And the Summer was Over

TW: suicide, self harm, hospitals, mental health in general

I consider the end of my childhood to be in May of 2017. Summer of 2016 through summer of ‘17, my sister, mom, dad, and me were on a trip in an RV throughout the United States. This whole time, I had been struggling more and more with my mental health. I had fallen into unhealthy coping mechanisms and was extremely suicidal and anxious all the time. While the air started to get warmer and the earth exploded into the colors of flowers and the scent of freshly cut grass and the chirping of birds early in the morning, I was self harming, not eating, and writing suicide notes pretty frequently. I would take them and stick them in a notebook that I kept by my bed, along with a log of what I’d eaten for the day. I just kept falling deeper and deeper, and I didn’t know how to save myself. While all of this was happening, no one in my family knew I was struggling. That all changed the day of May 5th, 2017.

That morning, I was getting ready for my APUSH test, and I left my phone up in my bed because I couldn’t bring it into the testing room. For months after I would regret leaving my phone ringer on so much, but now I recognize that it probably saved my life. While I was in the test, unbeknownst to me, my phone rang. My mom went up into my bed to answer it and found my notebook. My parents went from thinking that I was a healthy and happy cis girl to knowing that I was a severely depressed trans teenager in the time it takes you to read half a handwritten page. When I got out of my test, they told me that they found my notebook, and read through all of my notes. They wanted to talk to me, to ask me why I was so depressed when I seemed so fine all of the time, and why I didn’t tell them. They felt like I betrayed their trust by not telling them that I was struggling, and I was angry and I felt like they betrayed my privacy by reading my private journal. I was so hurt and honestly shocked that they found the most private things I had, and read them, that I wouldn’t have a real conversation with them for days. Avoiding the eyes of my parents because they knew my biggest secret was tearing me apart, and I just continued to get worse. They rushed me home from our trip, and sent me into therapy, but they really didn’t get that I had a seriously life threatening problem until a couple of weeks after, when my new therapist told them I needed to be in a hospital because I was unsafe and had suicide plans. They told me I probably wouldn’t be admitted because I wasn’t that bad, and that I didn’t really need to be there. Their favorite line was “it just seemed like you were doing so well!” When I arrived at the hospital, after seven hours of waiting in the dark and imposing part of the ER devoted to children’s psychiatrics, I was admitted as soon as we talked to a nurse.

The hospital is what I really consider the end of my childhood. I was one of the youngest people there, and it was altogether terrifying. I could have never imagined what it would be like to sleep alone in a room with bars on the windows until I’d done it, and I was scared out of my mind. But for me, the worst part was coming home.

All my life, my parents had given me a lot of trust and independence, and after the hospital it was gone. It was so painful for me to see that no one believed me anymore, and that my level of supervision was exponentially larger. Even now, two years later, I’m regaining trust my parents had for me. They check my scars when I act ‘suspicious’ to make sure I’m not hurting myself anymore, and my phone still isn’t allowed to be plugged in in my room at night. The path to forging new trust is long and tedious, and I don’t think it will ever be the same as it was before they found my journal, but every day they trust me a little more. My childhood ended the day I had to step up and let myself get help.