I take the pills

Fuck this – I just can’t stand feeling this bad. I’m going to take these pills. At least I’ll be somewhere different than this place.

Next day:

Well, I took the pills, and here I am in the hospital, again. I really don’t like this place — it’s too loud, and there are a lot of weird people in here. I’m just kind of wandering around, waiting for the nurses and doctors to decide what they’re going to do with me this time.

I just couldn’t stand how I was feeling last night. So I got some of Tina’s vodka and used it to wash down about half of the pills – it was hard to swallow them, and I just kept staring at them. I don’t really like vodka much, I was still feeling lousy, but I started to get sleepy, and then I called my mom. She was mad when I told her about taking the pills, but she called Tina, who came home early from work. My mom called Michael, too, and he and Tina talked about whether she could take me to the hospital or the police and an ambulance were needed. It turned out Tina was able to get me into her car and we went to the ER, so at least I don’t have to pay an ambulance bill. But Tina’s mad at me for stealing her pills, mom’s mad because I made another suicide attempt, and I can’t talk to Michael until tomorrow morning because of the goddamned 24 hour rule*.

So, as usual, I have just made things worse. I still want to die, but I’m in a hospital where I can’t do that. I guess maybe I didn’t really want to die, or not enough when it came right down to it. Michael says our minds are more like parliaments than dictatorships – there’s lots of different groups voting about any behavior. There weren’t enough votes in my brain for really dying, but there were enough of those votes to mess my life up worse. I hope I don’t lose my job over this – I’m supposed to be there today for the big project. I suppose Michael will tell me he’s glad there were lots of votes for staying alive. He’s trying to create votes for doing DBT skills. I wish I had called him and tried some skills…  Crap!!

END OF CHAPTER 1

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*24 Hour Rule: In order to avoid reinforcing self-harm behaviors, DBT protocol forbids the therapist to discuss anything with a client for 24 hours after self-harm behavior, except for helping the client get to the hospital if necessary.

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