A Distortion: A Short Story

Distortion. If I could put that moment into one word that would be it. Everything in my mind was racing, as if my thoughts were on a high speed merry go round that was no longer full of merriment, but filled with a feeling of disaster. Drowning in a vast sea of uncertainty, the light shining from above was slowly vanishing from sight. I no longer had hope. I remember just wanting to sleep. To drift away and have all my pain and worries leave my body. I never wanted to wake up and feel the agony that had overtaken me. So I made a decision. Running towards the kitchen I gabbed every bottle of pain and sleep medication I could find, popped them open and threw handfuls after handfuls of pills into my mouth. I begged for it to work, that all the
pain I felt would dissipate, that I could sleep forever, not having to wake up to the same emotional roller coaster I felt day in and day out. Why did I have to have a disorder that made me this way? Why did I have to be the girl that was diagnosed with anxiety and depression? This wasn’t my choice. I didn’t chose to be miserable, but I could choose to give up on life, so I did.
My mind went blank as my body tried its hardest to absorb all the medication I had given it. I laid there thinking it would all end soon, but it didn’t, my body fought back, even though I had already given up. I felt dizzy and nauseous. My head was pounding and throbbing. I had never felt such a deep physical pain as I did that day. I didn’t know exactly where the pain was coming from since I felt it all over. I took off to the bathroom and threw up a foul, yellow, sour, burning liquid that would not stop coming out of my mouth. Even after I was done, I still gagged and felt as if I was still vomiting convulsively. After it subsided, I thought it would be over, that I would go lay down and that would be it, but once again I was wrong. I threw up over and over again till my body finally decided it needed a rest.
Coming home from work, my mom found me lying face up, limbs spread out on the couch, in pain physically and emotionally. She asked me what was wrong and before I could answer I threw up all over the floor. She looked worried, but I didn’t want her rushing me to the hospital, I didn’t want to be saved, I just wanted to go, I wanted to leave this life behind. But she knew I wasn’t sick, she knew something happened and assumed that I was so distraught that it had taken a toll on my body. So she called my psychiatrist, who I recently started seeing. She told her what was going on and sure enough, she told my mom to take me straight over there. I went solely for the fact that it had felt like forever since I had taken all those pills, and I figured it wouldn’t be much longer till my body would stop fighting back and finally succumb to my decision. When we got inside, they sent me into my psychiatrist’s office right away, and as soon as she saw me she told me to sit down and started bombarding me with questions about what was going on and what was I feeling? I simply replied with the one word that everyone in agonizing pain does, “Nothing.” I was sitting in the big, comfy, green chair designated for her patients, she was at her desk right next to me with her chair pulled out wheeling in closer and closer to me, and my mom was pacing back and forth in the small, cramped room we were in, making glances at me every time turn she turned to pace the opposite direction. All eyes were on me for answers, I was being interrogated. Then when my psychiatrist asked me if I was happy, I completely broke down. I shoved my face into the cusps of my hands and balled my eyes out. I wasn’t happy at all, not even the slightest bit; my life was falling apart right in front of me. Everything was wrong! I hated life! I hated waking up every morning! I hated fighting with my boyfriend because he would always say “I can’t help what my mind thinks about,” or my mom saying, “A 92 isn’t good enough,” or the fact that my father let me go because he was a drug addict, or that all of that had made me believe that I wasn’t good enough for anyone, or the fact that I was given the disorders of anxiety and depression to top it all off. So no happiness was nowhere in sight for me. When I finally looked up, my mom was sitting on the couch in front of me looking puzzled and hurt. My psychiatrist put her hand on my leg and asked the one question I was hoping she wouldn’t: Did you take anything?
I looked out the windows of the emergency room watching the trees sway blissfully in the wind, wondering why I had told my psychiatrist that I had overdosed.
I didn’t have any recollection of doing so, but here I was, waiting for the doctors to do whatever they needed to do to save me. I wanted to leave, but my mother’s tears convinced me otherwise. It didn’t take them long to bring me in, since my organs were slowly but painfully shutting down by the second. They made me drink a black liquid, that would save my kidneys, but it had a wrenched smell of rotten eggs and a taste so horrid it still haunts me to this day. They then placed me in a room with monitors and wires covered all over me. I knew that I wasn’t going to die like I had planned, and that thought caused me to go numb. What was going to happen
now? When I woke up my mom, my two sisters, and my grandma were all sitting by my hospital bed. 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.
Furthermore, 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.
After being in the hospital for 5 days, they sent me to a psychiatric ward, for teenagers who were at risk of hurting themselves or others for 2 whole weeks; which was absolutely dreadful because I was basically a prison and I wanted to serve my time and get out of there as quickly as possible.
Then finally, I got to go home. My mom made me scheduled visits with my psychiatrist to get on medication and a counselor to deal with the problems I had been harboring on the inside. Till this day I am still visiting them both on a regular occasion.
The moment where I hit rock bottom was a part of my life that I will never forget. I could have been dead right now, but instead I’ve gotten better, still continue to progress, and I’m attending college. With all these obstacles that stood in my way and almost got me to give up on life, I still managed to make it this far. So instead of looking at the moment where I attempted suicide as simply a low point in my life, I look at it as both that and a turning point, because once you hit rock bottom the only direction you can go… is
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