You're scared and you don't know what the hospital will think if you arrive in handcuffs, so you agree to go with them. They drive you to the hospital across the street from campus, and watch as you're checked in. While you wait, you text your parents. They text you the phone number of a lawyer, so [[you call him]].

You are twenty-two, and more successful than you could ever have imagined at sixteen. This doesn't necessarily translate to happiness 100% of the time, but it is enough. \n\n\n[[restart|first]]

[[Nothing happens.]]\n\nWhat?

The first thing they try to do upstairs is take away your phone. You don't give it to them.\n\nYou walk out of the room they've brought you to, and back down the hall to the elevator. You push [[the down button]].

You are twenty, and more than anything you want to [[live]].

They worried that a New York City hospital would have too many drug addicts, too many patients who are so much more worse off than you, bad influences. So they send you to a private hospital, closer to home at least, in Westchester County. (The hospital in your town closed long ago, and you only even know it existed at all because a photographer friend of yours broke in and posted [[pictures of its decay]] on Facebook.)\n\nIt seemed good on paper, and they were limited by trying to find a place with a bed open for an adolescent female. And it's not like you weren't [[cared for]] there. Well, [[not really]]. [[Well]].

You know now that the pictures on Facebook were just demonstrations of how your friend was so edgy and cool as a teen. But for a while after you came back, you couldn't look at them. The pastel walls were too familiar. You could almost imagine the DBT posters from [[your hospital|the one you will be safest at]] on them.

content note/trigger warning: contains in-depth discussion of self-harm, suicidiality, mental hospitals, medical malpractice, and allusion to police brutality. \n\nif you feel unsafe while playing this, please reach out to a trusted friend or doctor. if you don't know who to talk to, you could try texting <a href="http://www.crisistextline.org/">Crisis Text Line</a>\n\ndeep breath. ready to [[begin|first]]?\n\n(if you want to play v1 of this game, which has a couple fewer passages but is pretty similar overall, <a href="http://philome.la/precisememory/sickness-an-autobiography">go here</a>.)

You love your parents very much and they love you very much, and you only realize years later how much you take this for granted. Well. You start to realize it the next day, when -- [[we'll get to that]].

You're scared of sirens for years after this, even though none were directly involved in [[this incident|you call him]].

They decide in the end that your [[IQ is too high]] for you to be on the autism spectrum. You breathe a sigh of relief; you guess it doesn't run in the family after all. At least not to you. \n\nYou don't realize until years later how many things are fucked up about their [[assumption|full psychiatric evaluation]], which you didn't know better than to accept uncritically.

You're still not nineteen yet when you finally have had enough of jumping at guards on campus, of professors insulting you in front of your classmates and the chair of the department writing it off as your problem because you didn't go to office hours, and you leave.\n\nIt's hard and it doesn't make everything better. But [[finally|final]], you're exercising [[agency]], and things do improve when you're out of that hellhole.

The nurse takes you to a small room, takes your blood pressure, asks you questions. Then she takes you [[upstairs]].

The guys in your section at band used to joke about one of them being "emo." They would tear down the posters for the [[gay-straight alliance]] and put them up on his locker. They'd make jokes like "down the lane, not across the street." Joke's on them, you guess, but in a much more personal way, [[joke's on you|stop]].

You convince them after ten days that you're well enough to go home. You tell them, the [[full psychiatric evaluation]] you did made me see things a lot clearer, and now you have the tools to deal with it.\n\nYou are lying, but being there longer clearly [[isn't helping]] you.

Midway through your second semester, you're struggling with balancing classwork and a position on the executive board of that special-interest housing group. You're miserable and you want out. But you remember your father at the hospital, so you usually don't want to kill yourself. \n\nWhen you break down crying at a psychiatrist appointment, he says "I'm sending you to the hospital for an evaluation."\n\nYou say, "I'm not going back there." You start trying to call your therapist. She doesn't pick up - in an appointment?\n\nHe says, "As a psychiatrist in New York State, I have the right to hospitalize anyone who's endangering themselves or others."\n\nYou refuse to go. After multiple calls, you give up on your therapist. You call home. Your mother picks up. You tell her what's happening. You hand the phone to him. He hangs up. \n\nHe says, "I'm calling security. You can either [[agree to go with them]], or they'll call the police and you can [[go in handcuffs]]."\n\nThe campus security guards arrive at the campus health center. He says something to them. You hear them waiting at the end of the hall.

As a [[final|not quite final]] 'fuck you', the doors in the back seat of the car they take you back in don't open from the inside.

That's what scares you about hospitals, in the end. Mental patients have no voice save for what the doctors allow them. And psychological doctors don't really care about giving a teenage girl any rope, ostensibly in case it becomes enough to hang herself, but mostly because their voice isn't the one being taken.\n\nConsole yourself with this: \nThey took away your agency because you were powerful, and they can't control you forever, and with time, you will realize this. \n\n[[You can take care of yourself now, mostly.|three]]

You are twenty. Your parents seem to think that you are cured, and you don't know whether to believe them. But it's been two years since you left and four years since the hospital, so maybe they're right and [[it's going to be okay]].

[[Yes|clearer]].

The nurses follow you and ask you to go back to the room. You refuse. You ask if you can leave. They say they have to [[evaluate you]] first.

They take you out of [[the schedule]] for a day, and give you a series of tests: IQ, depression scales, emotional intelligence scales, and some reflex tests that you suspect have something to do with [[autism]]. \n\n(You learn the next year that numbered rating scales in psychology are called Likert scales. You still [[never|Leave hospital]] want to take one [[again|Leave hospital]].)

You are eighteen and determined that, if you're going to self destruct, you're going to take down as much of the system as you can with you.\n\n[[(It doesn't work like you thought it would.)|Intro 2]]\n\n

You wait. After a while you realize they're calling people about you, trying to do as much of the evaluation as they can without your cooperation.\n\nAfter calling [[your parents]], they apologize for the misunderstanding and call campus security to [[take you back to your dorm]]. It's been two hours, but you don't think you can make it to your classes today anyway. The elevator works, this time.

Sickness: an autobiography (2016 deluxe edition)

The next day: You're sitting in chemistry class with your head down on the desk, taking in exactly none of the lecture, thinking about how, even if you slit your wrists in the [[bathtub]], how would you keep yourself from being found until it was too late? You don't want [[your family]] to have to find you, especially not your little sister.

They check on you every fifteen minutes. Except when they're running late, which is pretty much always. And then there's the time your medication makes you pass out in the hallway, too weak to stand up but conscious enough to notice them walking by, every fifteen minutes for hours, checking that [[you are still there|the one you will be safest at]].

You are neither gay nor straight, but it [[suits you well enough|wrists]] for now.

Like the time your knee hurt so badly from fencing that you could barely walk, and [[she|Your girlfriend]] spent the hour between the end of classes and the start of fencing practice walking in circles through the building, talking with mutual friends. You sat in a hallway and watched them pass again and again - they seemed so happy, unlike you.

You meet with a psychiatrist once a week, and a therapist once a week. The rest of the time is group therapy sessions, activities attempting to keep everyone happy (e.g. movie night, video game room), and two hours of useless school each morning. You break down [[crying|Leave hospital]] at "school", realizing that two hours is not going to be enough to keep up with three AP classes or even one.

Your [[depression|Not sure 1]] doesn't manifest like it says it should on Wikipedia. People are supposed to feel anhedonia, but you still laugh and plan for the future and talk to your friends. You still take joy in music performance and in math team. Not that that matters right now.

Surely they can't keep the stairs locked. It would be a fire hazard.\n\nThe nurses have apparently radioed for help. There's a security guard just inside the staircase. You push on the door, and he braces against it so you can't open it. You ask him to let you go, but he won't. He tries to tell you: "it'll go better for you if you [[cooperate]]." You [[wait by the door]].

You didn't want it to be somewhere visible, which rules out [[wrists]]. You want to have full control of who sees your scars. Not that you want scars. You just want everything to be [[clearer]].

So you hide in the bathroom with a box knife left over from a craft project (is this [[really what it's come to]]?) and pull your shirt and bra out of the way. The knife isn't very sharp and you don't push too hard, the skin barely breaks at all, but it's the thought that counts anyway. You are miserable and you're angry at your girlfriend and maybe this was a bad idea, maybe this is enough [[for tonight]].

It's too much. Classes (including three AP courses), college looming, concert band, symphony orchestra, jazz band, brass choir, math team. Fencing team, which takes up about as much time as all those bands put together. [[Your girlfriend]].

It's bullshit and he's playing mind games. [[You're not going to do that.|wait by the door]]

In the fall of 2011, when you start college full-time:\n\nYou join the special-interest housing group for nerds. [[Your boyfriend]] breaks up with you, so you cry, date an asshole for two weeks, and get back together with him, all inside of a month. You take honors proof-based calculus and ace both exams. \n\nYou talk over Skype with your therapist, which [[works okay]] for about a semester. You go to the university health center for prescriptions for your medication. This, too, works okay for [[about a semester]].

Tenth, to be precise. Still counts, in a [[graduating class|Intro 2]] of 900.

She always thinks that you're hanging up on her when the wifi just isn't very good on [[campus|private research university with industry connections]].

Overall score on Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale is 136, highest subscore 138. They say people tend to score about 5 points higher when they're not in the hospital, which doesn't really make sense to you - isn't your IQ supposed to be an unchanging [[measurement|autism]]? \n\nYou've always tested well. The structure imposed by regular questions helps you focus, and the explanation of each section beforehand calms your nerves.

Puberty hit you hard, it's true. When you come up from depressive episodes, usually the first thing to come back is your sex drive. You haven't quite figured out how to orgasm yet, which makes life somewhat more of a nightmare than it would otherwise be. Not that you [[realize|Not sure 1]] it could be different.

By now you've figured out the orgasm thing, but not remotely. Which is unfortunate, since you went to [[school|private research university with industry connections]] six hours away.

He asks if there are [[police officers]] there. You don't think there are. He tells you that if there aren't you can just walk away. The nurse comes over to you, so you thank him and [[hang up the phone]].

"Why shouldn't I start cutting? What difference does it make?" You ask this and wait for her to [[stop]] you.

You don't think you want to wait around to hear what they think about your health. You know it's not perfect, but you're not going back to the mental hospital. You press [[the down button]].\n\nThe nurses start trying to ask you evaluation questions. You repeat over and over: I am not suicidal. Please let me leave. \n\nMaybe you should try [[the stairs]]?

[[You wish you'd put up more of a fight, then.|agree to go with them]]

Last night you were so sad, and text chatting with her online. An [[argument you'd had before]]. I guess she finally got tired of it, because all she would do this time was laugh. She said it was ironic. She didn't try to [[stop]] you this time.

You [[never|we'll get to that]] want to make him [[cry|we'll get to that]] again.

How did this happen? You're [[not sure]]. Wait, [[that's a lie]].

They claim that musical instruments are a privilege that have to be worked up to, even though it's a month and a half before your audition for All-State. You say that you're not sure what you have to live for without your music. They say - we'll work on that later. Your parents eventually get them to agree to keep your instrument and folding metal music stand in a locked office, and let you take it out during free time to play. The next day, after you practice, they claim other people are complaining about loud noise in common areas. They try to lock you in the "quiet room", which [[ironically|the one you will be safest at]] echoes whatever you play with a 5 second delay. You break down crying a couple times, and tell your parents when they visit, and the next arrangement allows you to practice during lunch when everyone else is away. Which works, except for when the office owner leaves early for lunchtime and locks their door. Or when they forget to bring you a lunch. Or when they lose your music stand. That last one's especially ironic, considering that everything from a belt to shampoo is considered contraband, and is highly guarded. Your yard-long metal pole, however, is gone somewhere, and nobody cares to look for it for days.

You love your girlfriend, but she [[always prioritizes what she wants]] over what you want, and you always [[prioritize]] other things first, and you don't know why she [[doesn't seem to care]] about taking care of you instead of just taking care of herself.

But that's in the past [[now|three]].

Wait, what?\n\nYou got through the rest of your junior year (somehow, by the skin of your teeth), and then your senior year, and were determined to go away to college, like everyone does. You graduated high school in the [[top 10]] of your class, and landed a merit scholarship to a [[private research university with industry connections]], so you went there. \n\nYour application essay was implicitly about the resilience of the human spirit, but it was explicitly about the mental hospital. It's a miracle you got in anywhere.

Let's get this out of the way: You have nightmares about your experiences there [[for years|Struggle]].\n

To be honest, you're not sure what you [[prioritize|Your girlfriend]] anymore.

When, after the therapist at your appointment later that evening recommends that you check in to a mental hospital, and you agree, just to get a break, your parents frantically call every hospital in a two hour radius to find [[the one you will be safest at]]. And remove the locking doorknob from your room, just in case. \n\nYour father [[cries]] as he says goodbye to you before leaving you at the hospital the first night. They visit every day.

<a href="https://twitter.com/precisememory">Annie</a>

It's the least messy, [[you reason|for tonight]]. Less to clean up, just drain and bleach the tub.

They have a daily schedule, not that they tell you what it is. You're never sure when you're supposed to be going somewhere, since the events aren't clearly announced, but you know that if you miss something they will assume it was a deliberate choice on your part to isolate yourself and let your depression win. \n\nYou ask for a printout of the schedule, and receive it, but after that your psychologist doesn't hide that she thinks you're [[obsessive-compulsive|full psychiatric evaluation]].

You think your parents threatened to sue, judging by how apologetic the nurses were and the language they used. Is refusal to listen really a [[misunderstanding|take you back to your dorm]]?

You are [[sixteen]] and you're [[not sure you want to be alive anymore|Not sure 1]].