Personal History Essay

*Type of writing based on Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Daniel M. Lavery’s Something That May Shock and Discredit You. The assignment was to take an impactful time in your life, whether it was a day, a week, a few years, and write about it, tying in world events to ground it in reality and time, as well as things that were personally significant.

I reread a memoir called Because We Are Bad by Lily Bailey that I originally read a year prior, one I related to. I highlighted a quote that resonated then and continues to ring true even now,  “I am better. I don't know whether it's for good, or if one day something might make me abnormal again. But that's the funny thing about living. If you do it properly, you don't know how the next sentence will begin.” You can’t predict what’s going to happen in life, it’s a matter of how you react. The lessons you’ve learned inform decisions and impact your future. I have learned to appreciate the dark and the light for all it has taught me. I wish past me could know this.

“My mind is set on overdrive

The clock is laughing in my face

A crooked spine

My sense dulled

Passed the point of delirium”

-Brain Stew, Green Day

Saturday, October 4,  2019

The only reason I haven’t attempted is because I’m afraid I’ll fail like I fail at everything else. I feel like I’m at a point of no return. I don’t think I am capable of happiness. I ‘m just so tired. 

I wake up to the sound of a door opening and closing. What time is it? There’s no clock, but it’s still dark. Wait, where the hell am I? Three shadowed figures approach me where I lay in bed. I can feel my heart start pounding as my panic increases. As I start to scramble to sit up I hear a whispered, Jesse? It’s ok, we just need a blood sample, which clears up nothing and raises more questions. I am still too shrouded in sleep to fight off the faceless blood thieves, and I fear that wouldn’t do me any good. 

It turns out I didn’t have much to worry about, as it turns out these thieves aren’t very good at their jobs. After poking and prodding both arms for long enough that I know my anemic ass is going to bruise, they claim I am too dehydrated. You came to me in the middle of the night, of course I’m going to be dehydrated. As a last resort, they go through the top of my left hand. It yielded enough blood for them to scurry out. But now I’m awake, my eyes adjusted to the light filtering in through the window–it can’t be more than three or four in the morning. The classic How I Met Your Mother wisdom of “nothing good ever happens after 2am” starts to cement itself as truth now.  Damn you, Ted Mosby. Looking around the room, I start to remember how I got here..

A few days prior, I lay in a similar position, but states away at college. The streetlight outside my dormroom blinding at this hour. I haven’t slept since Tuesday–no, Monday. Even then it was for less than three hours. Within the last hour I’ve taken more melatonin, ambien, and xanax than you should at once, let alone all together. I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to sleep, to escape, and it didn’t matter if it became permanent. I often thought about dying, of freeing myself from the torment that my brain puts me through, always has and always will. I thought there was no hope for me. I was resistant to treatment, that I was a huge burden and an all around horrible person. I had a large stash of my sleeping pills and xanax, just in case. Right now they were laughing in my face, effectively calling my bluff, and calling me a coward. I went to my desk and wrote my note.

“Arrogant boy

Love yourself so no one has to

They're better off without you

(They're better off without you)

Arrogant boy

'Cause a scene like you're supposed to

They'll fall asleep without you

You're lucky if your memory remains”

-Therapy, All Time Low

Monday, October 14, 2019

I am just an asshole, just an awful human being….Dr. Cueva can’t seem to get that I am actively suicidal. I can’t come out and say it bluntly, so I guess it’s my fault. I’m just very not good recently. I really need to fix/end things.

I wait until I hear movement elsewhere in the unit before I leave my room in the morning. The first thing I noticed that morning was how strikingly silent it was here. The hospital is in a town called New Canaan. It is in a suburb in Connecticut, making this silent and creepy. I keep reaching for my phone so I can play music to drown out my very loud and very persistent thoughts, which now feel even more loud and persistent, when I realize I don’t have my phone with me. At least I’m assigned to a room that sleeps two, with myself as the only occupant. Thank Christ, because there’s no lock on the bathroom door. The accommodations and restrictions here make you realize how crafty people get in times of desperation to end their lives. All of my sweatpants had to have the pulls removed, my shoes without laces. They also wouldn’t allow my personal journal because of the elastic band. 

The ward is small and doused in beige, everything about it is designed to dull your senses and deescalate, though it does reinforce the feeling of insanity that I’ve been harboring for a decade. The nurses station serves as the central point, with two short hallways of rooms branching off to the left and right. Behind the nurses station is the exit, outfitted with alarms and a series of doors. To the right of the exit is the med station and the phone for patients to use to speak to the outside world. The phone itself was a decommissioned payphone, meaning it looked the part but didn’t require a quarter. Using it made me feel like I was using my one call from prison. On the opposite side of the nurses station is the common room, flooded with natural light to give the mentally ill as much vitamin D as possible, and lead right out to the deck. The common room doubles as a place to relax and convene for group and for a place to eat, food delivered to us through the window on the left wall that connects to a small kitchen. Most meals were made elsewhere on the premises and then given to our kitchen to dole out. 

The tour was given to me the evening before, so I knew what to expect, though it is a tough place to get lost in. I entered the common area and was politely greeted with a nod by a girl who looked around my age, but not older. An older man with white hair and  scruff introduces himself as Greg, and urges me to eat, that the food here wasn’t too bad. He was right about that, though I couldn’t bring myself to eat  much. I couldn’t tell if it was nerves or melancholy. I entered the semicircle of couches and chairs that faced the television. I approach the only other person seated so far, a bespectacled young man also around my age who was seated on a couch, and I take a seat on the chair on the corner by him. He looked how I felt–despondant, shameful, hopeless. I introduced myself, and he told me his name is Christian. I nod, not wanting to push him more, and pick up where I left off in the book I brought with me. “The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you're having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I'm fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I'm not falling apart. I'm just lazy. Why it's better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I'm not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital.” Well that seems a little on the nose, I think. Thanks for calling me out at my lowest Tara Westover.

Nurse Lauren comes in to let us know that the morning group is starting soon. She comments on the book I’m reading, Educated, asking how I’m liking it and that she’s been meaning to read it. Disturbing, I say. But fascinating in the way a car crash is–I can’t seem to look away. I also think to myself, it distracts me from my own shit, more than anything.

During the morning group I learned that the young girl’s name is Rose, and that it is also Christian’s first day. We are encouraged to reflect with the group on why we were here. Oh boy, where do I begin? Do I start from the beginning, at age six, with my obsessive-compulsive disorder diagnosis and subsequent generalized anxiety and panic disorder diagnosis? Or do I push ahead to middle school where I first slump into a depression and develop an eating disorder? What about ninth grade, where I was having at least on panic attack a day, and was actively suicidal and harming myself, to the point where I was taken out of school for a month for treatment? How do I sprinkle in that while all of this goes on I am berated by my dad for not being enough, or being too much, depending on the narrative he’s trying to spin. Do I mention that I can’t break free from the literal death grip my mental health has on me and I fear I never will? I know we’re in a mental hospital, but that all seems too intense, especially for nine in the morning. I settle for saying I’ve been chronically depressed for years, which led to my attempt. That seemed suitable and we moved on. 

Tuesday November 5, 2019

I think I have a lot of anger about how life is and how everything is being handled. I don’t feel like I’m being listened to—in terms of my family and Dr. Cueva and Dr. Slater. I hate that my life is being pushed back because of this.

I was consuming a lot of books, as there wasn’t much else to do. I scribbled the thoughts of a madman in the composition book they gave me in place of my banned journal. I also put together jigsaw puzzles that had missing pieces with my fellow patients. This is how I learned Rose is eighteen. She was originally admitted to a hospital down by her college in the South. She refused to be specific, but her experience was bad enough that she was always on guard and paranoid of the staff and us, but mostly the staff. At lunch, Greg would regale us with tales of his youth, going to rock shows and nightclubs. He talked of substance abuse and being disowned by family for being gay, then finding family and acceptance in community. Dance like no one is watching, he said, because the truth is that no one actually is. Just have fun. During art therapy, we colored pumpkins on the deck in the crisp fall air. Christian seemed to appreciate any levity I 

brought with sarcasm and snark. He still didn’t talk much. The times I was more anxious, a nurse called Chrissy took an orange out of the freezer and handed it to me as we paced the halls. She explained that the cold helps to ground you and as the orange thaws and it gets more pliable, like a stressball. At night, Greg commandeered the TV. The World Series is on. He explained. None of us put up much of a fight, and so the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals competed in the background of my impatient stay for the Commissioner’s Trophy. 

We were handed our pills in little paper cups, the kind they use for condiments. They were stationed behind a little window, one that reminded me of the snack counter in grade school. My medications were staying the same, though I don’t know if that is good or bad. Each day went down that way. After being there about a week, I was talking to my mom on the phone in the hall. She was picking me up on Thursday because the insurance wasn’t covering it anymore. Thursday was Halloween. Shit. Mom always has a party, and I do not want to be around anyone right now and explain why I wasn't in Delaware. My house is small and I don’t think I can fully avoid it. Fuck. 

While I get my stuff from my room, Greg chats with my mom, because of course he does. He tells her she raised a nice young lady. He tells me he’ll miss me around here, though he wishes me the best. I knew this was a moment that was going to stick with me. I have only known this man for a week, and yet he has so many nice things to say about me. How is that even possible? Doesn’t he know that I’m the worst? I guess I just can’t fathom when people take to me.

Though this wasn’t the first, or the last, time that I was hospitalized, it was the catalyst of change. It may have taken five years but this was where I started to see things differently. It was here I realized how unhappy I was in what I was studying. The months following my stay, my mom and I tried to figure out how I could get out of fashion. It didn’t come to fruition until another program in 2024, but the seed was planted. I started to trust what I was feeling more and pushed that I might be bipolar. Getting treated for that changed my life. My connection to

temporary people there and following programs helped my growth, and I hope I helped theirs too. I started to live for me, and not for what I thought other people wanted from me. The weight of expectations being lifted allowed me to be free. This program was a glimmer of hope, even though in a few months we’d be thrown into lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic. That definitely hindered my progress for a while, though I didn’t have the same desire to throw in the towel. I was lost and scared but I forged forward. I listened to Greg, aka I stopped caring what people thought. I found that people were more drawn to me than they ever had been. The silly, genuine personality was me. It’s who I always have been. I found her again.

“Unaware of where I'm going

Or if I'm going anywhere at all

But I know I'll take the leap if it is worth the fall

So long as the blood keeps flowing

I'll set a sail and swim across

I'm not looking to be found

Just want to feel (un)lost”

-(Un)Lost, The Maine

Saturday April 25, 2026

 I was so broken, defeated. And while I still feel broken in some ways–scars from that time are irreparable but not necessarily irredeemable–I was once a glass shattered into millions of pieces on the ground, while I am now a ceramic plate only broken in a few places, mended with gold. I was/am broken but I came back with my own unique beauty.

During a recent reflection of mine, I started to see myself through the lens of the ancient Japanese practice of Kintsugi. This is the art of repairing broken pottery by mending areas of breakage with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. It highlights cracks and breaks rather than hiding them. Breakage is treated as a part of an object's history and aesthetic, celebrating the beauty in imperfection and resilience. I hate that I had to experience what I have, but I wouldn’t be the person I am, the person I have grown proud of , without going through the types of things I have. To pull from my comfort show, How I Met Your Mother, once more: ”Sometimes things have to fall apart to make way for better things.” While Ted is referring to a break-up in his instance, I am referencing myself, my situation, and my resolve. Sometimes you have to fall apart to come back stronger, in other words.

All the lessons I learned over my life, during inpatient and the first time at this partial program, at my old college, my relationships, my hobbies and goals. These factors solidified and my perspective was so different, yet the same. The fact that I went through all of that suicidality made me realize life’s too short to not be nice, to not do what you want, to not be silly and imperfect. It’s ok to experience disappointment and anger, but holding on to that for too long is more energy that it's often worth. We all have made mistakes and will make more. It’s ok, as long as you apologize and grow. Perfection is misguided to aim for. We can really only aim for being the best versions of ourselves that we can be in this season of our lives.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

“One day, you will tell your story of how you’ve overcome what you’re going through now, and it will become part of someone else’s survival guide” -Brene Brown

I hope so. I really hope so.





Citation 

All Time Low. Therapy, 7 July 2009.

Bailey, Lily. Because We Are Bad: OCD and a Girl Lost in Thought. HarperAudio, HarperCollins, 2018.

Green Day. “Brain Stew.” 10 Oct. 1995.

“How I Met Your Mother.” Season 1, episode 18.

“How I Met Your Mother.” Season 6, episode 23.

The Maine. “(Un)Lost.” 31 Mar. 2015.

Westover, Tara. Educated. 2019.