I didn’t know what to expect, but I landed there. Behind the doors of the place that hurt me more than anything ever has. When I think about how I landed there, the brain image I get is pretty fuzzy. Yet the picture of me sitting in that room will always remain. A hospital. Not exactly the kind of hospital that you go to when you break your leg, the other kind; the kind that ruined me.

I don’t really remember what it was exactly that got me sitting in that room for hours every single night for six weeks. I will never understand the reasons for my parents making me sit there every night for over a month, but it happened. It was the worst experience of my life. I have never been looked at the way the staff there looked at me; like I was helpless; just a very sick girl. It hurt me in a way I cant even begin to describe. I have never been looked at like that. I was always so well viewed. I never get into trouble, I have good grades, the best friends, and in all honesty I think of myself as a nice person, but they never reallized. The only thing they ever saw in me was sick.

You would think at a hospital they help you get better. These people had no clue what they were doing. You would think the pain that you were feeling that landed you there in the first place would gradually go away. Wrong. The pain increased with every second I stayed. Believe me, I wasn’t crazy, but I was going through a very difficult time. Maybe all the mumbo jumbo of being a teenager came crashing down on me all at once, was too much for me to handle, and caused me to end up this way. That part was never really important to me but getting better was. Why was it that every passing day I was there I found myself asking the same question. Am I really crazy? I didn’t before, I may have been a little freaked out about the way I was feeling, but I never found myself thinking I was actually crazy. I feel as if their opinions drove me to believe the level of sick I was, was whatever they told me.

I heard this from someone before, “sick grows sick.” They couldn’t be any more correct. I was sitting in a room with a bunch of other kids “talking about our feelings” which I think was just another way the staff and doctors could analyze us. Being around those kids, I felt sorry for them and I could relate to them, but what I was searching for wasn’t an understanding, it wasn’t doctors figuring out my problem, I needed my friends and family to stop trying to fix everything and just help.

The second I got out of that place I was starting to feel better. I think it finally hit my parents that this place was not helping at all and some of their methods needed some serious work. What I needed was to get away from the rooms and people that were analyzing me. I needed comfort and my more than anyone, my mom. The one thing she told me she was sorry for was making me stay there. She realized it was the wrong thing to do and I appreciated her stopping it and getting me out. I don’t blame her or my dad. They are the best parents in the world and when they saw what I was becoming, I guess they just had nowhere else to turn. I was mad at them for long time, but I forgave them. The part that hurts me to this day is that I still remember the pain of sitting in that room, around that table with other teens, being questioned on my nights and emotions and having it written down. It hurts me, it made me weak. For me, I want nothing but to gain strength from these painful memories.

My aunt gave me a really good piece of advice once. She said to allow myself ten minutes a day to be angry about it. That I had every right to be, but she said spend they rest of the day realizing how good life is now and being thankful for all that I have. I’m not going to lie. I haven’t completely gotten over it yet, but some day, I will be entirely free from it.

My message to get across is that when you are struggling and in a stuck place the people that you need to be around are the ones that love you. You wont get very far without them. One more thing; the way you view yourself matters more than anything else in thing else. I am a strong person because of this.