Enough

Enough

By Mary Bubenzer

It is always about the blood.

I screwed up and need to pay. The best way to pay, the only way, is in blood.  I make my way to the bathroom and find a razor. Not a blade but a regular razor you use to shave your legs, with three blades fit into a handle.  I took my left arm out of my t-shirt.  I press the blades against my shoulder and draw it down, creating a score of three red lines. The blood beads up. The red blood is beautiful. Oh, God. I feel an easing of my shoulders.  I lift the blade about an inch from my elbow and examine my handiwork.  Not enough. I place blades at my shoulder and draw it down again, and again, and again until my arm is a bloody mess.

Still not enough.  I have not paid enough. I walk down the carpeted stairs to the living room in a daze, blood dripping. Finding my purse, I take out my bottle of Xanax. I take six. I’m the problem. Then four more. I have always been the problem. Then two more. I’m not good enough. It would be better if I were NOT. But I haven't said goodbye to Henry. Oh, God – Henry.  I could picture his kind ocean-blue eyes. Henry is my very heart.  Henry is at my core. How can I do this to Henry? I feel a bit dizzy as I pick up the phone and dial his number.

"Yello," he says in his corny way.

"What should I do?"

"What do you mean?"

I tell him what I've done.

"Call your doctors, Hols. I'm on my way."

I sigh and call my shrink.

"Hi, this is Holly. I need to talk to Dr. Nilsson."

I say what I've done in a monotone, and the receptionist assures me the doctor will call back. Ten minutes later, he calls. I’m already getting tired of explaining.  He tells me to get to the ER.  I tell him Henry is on his way.

"What’s going on, Holly?" Dr. Nilsson says.

"I’m no good.”

“You are. You are good enough.”

“Yeah, ok. So you say.”

Henry arrives and bundles me into the car. He doesn’t speak much. We’ve been through this routine before.  At least with the blood.  The pills are new. I almost feel good about having the guts to do it. Maybe now it will work; perhaps this time, I’ll get what I need.  I don’t know what I need.  My life sucks right now. I lost my cats and my aunt last year, and my addiction to spending has us deep in debt.  I hate my job. I hate how I’ve been wasting everyone’s time. See?  I’m the problem.

When I was about six years old, my mother took me to see my first shrink. She said he was my "talking doctor.” The doctor was East Indian. He was kind. He opened a cabinet that was full of toys and told me I could play with anything I wanted. We played and talked.  I didn’t understand much, but I liked him. I even bragged to the other girls that I had a “talking doctor” with a roomful of toys.

I was a weird kid, an outcast who teamed up with other outcasts to brave the bullies.  The bullies were brutal, and they saw a perfect whipping girl.  It was fun to make Holly cry and so easy to do. I'd pretend to be sick and beg Mom and Dad to let me stay home. Sometimes it worked, but usually, I had to go to the daily firing squad.  I probably had ADHD, but that wasn't a thing in the '70s. I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression.

My second brush with psych professionals happened when I was in high school.  Mom was seeing a psychologist about the chaos in our family, and we had some family sessions.  I did NOT want to participate.  Being the egoist that most young teens are, I imagined it was all about me and how substandard I was.  It wasn't until years passed that I realized it was more about my mom and her coping. At the end of high school, I started seeing a different psychiatrist who prescribed medication; it’s been part of my daily life ever since.

I went off to college to study theater and fell into a lifestyle of partying, drugs, and alcohol. When I felt very depressed and anxious, I went to the student clinic for some therapy.  The guy that saw me was a psych grad student, and he was strange.  He liked to talk about sex—a lot.  I was still a virgin and had ambivalent feelings about sex.  He was lousy; he spoke of his other client's sex lives and even set me up with one of his other clients. At that point, I was an anxious mess, failing classes and barely holding it together. I left college before I got my degree and came home to my folks’ house.

Life progressed as life will. I met Henry, and we got married, eventually got a degree in English, earned a Master’s degree, had a child.  All that achievement didn’t mean a damn thing to me. I never used my education. I had a complicated and sometimes adversarial relationship with my son. All that time, I had ongoing years of therapy and even six years of being on disability. Henry was a rock through it all, and I put him through hell. I started the cutting as an adult. This is not my first trip to the ER.

When I get to the ER, I’m in a daze. The medications are affecting me.  They call me back into one of the exam rooms and have me put on one of those giant backless gowns. It’s chilly in the exam room, and I wish I could put my sweatshirt back on. They clean me up and bandage me, and a social worker comes to ask me a bunch of questions. Everyone agrees that it would be best to admit me.  Should I argue? I don’t care.  I need someone to tell me what to do, so I agree. I put my clothes back on, over the dressing swathing my arm; I am put in a wheelchair and wheeled down into the basement, through several locked doors to the psych inpatient unit. They tell me Henry could come to see me later. I am alone, in a scary new place and situation.  I have no idea what to expect.  My arm is burning. I also feel very sleepy. Those pills are kicking in.  They think I have not consumed so much that they’d have to pump my stomach.  I am glad about that. 

At the curved desk in the Psych Unit, they take my favorite Bucky Badger hoodie; they say I can have it back after they take out the string.  The nurses check my shoes, but I am wearing slipons without laces to confiscate. They check to see if I have a belt, which I do not.  They take my phone, but if I want to use it, I can come up to the desk and ask for it. Henry comes down and says he will go home for some clothes and books for me. At that point, I want to be left alone.  They take me down to the end of the long hall and show me into a room. It has Spartan furnishing with two beds, a desk, and a door leading to a bathroom with a shower.  A woman is sitting on one of the beds.  She tells me her name, Kate, and says, “welcome to the bin.” She leaves.  I lay down on my bed.  It is rather stiff and not the most comfortable.  I close my eyes and listen to my heart beating. Psych ward, I am in the psych ward. I feel scared.

Later that afternoon, Henry drops by with clothes, books, and my precious journal. He promises he’ll come the next day during visiting hours, wishes me love, hugs me, and then he’s gone.  I wander into the dining area, looking for coffee—no coffee for inpatients. A few people are sitting around a room with round tables and plastic chairs.  My roommate is one of them.

“Holly, Have you ordered your dinner yet?” Kate is younger than me, but still middle-aged, I’d say in her thirties.  She has long blonde hair and wears a hoodie with comical ears on it, which she keeps up on her head at all times. I haven’t ordered dinner, and she shows me a menu and what numbers to dial at the main desk to reach foodservice.  The menu is nice, like what you might find at a café. I need comfort, so I order beef stroganoff with noodles and a yogurt parfait.  The parfait, with yogurt, berries, and granola, will become one of my go-to foods. The food is good. A nurse comes up to me and takes me into an exam room to look at my scabbing scars. She redresses them and asks me how I’m doing.  Well, I’m an inpatient at the psych unit, so not so hot. “Ok,” I tell her.

“Holly, there’s going to be a group after dinner.  We’d love it if you joined us.” I shake my head.  I’m not ready for any group. After dinner, I go back to my room and write in my journal for a while. I go to the main desk to get my medications and then go back to bed.

When Kate enters the room later, we have a conversation.  She’s only been in here a day longer than I have.  She has two teenaged children and works as an apartment manager.  She doesn’t know how much longer she’ll be able to work there; one guy is harassing her.  But if she leaves that job, she’ll have to leave her apartment too. I feel grateful for my house, but don’t tell her that.  She’s friendly, very down-to-earth. We don’t discuss what brought us here. After we talk, she settles in to read, and I try to sleep.

I can’t sleep. Everything feels wrong. The heavy, squeaky door opens every hour, and someone peeks in at us. My roommate is sleeping, but not me. At around two AM, I quietly creep out of our room. I wander down to the curved main desk and ask if I can have any sleeping medicine.  They give me a Trazodone, and I walk back to my room. Everything is quiet on the floor.  What did I expect, wails and cries?  I don’t know.  I try again to sleep, but the Trazodone is not working.  Two hours later, practically in tears, I go back to the desk.  They give me some Hydroxyzine, and I lay back down and stumble into a fitful sleep. I dream confusing and upsetting dreams that dissolve as I wake.

A nurse wakes me, reminding me that it’s breakfast time, and I don’t want to miss it. I go to the dining area; everyone else ate already.  Fine by me. I take my breakfast tray with its precious coffee cup to the eating area. A nurse comes up to me and hands me a daily schedule.  Apparently, after breakfast, there’s “Art Therapy.”

“It’s expected that you come to the therapy sessions.” She says pointedly. I nod and sip my coffee.  I wouldn’t mind doing a bit of art.  Creativity is my thing when I’m not in the pits of despair. When I get to the art room, there are people jammed all around the tables.  People are coloring, cutting pictures out of magazines, and painting miniature wooden sculptures. It’s chaotic. I grab the image of a mandala and set to work coloring it with markers. The art therapist guides the conversation as we work. Just regular talk, like we’re not even in the hospital. “What is your favorite animal?” “What is your favorite color?” “If you could have dinner with anyone, past or present, who would it be?” I have to admit; the coloring is relaxing. I talk more with Kate, who seems to have her shit together.  I wonder why she’s here. I never ask.

After Art Therapy is some free time, some people drift to the TV, some to their rooms, and some pull out board games. I’m still feeling shy, and I go back to my books and journal. 

Lunchtime is also visiting time, and quite a few visitors come.  Henry comes and sits with me while I eat my hamburger and parfait. He keeps things light, always keeping a hand on me. He tells me about work, I tell him about Art Therapy, and soon it’s time for him to go.  In a way, I’m glad he’s gone; having him here, such a part of my before life seems jarring.

It’s group time.  I have to go, though I don’t want to.  I hate group stuff, and I still don’t know these people.  We go into a small room and sit in a circle in comfy chairs. Some people have blankets with them and swaddle themselves.  I have my hospital-branded water cup with my name taped to the side.  I’m glad I have something to hold.  Once the group has shuffled in, the facilitator begins. I look around the room at everyone’s feet;  everyone but the facilitator is in socks or slippers, including me. We go around and talk about ourselves. 

As people talk about abuse and rape, time spent in jail, incest, and living on the street, I feel myself crawling deeper into my chair.  Holy sh*t, I didn’t know these things happened to real people.  I feel like those were the sorts of things that happened to people on TV, not in real life. I guess I’m more sheltered than I know. These people have REAL problems, and while I have problems of my own, problems that landed me in the ER with a suicide attempt, I felt like, geez, I have it pretty good. What kind of excuse do I have to be here? When it gets to me, I talk about my spending addiction, how it has almost brought us to ruin, and losing my cats and hating my job.  It feels weak and flat.  Am I envious that people have it worse off than me?  That’s pretty messed up.

Henry comes again at dinner time, and I tell him he doesn’t have to come every visiting time. I hope I have not hurt his feelings. 

Days run one into another, and I am getting used to the place.  In Art Therapy, I ask for knitting supplies, which they have, and I begin a scarf for Kate. I hope I can finish it before I leave.  I can’t take the supplies to my room; guess they worry that I’ll stab myself - or someone else? They keep them behind the desk, and I can get them to use in the common areas. Henry visits me once a day.  I feel safe here, taken care of, more relaxed. Like my problems are in some other reality that I don’t have to deal with right now. I – I wish I could stay here.

Then we have a group where I decide to talk about how I try to medicate my problems away. I want to talk about it because several people there talk about how they never take medication. They refuse to take pills.  And I think about how almost sacred those little bottles of drugs are to me and how I expect medicine to take my problems away. Headache? Pill. Anxiety? Pill. Depression? Pill. Stomachache? Pill. Stress? A bunch of pills. I began to feel ashamed and concerned.  What if the drugs don’t take my problems away?  What if they’re part of the problem? It hits me hard.

In Art Therapy, I paint a stained glass window frame with birds on it for my mother.  I’m still upset from the group session, so I leave early, retreating to my room.

More meals, more groups, and days blend into each other. Tomorrow is my birthday. Birthdays always make me reflective, especially now that I’m in my second half-century.  Here in the hospital, I think about what I have; I think about how fortunate I am, and I almost see it. When the nurse says tomorrow will be my discharge, I feel mixed.  Glad not to spend my entire birthday “inside” and scared, too.  The unit has become a cocoon for me, a place where I feel safe and healing. I no longer want to end my life, though I’m still frightened of what will come and the need to face my problems. For the moment, at least, I feel a shred of hope.

The following day after breakfast, I go to my exit evaluation with the doctors, nurses, myself, and Henry. The doctors go over the medication changes, the nurses talk about how well I opened up in group sessions, and all of them confirmed I am good to go. There is a flurry of activity as I pack everything up.  I hug Kate, and we use our phones to follow each other on Facebook. It feels strange to have shoes on. 

Henry and I leave. It is cold and snowy, and as we get into the car, he looks over at me.

“Are you ok?” he asks.

“I’m good enough,” I replied. “I’m going to miss the food.”

Henry smiled and took my hand.  “Let’s go to the store.  We can get you a birthday cake.”