Blue Plastic Mattress Narrative

Depression placed a dark brooding shadow over my mind. I was weighed down, oppressed by the burden of having to carry on with life. In my mind, there was a crushing sense of hopelessness that I have never felt before. The only therapy I found was taking that beautiful, freshly sharpened razor to my left arm. A sigh of relief departed me as I watched the bright red blood drip from my vein. The only burden I had was going to school and hiding my war scars. Each day, the darkness spread through me like cancer. My body withering away, I needed an escape route from this crucial disease. This all continued until the day I saw a light and the darkness began to fade

The rooms were confined to themselves by a large metal door with a small slot about 5 feet from the floor that could only be opened from the outside. The walls were once a brilliant white, but now filled with the scratch marks and blood stains from the ones before me. The room stench of urine, most likely from the other patients. All there was in the room was a small cot with a mattress so thin, it almost looked as if it was a thin piece of plywood. As I laid there strapped to my bed by leather restraints that were made to “protect” me from myself, I kept pondering on the question “what did I do to deserve to be locked up in a place like this?” Then I remember my crime, and smile.

My hospital bed was ice cold and the bleak and empty white walls depressed me as the uncomforting thought that I would have to stay here for maybe another week brought tears to my eyes. The usual and oppressive smell of disinfectant lingered in the room as I recalled that night in my head, trying to convince myself it wasn’t my fault, as I had done everyday since the accident. It was the day everything changed and my life was turned upside down. Forever.

Every day I told myself to just be strong. I told myself to be so strong no one else will notice that inside I was falling apart. Every day I told myself that, and I did exactly that. But that is only half the story. Every night I broke down in tears until I couldn’t be strong anymore. I felt heartache, I felt loneness, I didn’t feel as if I was worthy. As I lay there in bed knowing I am loved, knowing I am not alone, and knowing I am worthy, I asked myself how did I get to be like this. Why did I allow one person to take my who I am from me? After many months of holding myself together in public and breaking down in private I realized it’s because I didn’t love myself. Loving yourself is a process, and a process you might not always get right, but one worth striving for.

Mental health was beyond the ability to be anything but mentally self-eroding. Confidence was lost on a map of self love that I had erased. A friend of mine had bought me a mainstream poetry book called Milk and Honey. They thought it would render me some “help”. It sat on the shelf for months until one night my ears were fed a TED talk by the author, Rupi Kaur. The book had been scanned by my eyes twice before they involuntarily shut on my third attempt. A book is no remedy for a broken heart, or a depressed little teenage girl. But THIS book is the exception. Particularly because the author speaks to me, and I see her in me and me in her (Or maybe that is just the empathy talking). Poems of self-love and recovery hung in shiny frames in my head for weeks. Through her words, positive feelings were generated.

I pushed myself onto my weak feet and stumbled home. For days I couldn’t leave my room, my anxiety and depression preventing me from moving, pinning me to my bed. His words still rung in my ears and all I could do was think of him. Somehow in the midst of my thoughts, my sorrow slowly turned to anger. I didn’t understand why he would shut me out so abruptly and suddenly I realized that I had to change, that I had to move on.

When their eyes met mine they began to cry, I could tell that this had shattered them. All they would ask was, “Why Jocelyn, why?” How could I explain to them all the emotions I kept inside? Would they even understand? Of course not! How could they? They had no idea what it was like to feel so low all of the time, and sometimes for no reason at all. They were normal, I wasn’t, and that’s all I wanted to be. I didn’t want to let little things like arguments get to me, but they did and it wasn’t even my fault, that wasn’t the person I knew I truly was, but the depression had taken over my life completely. I thought if I died, people, including my family would simply move on and not give a single thought to why I would end my own life, or even care too much for that matter. But when I looked into their eyes, I saw people who truly cared about me, people who loved me so much that they would give up their own lives to save me. I realized how much pain I had caused them and that was something I never expected to come out of this. I hated causing a cut-straight-to-the-heart kind of pain, which I myself dealt with most of my life. It made me see some things in a different light.

The day was August 1st, 2013. Summer was coming to an end and fall was close at hand. However, on this particular day, I paid no mind to the changing season. Hundreds of people strolled the hospital hallway, their voices echoing the long pale corridors like distant hums. Despite the outside chatter, my room encompassed a certain stillness. I had always associated stillness with serenity, but this stillness was made up of apprehension, hopefulness, and most notably, fear. As I sat on a bed meant for sick patients, I looked around the small confines of the white room to my family. Within each of them I saw panic; I saw the fear of losing me. After what seemed like a lifetime suspended within a cruel dream, the doctor finally entered the room.

The frighteningly familiar smell of latex gloves and old hand sanitizer linger the halls of the hospital. I hate that smell, but it is forever etched into the creases of my brain. That smell is one I will always remember. My thoughts are pinging wall to wall like the ball in a pinball game. I find it hard to breathe, because I know what is happening beyond those doors into the operating room. It is May, extremely hot outside, but I am wearing a jacket; it’s too cold in this large, lonely building to be without one. I see all these people with burdened looks on their faces, waiting for their loved ones to come out from surgery as well, but yet I still feel alone. I walk down to the first floor and purchase an iced coffee from PJ’s and I take the elevator back up to the second floor. I pull out my phone to check the time and use my camera as a mirror to see how exhausted I look. I walk to where my mother and my grandmother are sitting, looking just as exhausted as I.

That night I went to sleep emotionless. I could not think. I didn’t eat. I didn’t drink anything. How could I? I don’t remember the rest of the day, I don’t even remember going to sleep. Only the one thing remained in my mid, burned in there forever. My uncle was dead. He was shot, by men whose drive was drugs and money. An amazing man and father was killed that day and a whole family left in grief. All for

The doctors informed me that stitches were needed for my forehead and some parts of my scalp. I had never gotten a suture before and it made me absolutely nervous to the bone. My open wound was the only thing I was feeling right about then. Maybe hearing such heart racing news was the reason why my face became so painful, to the point where numbness was all I could feel. As I’m being rolled through the mysterious hospital halls, I thought about how creepy the environment made me feel. From what I’ve seen in horror movies, this was the exact image I had about hospitals. I hated it. I wanted to go home and make everything right again. The rolling suddenly came to a stop, and the nurses injected me with anesthesia which soon thereafter, I began to fall to a deep sleep. Thank goodness I couldn’t feel a thing, because the idea of having my head being sewn back together sounded awful and I didn’t want any sensation of

I opened my eyes to reveal a heavenly light but when my eyes focused it was just a currently cleaned hospital light. “Stupid but precious light.” I mumbled. I tilted my head up and looked around. It was my room clearly. I could tell due to the wall dents and blood on the wall. Sometimes the medicines would make me go crazy and the emotional pressure hurt to much.

They say god gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers and what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. People have always said you’re so brave and fearless, but they don 't know I’ve felt more pain than some people will in an entire lifetime and all before being old enough to order myself a drink. I never learned how to channel my pain, I let it grow within me like a tumor killing me a little day by day. My parents sent me to the best psychiatrists money could buy but when they asked me, “what causes this pain”  and then I’d obliterate any success we had made in that session by simplest of actions, walking out. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t tell them why because if I did I would be admitting to murder.

They say God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers and what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. People have always said you’re so brave and fearless, but they don 't know I’ve felt more pain than some people will in an entire lifetime and all before being old enough to order myself a drink. I never learned how to channel my pain, I let it grow within me like a tumor killing me a little day by day. My parents sent me to the best psychiatrists money could buy, but when they asked me, “what causes this pain” and then I’d obliterate any success we had made in that session by the simplest of actions, walking out. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t tell them why because if I did I would be admitting to murder.

Maybe to some her days seemed perfect, but to her it was never enough. She wanted to escape the prison that was her life, and for once she felt ready to take a small step out into the world. She was ready to walk into the bright LA sun. She hoped for a time when she could finally escape the fear and the shining lights of fame to a normal life, a life she had been waiting for all these years. Many young doctors were willing to take her position in an instant and take over the long conference calls, and the experimentation that went on behind the heavy metal doors. The fear was no longer a heavy weight on her shoulders, only a moment in the grand scheme of her life. It was evident now, she knew what she was meant to do. Falling in an out of waves of thought she dreamed of a life she could soon live, with nothing but her own will holding her back.