1631440624 (N) by Helaina Hovitz

Author:Helaina Hovitz [Hovitz, Helaina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2016-08-08T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

War is a mind-set, and all action that comes out of such a mind-set will either strengthen the enemy, the perceived evil, or, if the war is won, will create a new enemy, a new evil equal to or often worse than the one that was defeated.

You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.

To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing.

—Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

In January 2006, Dr. C’s chart read:

Seen in emergency room in St. Vincent’s. Began taking Risperdal.

It was the first time that whatever had upset me, whatever dark thing had happened as a result of fighting with Vin, had made me actually draw blood in two lines over my wrist.

I presented them to my father right after and told him, “I need to go to the hospital. I want to kill myself.”

In a painfully slow, awkward, dragged out, and desperate cry for help, we drove to the St. Vincent’s Emergency room—the one at New York Downtown Hospital across the street was to be avoided at all costs, no matter how convenient—and I was led into a small, private emergency room, where a curtain was drawn around us.

They kept me in that room for two hours doing nothing but sitting there.

Eventually, a black woman in a charcoal suit entered carrying a clipboard, wearing her glasses on a colorful chain around her neck.

“We can admit you to the children’s psych ward for two weeks if you don’t think you can keep yourself safe,” she said.

“I don’t know. Maybe that would be best,” I said.

I knew I didn’t belong there. I didn’t want to actually kill myself, I had no real plan; what I wanted was to not feel how I was feeling, for someone to help me out of it, not to die.

You’re not crazy. A crazy person wouldn’t be thinking about getting her homework done right now.

But it looked like I was out of options, and so maybe, having an excuse to be away from everything, from Vin, from school, from my parents, from the subway, was the solution. Literally removing myself from the world.

If they think it’s serious enough, maybe they’ll give me something I haven’t tried yet.

Just then, my mother showed up, throwing back the curtain in time to refuse to let them admit me anywhere.

“You want to go with all those crazy people, those degenerates? You’ll be all alone surrounded by crazy people and drug addicts. That’s not you. You don’t belong there. You’re not going.”

She turned to the woman.

“She’s fine. She’s just being dramatic.”

My mother gathered up my things.

“Now, let’s go see your grandfather, someone who is actually sick.”

I hadn’t even realized that Grandpa was on another floor in the same hospital, going in and out of consciousness after having a stroke.

Where the hell is my head at?

My aunt was there, my grandma was there, and I told my mom, “Please don’t tell them I was down there.

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