56. Lydia
Lydia
They wake us up early.
Every. Morning.
Even if we were up all night.
“Vitals,” a tech says to me, so cheery it’s like she stuck herself with a needle full of caffeine.
Could I get a shot of that?
I automatically stick my arm out before my eyes are even open, not having the will to fight them here anymore. My meds are handed to me in a tiny paper cup, and then they tell me it’s time to head to the dining hall for breakfast.
I sit there and push my eggs around, staring at the food until a staff member with a way too friendly voice comes and talks to me and encourages me to eat—“It’s fuel for your body and mind.” I eat just enough to prove to them that I won’t wither away, and thankfully they take that.
Groups—there’s always a damn group. Psychoed, DBT, relapse prevention, process group where you sit in a circle and try not to lie about how you’re doing.
Family group once a week that I kept telling Sarah and Mark they didn’t have to come, and they’d say, “We know,” and keep coming anyway.
I’m honestly glad they did, I need them even when I won’t admit it.
I do individual therapy twice a week with a woman named Dr. Raina who could talk anyone down from any ledge.
I thought rehab would feel like a car wash.
You drive in dirty, come out clean. A bunch of days full of kumbaya moments, holding hands in a circle, crying together, sitting around a fire pit, bonding, sleeping in, and drinking coffee with a nice view.
Spoiler—it’s not like that at all. It’s all the worst parts of you pushed to the front and examined.
It’s a room full of people admitting their dark truths in a room where you all sit in a circle and confess things you wouldn’t tell anyone else.
Because truthfully? It’s not that you trust these people more; you actually care less about them…
and that makes it easier to say all the shitty parts out loud.
Half of the time, rehab is just me constantly still craving to get high so I don’t have to talk about my damn feelings around here anymore.
The first month, I couldn’t hear anything over the need.
It lived under my skin like an electric wire I was holding on to.
Groups sounded like adults in old cartoons—wah wah wah wah—and it took all my willpower not to stand up mid-session some days and jump out of the second-story window.
My body kept demanding to be turned off.
To not participate anymore. Staff would put cool packs on my wrists and kept trying to teach me breathing exercises (in for four, hold for two, out for six) like we were in some Lamaze class.
I tried to keep to myself. It felt safer that way.
I said the right things in group because I know the right things to say that sound pretty and make people not worry about you trying to kill yourself again.
People cried in the group session—I didn’t.
People admitted things like they were in a confessional at church and it was the only way to get to heaven.
I just crossed my arms and took notes in my head, watched the way people acted and started to understand what made staff watch you more and what made them believe you were getting better.
I tried to bargain it in my mind just to make it bearable.
“If I do all my chores here, say the things in group and therapy that make it seem like I’m healing, and don’t cause any trouble,” I told myself, “maybe they’ll sign me out early.
” But Hawthorne Ridge Rehab doesn’t care about bargains.
Hawthorne Ridge Rehab cares about whether you’re breathing and telling the truth, and I’m actually bad at both apparently.
The panic attacks and shut-downs still sneak up on me.
I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine.
Then someone drops a pan, and it’s too loud, and I’m on the floor with my hands over my ears, back on the gravel outside of his car that night.
Or someone’s cologne will be a little too musky, and I’m back in a bedroom I never want to see again, locked doors, not being able to move, breathing raggedly.
Sometimes it’s quieter triggers, just the way a staff member says my name and my body answers on command, freezing up like I’m in trouble.
Then my mind leaves my limbs, and I watch myself from across the room, getting smaller by the second, wanting to escape whatever is happening.
They’ve tried all the things. Giving me rubber bands to snap against my wrist when I start to float.
Sending me outside to name shit I see and smell and feel and hear.
Making me read a letter I wrote to myself when I first got here, like it’ll do anything but remind me that I’m probably in a worse state right now than I was when I arrived.
When Simone was finally able to come visit, she’d sneak in my favorite snacks because she knew the only five foods I’ll touch when I’m depressed.
She talked to me like we weren’t here, like I could just walk out of those doors with her and go shopping like it was a regular Saturday afternoon together.
She doesn’t make me feel broken, even if that’s all I feel.
Nights are the hardest. No one can keep you safe from your own head at two a.m. I lie there and count the lines in the ceiling tiles.
I recite stupid song lyrics to get my mind to focus on anything else but the awful way I feel.
I try that 5-4-3-2-1 thing that I can never get fully through without still feeling like I was on the verge of a panic attack.
Sometimes I have to go to the night nurse’s station and beg for Trazodone just to get some sleep.
Some days, I feel like a person under construction, and not in a cute way—caution tape everywhere. And some days, I feel like I’m kind of a person again. I don’t know which scares me more.