Sixteen

When I was sixteen, I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital about twenty miles

south of where I live. There, I met an array of youths whose lives had been permanently

fractured and tainted by dysfunctional, broken homes, substance abuse and addiction. But above

all else, they all experienced a kind of betrayal that is difficult to reconcile--one in which the

traitor is also the betrayed. When your own mind turns its back on you, every day is a struggle,

an uphill battle.

What one discovers right away at a hospital is that everyone in the world is completely

alone. There is no way to sugarcoat this truth, and no easy way to articulate it. Thrust into a

completely different environment that was full of suffering individuals in similar circumstances,

I became acutely aware of the presence of my brain in my head, of the brains in everyone else’s.

We were together in our aloneness, bound by our baggage, sharing the common affliction of

having a brain, and all that this condition entails.

It was completely jarring, like a million radios blaring all at once around me. This

facility, it wasn’t a place of healing, it was a place of coming to terms with. Coming to terms

with personal identity. Loss. Sorrow. Anger. Trauma. Fear. Hopelessness. Suddenly my own

problems paled in comparison to these other heartbreaks happening in real-time all around me.

That isn’t to say my problems disappeared, but they rearranged themselves within me in a way

that made me realize that I shouldn’t feel bad comparing my problems to someone else’s, but

work to help them in the little ways that I could. I couldn’t fix anyone else’s issues for them, but

I could ease them. I could share a few comforting words, I could listen to them speak for a while.

I could hold someone’s hand, I could let them borrow my markers, I could tell a joke.
 Then one day I began to apply this little mantra to my own life, my own unsolvable

dilemmas. I cannot fix you, I told myself, but I can ease your pain for a moment. And as those

moments of peace grew longer, I found myself leaving more and more of my fear behind.

So slowly but surely, I learned what healing meant to me. Painstaking and gradual, like

all things. You have a day in which coping feels impossible, but then the day passes. You sleep

for a whole day straight. You mess up horribly, and then feel like the world is beautiful the

minute after, because instead of staying down you tell yourself that it’s okay and you can try

again. Take the fear and hold it and soothe it.

Someday you will look back and realize that it’s been a year since the worst

day of your life. Then two. And while you won’t ever forget it, you will always remember the

sensations.

When I was sixteen, I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital about thirty-two miles south

of where I live.

Since being discharged from the first hospital earlier in the year, I had only grown. This

time around I understood that hatred isn’t really hatred, it’s a lack of love. When I treated myself

with the kindness that I believed other people deserved, the pain was easier to bear. Despite

every difference, every world that separates us, we all deserve kindness. And we are all capable

of giving it. Not for personal gain, not because it makes us feel good, but because we can.

Because we see others suffering and our empathy urges us to. That, to me, is the most

powerful and important part of the human experience. And to see ourselves as just people--

impossible to fully understand, constantly growing and evolving, stuffed to the brim with

memories and feelings--is a feat.

Last modification to the original essay was made January 14th, 2019.