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The days following my suicide attempt
By Rachael Krasnesky
Nov. 26, 2018
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“Okay, I need you to lift up your breasts for me,” the nurse said to me while she gently searched my shaking, naked body for contraband. Then she took my picture, which I would get to see every time I stood at the medication distribution window in the adult ward of Vantage Point Behavioral Health Hospital.
Tucked behind trees and a sloping driveway off Crossover Road in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Vantage Point serves as one of two psychiatric facilities for adults in the Northwest Arkansas area. It provides short-term mental health care for patients to undergo detox from drug addiction, psychosis and suicidal ideations.
Before my strip search, I was seated in a light-green waiting room. It was around 2 a.m. and no one else was in any of the adjacent waiting rooms. The headache I felt from overdosing on Xanax, a drug I’d originally been prescribed to treat Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which was diagnosed as the root of my panic attacks, had started to wear off.
The chairs in the green room were too heavy to scoot comfortably up to the table. All the chairs in Vantage Point were like this, which I learned were designed for the safety of patients and others. The mirrors in every bathroom were bolted to the bathroom walls and were made out of semi-reflective sheet metal that couldn’t be broken into harmful shards. We weren’t allowed to use floss without a doctor’s order and had to turn in our toothbrushes and toothpaste after each use. All of our garments were inspected for strings, and if any were found, they were removed or cut out. I made-do with wearing a sports bra, as the underwire that provides support to most bras posed a potential risk if a patient removed them.
These precautions existed to make sure that patients like me didn’t try to hurt themselves again.
…
I had only been in therapy for about a month before I overdosed and ended up at Vantage Point. I’d seen a guidance counselor once in high school, but I never made any attempts to see a therapist after that until my then-boyfriend’s mom mentioned that she went to a therapist every week and that it might be beneficial for me.
My perception has always been that I feel and respond to emotions more dramatically than others around me. I would make friends quickly but had trouble keeping them. My romantic relationships were usually characterized with an initial, white-hot intensity that fizzled out in a matter of months or ended explosively. When my high school boyfriend ended our relationship my freshman year of college, I soaked my heartbreak wounds in alcohol and self-harm.
Multiple people told me that my inability to handle everyday life was exhausting to them. My coping mechanisms had always been to sleep away pain or to self-harm. This was curbed somewhat in high school when my parents were there to force me out of bed, but once I entered college, there wasn’t anyone there to force me into making responsible decisions anymore. Looking back, I slept away much of my college years, which extended beyond the standard four years it takes most students to earn their undergraduate degrees. I’ve changed majors twice and spent nearly seven years so far trying to graduate. I still have about four classes left.
By August 2016, the depression and anxiety began to outweigh my will to fight back. A nurse told me that I just needed to run more and get out of bed in order to solve my problems, which left me feeling like all of my shortcomings were preventable and my fault. It wasn’t until later that my psychiatrist taught me that it wasn’t that simple. Coping skills like exercise don’t always work without routine psychotherapy and medication.
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Infographic by Sarah Young
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One of the most important facts about suicide is that there is no singular cause or sign. Individuals living with depression or anxiety and other related disorders have a higher risk for suicide, but that’s not necessarily criteria for someone who is suffering from suicidal ideations.
The Centers for Disease Control reports that suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. across all ages and is the second leading cause of death among people ages 10 to 34. Suicide is a heavy problem for many people, but I learned there is always hope, and there is always help.
…
I spent the first half of August 4, 2016, shuttered inside my house, groggily stumbling to the kitchen and back to bed. It was the third day of a depression-induced binge. I called in sick to work and didn’t leave my bed.
The previous Saturday, I’d agreed to temporarily foster four, 2-day-old kittens for my local animal shelter. The tiny, bean-shaped, fuzzy cats needed to be bottle fed, and I had some experience as I had three cats of my own. Sunday morning, however, I returned them to the shelter. Two of them wouldn’t take a bottle, and they weren’t moving very much anymore. I called a few hours later and found out that one of the kittens had died. It probably wasn’t my fault, but the monster that lives in my brain whispered greasy words about failure, sliding into the hinges of my already unsteady psyche.
My dad called me a few days later to talk about a class I’d failed that spring semester. It wasn’t the first time he’d called to talk about it and an argument ensued. He was tired of my inconsistent grades and spending thousands of dollars on my education. It was time, in his opinion, for me to either get my life together or to get out into the world on my own.
All of this was too much – the dead kittens, the flood of guilt I felt for letting my parents down again, my ever-decreasing GPA.
I tried calming myself down with the usual coping skills my therapist and I had practiced. I vacuumed the house because cleaning always made me feel better. I watched something happy on Netflix that usually distracted my mind. Nothing gave me comfort from the dark, looming cloud of self-hatred that had formed within me that day. I texted my aunt, Leslie Alexander, saying I felt like there was nothing left for me, that this day was too hard to handle. She didn’t respond.
My house was spotless and all of my cats had been fed. I turned off my television, unplugged the internet modem and shut off all the lights. I turned off my phone and my computer. I opened the orange pill bottle I’d kept in my purse that was full of Alprazolam – Xanax – poured them out, lined them up and started to take them.
My aunt Leslie hadn’t responded to my text because she had immediately gotten into her car and driven to my house instead. She felt like something was different and more alarming than my usual kvetching about life’s hard knocks. She knocked on the door but didn’t wait for me to answer before unlocking it to get inside.
Looking at the note and the line of pills on my coffee table, Leslie asked me what I did, realizing things were worse than she’d originally anticipated.
“You told me you’d taken a lot of your Xanax. I called poison control and they said that if you were awake, you didn’t need an ambulance but needed to go to the emergency room anyway. I loaded you up into my car and did my best to keep you awake on the way to the hospital,” Leslie recounted.
When we arrived at the hospital, Leslie helped me out of the car. Most of what I know is from Leslie’s retelling of what happened once we got to the emergency room. I fell in the parking lot and eventually ended up in a wheelchair. At some point I was taken to a room in the back of emergency room, where I saw a nurse and a doctor. I was asked if I wanted to stay the night at a special emergency hospital for suicide patients – at the time I thought it would be temporary and I could go home when I’d sobered up. Most of what happened from that point is fuzzy.
My time in Vantage Point began later that day. It was a Thursday, and it was the beginning of a long weekend. Being at Vantage Point over the weekend only added to the monotony, as there weren’t any family visits or doctor’s appointments on Saturdays and Sundays. There were coloring pages but only felt tip markers or an occasional Sharpie, and sometimes the markers went missing. The flat screen TV in the recreation area of the adult ward sat behind thick, somewhat foggy plastic sheeting bolted to the TV stand. The only chance to get outside was during smoke breaks, which were in a fenced-in yard covered in dying grass and cigarette butts.
Group therapy was surprisingly uplifting, despite my desperate desire to fall asleep. We discussed the things in life that made us feel worthless, and we all chimed in to each other’s stories with advice and words of hope, reassuring one another that we weren’t alone and that there is always a reason to keep trying. Like little kids learning to understand the world, we were given coloring pages with meaningful quotes about recovery, and we kept journals to write down our feelings – something the therapists encouraged as a way to keep track of our day-to-day struggles and successes.
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Rachael stayed at Vantage Point Behavioral Health Hospital on Crossover Road in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Photo by Lexi DeLeon
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While my stay at Vantage Point was relatively short, the staff and other patients’ honesty and kindness impacted my view of life. There was no judgement from these strangers, and this environment allowed us to find strength and hope in each other’s brokenness and vulnerability.
When my aunt brought me home from Vantage Point the following Monday, I got out of her car and stood barefoot on my front lawn. I wiggled my toes in the cigarette-free grass and let the sun soak back into my skin.
…
To this day, I haven’t forgotten the smell of sanitizing cleaner vaguely scented like lavender mixed with the lingering aroma of all-in-one combo soap. I haven’t forgotten the panic of being unable to call my mom because the ward’s phones shut off during group therapy, or being told to walk quietly in the hall on the way to a 30-minute lunch like a second-grader. I also haven’t forgotten the tattoo-covered patient who introduced himself to me and asked, “So what got you here?” I told him I’d overdosed the night before. He said, “Damn, that sucks. I’m glad you’re here because that means you’re still alive. We’re still alive and tomorrow can only get better.”
I haven’t forgotten the way my dad cried when he told me that it didn’t matter if I took 20 years to graduate college, because if I was trying, it meant I was alive and that’s what mattered. My mom, who I have always been very close to, echoed similar reassurances. However, something I’ve worked on in therapy is learning that part of my self-care includes forming opinions of myself based on what makes me happy rather than what might make someone else happy. Basing self-worth on another person’s opinion is a dangerous path. What is good for you may not fit the image of someone else’s vision of your life. My parents gave me the reassurance I needed, that I am loved regardless of my educational and career path, but that wasn’t what ultimately led to the healthier mental state I am in today.
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Photo illustration by Lexi DeLeon
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Generalized Anxiety Disorder, OCD and ADHD will always be the monsters that whisper words of self-doubt and failure to me in my most vulnerable moments. The day-to-day struggles haven’t changed. I struggle with school, and I struggle with relationships. Sometimes my mental fragility makes people take me less seriously. Some days I still feel vulnerable and worthless, almost as deeply as I did in 2016.
But my time in the hospital, as well as the subsequent therapy and psychiatric care I’ve received since then, have given me much better tools to work with than I had before. I have learned to communicate my pain before it’s too late. I’ve allowed myself to relax into uplifting friendships and familial relationships I had neglected before, mostly out of shame. I’ve made new, healthy relationships with people who lift me up instead of focusing on my failures.
I’ve managed to keep a journal since leaving Vantage Point. It helps me sort out the disorganized mess of feelings that constantly run hot and cold. I keep the ADHD and OCD monsters at bay by keeping to-do lists, and I can look back at what I discussed with my therapist every week. My goal is to someday become confident enough in my own mental-health journey that other people can look to me for support when they can’t support themselves. Some people don’t get a second chance. I did, and I wiggle my toes in the grass every chance I can.
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Infographic by Sarah Young
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