise in the back of my mind.
You’ll amount to nothing.
No one cares about you.
You are alone.
There was no active plan this time. I was simply biding my time, waiting for the time to be right. Waiting for a sign.
So when a raggedy homeless man, a few years older than myself, matched with me on Tinder, I was intrigued.
Guitar slung across his back, I followed him across the train tracks to the camp he shared with a couple of other homeless men. The summer heat was oppressive, but in the woods behind the Zoo, the sun was completely shaded out.
Chords rang out as he played through his repertoire.
“Sometimes I don’t know where this dirty road is taking me
Sometimes I don’t even know the reason why
But I guess I’ll keep a-gamblin’, lots of booze and lots of ramblin’
But it’s easier than just a-waitin’ around to die”
I realized then that was exactly what I was doing. I was just a-waitin’ around to die.
That night, I began packing my bag. I fit my entire life into one backpack and a cooler that I threw in the back of my Buick Rendezvous.
The next year was a series of events too convoluted and crazy to go into depth here, but I slowly began the process of breaking free from the darkness.
I saw the reality of my childhood for the first time. I learned what a narcissist was. I learned that I was not immune to the age old saying that we ladies love to love men that remind us of our dads. I found myself in a new type of darkness. The darkness of abandoning yourself– prioritizing the needs of others to your own detriment. Pushing yourself down inside your own mind, convincing yourself that you’re happy to live this dirty, rambling life with a man who doesn’t really love you. Each morning, I would wake up and promptly shove the bile of reality down with a shot of whiskey. It made it more palatable. Made it easier to ignore how I really felt.
When I finally gained the courage to return home, I stumbled into the gas station to buy myself a pack of cigarettes. A man I once knew was working at the counter.
“Brittany, right?”
My breath caught in my throat. I had no idea he knew I existed, let alone knew my name.
“You’ve lost weight,” he continued. “You look good.”
I couldn’t contain the smile that beamed from my face. We made a few more lines of small talk before my transaction was complete. I left, not thinking that that man would be my husband nearly a decade later. That our daughter would be strapped to my chest as I write this story.
The first night we spent together, we drank a little too much. We were staying at the house that one of my friends was house sitting at. Their yard was huge, and I realized I was too drunk to be around anyone. I found a cozy spot in the grass behind a big evergreen tree. I laid there until Josh found me and laid next to me.
“I know I shouldn’t say this, but I think I could really love you,” he told me, slurring his words as he went.
I have a picture of us from that night, and I can still feel the happiness radiating like light from my every pore. I was drowning in light for the first time. The next few years were an upward spiral. I stopped drinking. I stopped smoking. I started taking care of myself. I lost a significant amount of weight. I began going to the gym three times a week. I was walking daily. I wasn’t eating perfectly, but it was a far-cry better than daily fast food.
The darkness crept back in, slowly, insidiously. I let go of my curiosity, my whimsy. I closed the door on multiple friendships. I began to shut down, stopped working out, started drinking again. I didn’t even realize how bad it had gotten until recently, years after the fact.
Somehow, I didn’t let the darkness consume me. I held on to an anchor of light, guiding me back to myself. I finished nursing school, became a Registered Nurse. I started working in an emergency room. I began making new friends and connections. I started going back to therapy, and my therapist recommended EMDR therapy. I followed a pen light back and forth as I relived the worst moments of my life. A few weeks after I began these sessions, I found out I was pregnant. Pregnancy was relatively easy, but the postpartum period took me by surprise. I thought I was prepared, and yet I was still steamrolled by the intensity of learning to be a parent. The reality of my own upbringing dawned on me. I felt grief for myself and my siblings. I looked at the tiny, precious face of my daughter and promised her and myself that things could be different.
It’s a work in progress. Every day, I have to make the next right choice. The one that leads me in the direction of the light. The one that fights back against the darkness that has had its hold on me my whole life. It isn’t always easy. There are fights. There are tears. There are moments of isolation and questioning myself. The nights are long, getting up and down with my child who knows she can count on her mother.
In the morning when I wake up, I open the curtains to let the sunlight in.
