Tiff

My thoughts and other stuff
2014-02-23 23:38:01 (UTC)

Treatment Center.

A year ago I was on my month of Prozac. Before that I was on Celexa. After Prozac I was put on fluoxetine and after that (my final depression medication) I was put on Wellbutrin. They kept switching me because the medications weren't "working". I was taking all of these between December 2012- May 2013. Once I turned 18 I stopped taking Wellbutrin, you're not supposed to abruptly stop taking Wellbutrin because it can make your blood pressure sky rocket... It sucked. Let's go back to where all of the depression medications started, the treatment center. I went to the treatment center on a Friday in December 2012. I had an art show on that Monday and my car had broken down afterwards which made my mom furious. Angry enough for her and I to start fighting which at that point I had had enough. In my head all I could think of was that "I wasn't high enough for this shit." Getting high made being around my mom more tolerable, it made life in general more tolerable. I didn't have to sit in a reality where I could hear my mom's voice in my head constantly, or have to be fully aware of her yelling at me and hitting me. Anyway so we were fighting all the next day and then on Wednesday, it was pretty bad, my mom pulled me out of school telling me that I had a doctors appointment. I remember being scared and asking my Spanish teacher ( She was also my theater director so I was close with her) if I had to leave. She knew I had problems with my mom and she just gave me a hug and told me it would be okay. When I got into the truck with my mom it was dead silent and she drove me back home. That was when I found out that we weren't going to a normal doctor. I was going to be evaluated, my mom just laughed and started telling me that she had talked to my dad and he told her everything. My dad was my best friend, the one person who knew what it was like to be me, to be at the bad end of my mothers hatred. I told him everything. I then texted him and he was upset that I accused him of telling her and he told me that I was just like her. Through out my entire time at the treatment center I didn't talk to him until my final day.
I remember crying and feeling completely helpless with no one left who cared. She turned my phone off so I couldn't talk to anyone and we went to the doctors. I took a depression and an anxiety test and when they got the results they sent us to Prairie St. Johns immediately. There are two programs there for teens, in-patient or out-patient. My mother signed me up for out-patient which meant that I would be in the treatment center during school hours and over Christmas vacation. We talked to a therapist right away, I asked if I could speak to her alone. I asked her if I could be put in in-patient because I was afraid to go home. You'd think that would set off a red flag, a teen being afraid to go home but nope. They said that I wasn't high risk enough to be in in-patient. When I came back out my mother looked at me and smiled a cruel kind of smiled and said, "What? They didn't want you to stay did they? Who would? You're stuck with me whether you like it or not." There was a nurse in the lobby who overheard this and all she did was squeeze my arm. I was told my first day would be on Friday.
We went home that night and it was like a screaming match. Her treatment center stunt made me miss work and would make me miss work for the next 2-3 weeks. So I was forced to take a leave of absence. That night I fell asleep crying. The next day (Thursday) I stayed in my room and drew all day, that night I took an entire bottle of muscle relaxers and mixed it with my pain pills. I remember feeling like I was going to throw up and nothing would stop moving until I passed out. Of course I was trying to kill myself but just like every other time I tried I failed. So I showed up for treatment that Friday. Got into a fight that morning with my mom and she left me at that place.

I walked in and went through a metal detector, my belly button piercing set it off so they made me lift my shirt. I was then led to an old chapel that had two round tables with markers and coloring book pages. They took my vitals and then once it hit 8am all of us were led to a class room where we were all put at separate tables. This was where we would SILENTLY work on our school work. If you weren't quiet you got in trouble. I missed my first day of "school" in there because I had to go do an evaluation with a therapist, get blood drawn, and take a drug test. After school was a therapy session, at first mine were focused on my depression then they switched after my drug test came back off the charts. They forgot I even had depression and switched me to the substance abuse program. After that it was lunch time, at this point we were led through underground tunnels to a separate building. These tunnels might have been the worst part. The walls were stained and huge pipes ran along the ceiling. The lights flickered as we walked through them. The food was terrible there, I hated eating but if I didn't eat they'd make me or it would just count against me in the end, "my choice."
After lunch we had music, which they would play songs and ask us how it made us feel... I hated that. That is the reason why I can't play guitar or listen to music anymore. That fucking place ruined it and turned it into something terrible. The way they looked at you, all of the nurses and therapists and security, like you had a fucking disease and if they got too close they could get infected. They didn't care about us, any of us. We were just another pay check to them. Or another kid they could throw into a padded room (I HATED that room) when we got too angry. We had another group after that and then we had arts and crafts last. I made bracelets in arts and crafts. They asked me why, I told them I was making a bracelet for every scar. They stopped asking after that.
We were zombies, we played their game and did what they asked and pretended we were okay. They pretended they didn't notice our mask. They gave us pill to make it all better. Pills to make us sleep, pills to make us happy, pills to make us normal, pills to make us okay again.
I remember that something broke in me that first day and from then on I was never the same. I pretended my entire way through the t.c. I was there on Christmas.... I spent my Christmas in a fucking treatment center. There were bars on the windows. In the bathroom there were scratch marks on the plastic protecting the window. I hated taking drug tests, I took 3 a week and they watched me while I took them.
At home it was worse, my mom took my door away to make sure that I didn't "do anything." No one talked to me, they looked at me with disgust and my mother reminded me how terrible I was. Whenever she was at the treatment center she put on her happy face... No one believed me when I told them the truth about her and everything. The nurses just rolled their eyes. That is 3 weeks I will never forget. On the last day I was allowed to drive to and from there, they locked up my keys to keep me from escaping.
Things only got worse after I was released. It was still Christmas break so I didn't have to go to school right away. I was still drug tested at every doctors appointment and I started taking Celexa.
Zombies. That is the best way I can describe every person in the treatment center. They don't help. They are pieces of crap. Everything they tell you in there is a lie. They say whatever it takes to "fix" you. To kill that part of you that doesn't fit into their world. I hated that place. I cried every night because I didn't want to wake up the next day.




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