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[TW: attempted suicide]

I’m twenty-one-years-old and I’ve swallowed half a bottle of acetaminophen. The nurse had given me a cup of charcoal to neutralize the acid in my stomach. My vomit is the color of midnight. My body is ejecting a nightmare.

One of the nurses tells me, “You’ve been Baker Act’ed.” Like it was a gameshow. It’s a seventy-two hour hold. I get moved from the hospital to a mental institution called Bay Care or Bay Pointe or Bay Life. It might as well be Bay Prison. By the end of three days, I lose thirteen pounds and one of my socks.

The patients and I go to this group meeting, and the lead counselor passes out these giant rubber pens and circular sheets of paper. He asks us, “What’s your goal today?” One of the guys pulls the fire alarm and yells that he’ll never stop doing favors for crack. “It’s a free country,” he yells, while two nurses sedate him and drag him across the linoleum. He’s still yelling but the fire alarm drowns him out. The counselor asks again, “What’s your goal today?” I write down, “To get out.”

That night, my bunkmate wakes me up. He’s the same guy they dragged out of the meeting. He’s spinning his mattress over his head and he tells me, “Roaches in my bed, my veins, come on, it’s true, it’s really true!” I know my options. I can grab a counselor to stop him. I can ask to switch rooms. I can tell the guy, “It’s not true, you’re hallucinating, that’s why you’re here.”

“Hey,” I tell him. “I know. Let’s look for them, you know? If we don’t find any, we can sleep, how’s that? Let’s look for them together.” My bunkmate likes this plan. We get on our hands and knees to look for cockroaches. After thirty seconds, he gets back on his mattress and falls asleep.

I touched upon something that has since informed the way I treat people. The way I treat their mental health. The way I treat their feelings of loneliness, of being unheard, of being a minority, of being silenced.

If it’s important to you, it’s important to me. If it’s real to you, it’s real to me. If it hurts you, it hurts me. Your pain is my pain.

— J.S.

[Excerpt from my book, The Voices We Carry. https://www.amazon.com/The-Voices-We-Carry/dp/0802419895]

[Photo by Hoon Park]

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Brace yourselves... https://www.instagram.com/p/B3AooKOlnhKs8GuNTtlouBmW53HNuu-72YoV3w0/?igshid=1n6cfx0kne75

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Rorie X Lombard ave. #DarkMoss #NFG #winnipeg #winnipegphotography (at One Lombard Place) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2sS-P0lIpA7uN_MP9lS4KBThTQ8MC10ioX4SI0/?igshid=1mi6ilzvf5ox7

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Rorie X Lombard ave (at One Lombard Place) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2sSVRIlJ_AFK22q_ku8Winsw6RzP6kwqya11Q0/?igshid=1fnis56fwzw9p

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leftXright

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Hallstatt, Austria | ( by Luke )

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Ocean art | ( by Tobias Hägg )

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Binary House / Christopher Polly Architect

ph: Brett Boardman Photography

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Baan / Anonym Studio

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The Conservatory / Nadine Engelbrecht

ph: Marsel Roothman

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Laurelhurst Midcentury / mw|works

ph: Jeremy Bittermann

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