Crystal Creek Mental Rehabilitation Center. Doesn't that name just sound horrid to you? It does to me. However, unfortunately, this was where I was going to be spending the next month of my life. Special thanks to Cameron for this one.
"I'm just trying to help," was what he said as they brought me here "You'll understand at the end of this month.
"I hate you," was what I said in reply to him.
"I love you too," he said while kissing my forehead.
They brought me into this waiting room. I guessed it was to see how insane you were. I expressed this opinion, and by the look on her face, shocked my mother who was sitting on the other side of the room.
After what seemed like an eternity, this old looking lady led us into this small room. "Claustrophobia anyone?" I laughed in my head. Then she started asking me all these pointless questions about my eating habits and why I was depressed and stuff like that. Her answers were me staring at her with this bored expression on my face.
So she gave up, stuck a hospital bracelet on my wrist, and got a security guard to escort me to the teen ween. The security guard's name is Carlos. He's a big, fat guy. I wanted to ask him if he had ever hurt anyone or had gotten hurt on the job, but didn't feel like talking. He stopped at a door, got out a chain of keys that looked as if you couldn't fit another one on there, and unlocked the door.
We walked into the room, which was the teen wing judging by the sign and about fifteen heads shot up in curiosity at the new girl. I looked around the room. It was pitiful. The walls were a puke yellow color and the furniture looked as if they got it at a yard sale. Okay, so maybe it wasn't that bad. A lady that looked like she was in her mid-20s stood up.
"Hood off, please," was the first thing out of her mouth. I reluctantly pulled down the hood on my jacket. She then proceeded to take me into a small room, not as small as the first but still enough to give me slight claustrophobia, for me to fill out some forms and for them to do the normal processes for new people. I won't get into it too much, it was unnecessary. By the time I was finished, everyone else had gone to bed. She gave me a slip of paper and said good night. I looked at the paper. Room seven.
I opened the door to my room to find out that I had a roommate. The lights were already out so I just climbed into the so called bed. It was all lumpy and smelled dreadful. I was tired, but knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. I haven't slept in so long that I can't even remember the last night that I had a good night's sleep. Although just taking a guess, it would be about four months.
I laid back and thought about Cameron. We had met about four months ago. My friends had completely stopped talking to me and he had always been the loner in our high school. We had started sitting at the same table at lunch this year and had immediately hit it off. At least one good thing had come of this, I thought. It went all right until two weeks ago when Cam had started noticing that I didn't eat and that when I did I had to "go to the bathroom" afterwards. They today he picks me up, tells me we're taking a drive, and takes me here. I don't have a problem. So I don't eat sometimes. I just find it pointless to eat when I'm not hungry.
I finally drifted off to sleep sometime later, but as normal, it was full of nightmares. They were always the same thing. That night four months ago. It wasn't always in the same place, but he was always in it. In fact, he played the male lead in the movie, while I played the female lead.
I woke up this morning feeling the same as always. My roommate is nice though. She told me that her name is Jane and that she is in here for anorexia. She said she would help me around today because the first day is always the toughest. This was her second time here and her second day this time.
The first thing we did was get dressed, which I didn't have to do because I had no other clothes yet, and other morning stuff like brush your teeth and stuff like that. I did get to brush my teeth though, because they had these little things of toothpaste and a toothbrush too. Then we went into the same room I had first came into the night before. About half the girls I saw last night were sitting on furniture and on the floors and more were still coming in. A lady gave Jane and me both a paper. I looked at it with a quizzical expression on my face. Jane came over.
"It's just some paper type thing. We do it every morning. It just has questions like how you're feeling today, how you slept, stuff like that," she explained.
I just nodded in response. I filled it out mindlessly, not even paying attention to what it was saying or anything Then we headed down to breakfast. Jane kept pestering me with questions and finally I just started answering them.
"Okay, jeez. My name is Veronica, I'm going to be seventeen next month, and I don't know what else to say about myself. I'll answer just about anything though," I replied back. Hey, not talking is hard.
"So, why are you here?" was the next question out of her mouth. Great, I though, the one question I don't really want to answer.
"My boyfriend brought me here along with my mom because he said that I'm anorexic and sometimes bulimic. His words, not mine," I reluctantly said. I think she got that I didn't really want to talk about it so she left it alone for the time.
I picked through my breakfast tray, drinking the juice but playing with the little sausages. I tasted the pancakes though, but they tasted like they were made in bulk quickly. When everyone started getting up, I noticed that everyone had to put their plastic silverware into this little bucket.
"Why does the silverware go into that bucket?" I asked Jane confused.
"It's some sort of protection thing. So they know that we aren't carrying it back into the rooms to cut ourselves with them. It's stupid, I know."
So then we go back to the big room. I quickly learn the schedule for the days. It included thing like group discussions (same sex only), art, games, and free time (to be spent in our rooms, of course). At the end of the day after supper, we were allowed to watch TV. But certain channels were not allowed and although the youngest person there was 14, we were not allowed to watch anything above a PG rating.
Things continued like this for two weeks. When we would have to meet with our own personal psychiatrist, I would clam up. They could tell something big was wrong, I knew, because I talked freely with all of the other girls and the nurses. But when I was in that room, I completely stopped talking. It went on like that for a while until that prominent day when one of the shrinks guessed exactly what was wrong.
We had just been talking, or rather her asking questions and me not answering them, when suddenly she asked, "Have you been raped or abused?"
My eyes opened wide and my eyebrows shot up. I tried to correct it, but it was too late, she had seen it.
"You have, haven't you sweetie?" she asked.
This was when I started crying, and not just a few free tears either. I mean full on sobs. If only she knew, I thought, how long I had been wanting to tell someone. How close I had come so many times, yet chickened out at the last minute. It had happened four and a half months ago, but it was finally out there. It's not like I didn't want to tell anybody, I just didn't know how. Then it had been a while, and I thought that people would think I was making it up, that I had waited too long to tell.
Now was when I started talking. I knew what she was going to ask, so I answered every single one of her questions, even though they were still left unspoken in her head. I told her it had happened four and a half months ago. That I had been walking home from the movies because my car broke down, and he just came out of nowhere. I knew him, of course. He was the most popular guy in the school and had graduated the year before. I told her that I had started controlling my weight like I had because it was something that I had that I could be in control of. No matter how screwed up life got, I could control what I ate, what stayed in my body, and what I ended up puking out several hours later. I talked like I was a mute child that had just suddenly been found able to talk. It felt good. To finally get everything out there, and not have it bottled up inside where it had sat for what felt like an eternity.
Now it was her turn to start talking. She said stuff about being tested for STDs, which they could do here in the center, and how I probably wasn't pregnant because I would have noticed by now.
The she asked, "Do you want to tell your mom, or should I?"
"I want to tell her. I need to tell her But I want to do it in person. Can you do that? I want to tell Cameron too, if that's okay." I figured it would be better if I told her than some stranger. It would answer many of her questions, I knew.
"I can get your mother here. As for Cameron, I'm not sure. He's the one who brought you here, correct?" I nodded. "Then I may be able to get him here too. We don't normally do that but since he aided in you being brought here, then we may be able to pull a few strings."
I nodded gratefully. She then said I could leave. I walked out there into the room feeling so much better, when it hit me. Cameron was right. I was glad that he brought me here. Now, I couldn't wait to tell him that.
The next day around six o'clock, Carlos came in to escort me to the room where I was meeting my mom and Cameron. I was nervous. I wasn't exactly sure how to tell them. I was so happy to be seeing my mom and Cameron again. We arrived at the door. Carlos unlocked it and I walked in. My mom, Cameron, and the psychiatrist that had been with me that day, whose name was Trisha, were all in there.
"Oh sweetie, I've missed you," my mom said while hugging me closely.
"I've missed you too Mom. You have no idea how much," I said returning the hug with the same amount of emotion.
I sat down across from my mom and Cam. I took a breath. "You both know something is up and that I'm going to tell you what. Four an a half months ago, I was..." I hesitated for a minute, "I was raped two blocks away from the movie theater." I looked over at my mom and Cameron before continuing. They looked shocked to say the least. "I started controlling my weight the way I did for control. I couldn't control being raped, and I couldn't control all the stuff happening at school but I could control the way I fit into my clothes. I know it was the wrong way to go but I wasn't thinking clearly. I've been spending the past months denying to myself everything that had happened. And telling myself that I didn't have a problem and that nothing was wrong. I realize now that I was completely wrong."
By now my mom was crying. "What's wrong?" I asked her.
"I should have seen it. I should have realized it. I'm a horrible mother," she sobbed.
"No, you're not. No one expects you to have seen it. It's not like it was obvious or anything," I said while walking across the room to hug her.
We just sat there for a while talking until Carol came back saying that it was time to bring me back because it was almost time for bed. I said my goodbyes to my mom and Cameron and promised I would call them tomorrow.
The next two week went by quickly. I started eating and realized that I missed it, as weird as that sounds. I started talking in group and to my psychiatrists. Yet, it wasn't until the very last day I was there that I realized something. It was while I was packing up my stuff waiting for someone to tell me that my mom and Cameron were here to get me, that I realized that Cameron was right. I did understand now what he said a month ago, that he was only trying to help. I looked around the room that I had lived in for the past month and realized that this month wasn't so bad at all. I was able to do so much that I didn't think was possible a month ago. I stopped starving myself and I finally worked up the courage to tell my mom what I had wanted to tell her for five months now.
One of the nurses I had worked with closely walked into the room. "Your mom is here to get you. Now get out of here and I expect to never see you here again," she said with a smile. I picked up my bags, took one last look around the room, and left the old Veronica for the better, new and improved Veronica. The one that I liked so much better.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment