we need to talk

i spent my sixteenth birthday in an eating disorder inpatient unit. my assigned

dietician printed out a coloring page of a piece of birthday cake, left it on my bed, and told me, “here, this is for you, since you won’t eat it.”

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we need to talk about the adolescents labeled “chronic” before their seventeenth birthdays.

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we need to talk about the adolescents who spent more time in physical restraint holds than they ever did being held by someone who cared.

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we need to talk about the adolescents who drink warm coffee for breakfast and cry at every “wow, you look great. what’s your secret?”

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i was admitted for cardiac issues from my eating disorder for the first time when i was just thirteen, and i made all the nurses cry when they had to snake a nasogastric feeding tube down my nose and throat for the first time.

my doctor came the next morning. she asked, “and what happened when you didn’t drink the ensure we provided?” i told her, “you know what happened.” she said, “i want to hear you say it.”

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i was force-fed from the ages of thirteen to nineteen, most times while being held down, restrained; counselors and nurses words bouncing off of me, “you did this to yourself”, “maybe you’ll eat next time”, and “this is the expectation.” i watched desensitized, emotionless faces as i scratched at my forearms and prayed that the feeding tube would not come out my mouth this time. please, god, not this time.

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we need to talk about the adolescents who know the restraint protocol like the back of their hands.

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we need to talk about the adolescents who are still amazed that they’re able to flush the toilet on their own now.

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we need to talk about the adolescents that were told that this was normal, necessary, and life-saving. life-saving.

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i tried to kill myself for the first time when i was just ten or eleven years old. i had read somewhere that there were poisonous pesticides on grapes, and in my mind, i thought if i ate enough of them, the pesticides would kill me. i laugh about that now, and most of my friends laugh with me.

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at school, i couldn’t get the words to come out when they were supposed to. my teachers said i was “defiant.” one wrote me up. i came home with a green slip. the next morning, i came back to school unable to walk because of the burning between my legs. but, he brought me out for vanilla ice cream and told me he was sorry.

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my pediatrician proposed generalized anxiety disorder. why didn’t they ask what was going on at home?

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we need to talk about the adolescents who fit criteria to be diagnosed with everything in the DSM, who interacted with nursing students over lunch.

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we need to talk about the adolescents that are now adults with white scars on their arms that they hide under long-sleeved blazers in the name of professionalism.

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we need to talk about the adolescents who took rides after school with oblivious counselors that didn’t know the difference between a child who was sexually abused and a child who was a little bit anxious.

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in middle school, i snuck off from lunch period to go throw up in the girl’s bathroom with the back of my paintbrush from art period. in high school, i survived off of half a granola bar, an 80-calorie greek yogurt, gum, coffee, and green tea. by the time i was nineteen, i fell asleep feeling the dips of my hipbones for comfort and tightening my ab muscles until it became too hard.

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a counselor in the hospital pulled me into a side room and asked me if someone was hurting me. i was an adult by now, nineteen, and i didn’t owe my story to her. but she searched my eyes and spent her free time with me until i finally spilled over. she told me, “it’ll never be this bad, ever, ever again.”  in the end, it was. and she was just another entry-level positive-psychology enthusiast with a demanding, understaffed job and a raging savior complex. i don’t want to be like her.

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now, almost-22, i study psychology to be like the school psychologist who sat right next to me as a held a blade to my wrist because she knew i would never hurt myself in front of her. her hands hovered, and the school fought her to call the police, but she always said, “just… give her a few minutes. just let me talk to her.” i wrote suicide notes that she wrote back to.

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i study psychology to be like the group therapist who worked within the confines of an abusive system—sitting right next to me, eyes never leaving me as i was force-fed. she told me how angry she was at the system and would sit in silence with me. she always knelt-down to my level to speak to me.

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we need to talk about the adolescents who felt the weight of the world before they even graduated high school. who are tired and angry of being complicit because somebody should be but nobody is.

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we need to talk about the adolescents who say “abolish the police”, “abolish psychiatry”, and “stop hurting us”. we need to listen to them.

 

we need to talk to the adolescents who would have rather died in a treatment center so that someone would finally care, notice, and change something. anything. please. we need to talk.