Well, I Guess I’m 20 Now

So at some point I had thoughts I did not fully understand and eventually there I was on my bed. I had just obsessively and meticulously counted exactly 100 Tylenol pills out from a bottle I stole at the CVS on my way back home from school. I just swallowed it down in batches with some water and just laid down. Two-ish hours later, my whole body getting cold sweats and my chest hurts or was it my stomach? Honestly I don’t really remember. I ended up scared out of my mind, I’m knocking on my Mom’s bedroom door and told what I’d done. My 11-year-old brain was so confused— wait I thought I was supposed to just go to sleep like in movies I thought ? Gotta laugh at that idiotic logic now. Maybe she would save me? Care about me a little more? Yeah sure…..

That was the start of a rough journey: 6 hospital stays at almost all the different facilities in my state for ideation, self harm and different unsuccessful attempts by the time I was 13. I was never there for longer than 2 weeks for “good behavior”. Just had to smile give them the answers they wanted to hear, and explain how I wasn’t thinking properly. I thought that technically I wasn’t lying to them because I would dismiss it as me just acting rash and plus after I calmed down from my emotional state I would usually end up regretting it eventually.

They originally started by saying I had PTSD, then it was depression then it was manic depression/bipolar and they changed it back to depression.

Then I went to foster care temporarily at 13 for a few months because I had opened up to one of the therapists. I expressed that my mom would blame me for a lot of traumas and some time she would make backhanded comments that she wished I would have succeeded because I was being a nuisance to her. So yeah, I stoped opening up after that point because the foster care facility they threw me in was so bad. But my mom did somehow get me back after I attempted at the foster care facility and got sent to hospital again one more time. Coming back home unfortunately, I continued with skipping school having reckless behavior—smoking, hanging with older, sketchy crowds.

School was a mess since my my family was always moving around, I had gone to like 12 different ones before I dropped out mid-freshman HS year during COVID. Zoom classes? Nope, I was flailing and didn’t care. I was barely home anyways since I was always with my abusive ex. I had to leave that relationship because the physical abuse was so bad. So now I’m freshly single after a two year of a toxic/abusive relationship. What do I do to suppress my negative thoughts? I enrolled in a credit high school, at 16; the youngest they’d allow. I threw myself into it, grinding through online assignments, only sleeping 3-4 hours a night. I went back to being desperate for my Mom’s approval or for her to notice me. I graduated as valedictorian a year earlier than my peers from my old highschool, but she didn’t show up to the ceremony. Yeah I stoped getting my hopes up after that.

Community college was my next step—no job, no college fund, just me trying to keep it together. It was different from high school—fewer classes hours which means more time in my head. By the time I was finally 18 entering my 3rd semester but I already fell back into my old patterns, distracting myself with similar reckless behavior as my past. I met a guy who made me feel seen again. I built my whole world around him, changed the way I look, changed all things I was into. I wanted to be everything he wanted. But then it ended because I was draining his mental health with how bad my need for reassurance was. So after he put his foot down and officially ended the relationship with me I crashed hard.

Few nights after the breakup, I found myself counting pills again. Oh yeah, wow very classic of me, lying in bed, crying and taking them. Cried more, and just laying in bed. Just waiting. Yeah no. Fuck this. I’m a fucking pussy! I get up, washed my face did my makeup, and Ubered myself to the hospital in the middle of the night—not escorted by a counselor’s, not in a back of an ambulance, just me in an uber trying to stay alive because I was more worried about the possibility of me having an really bad overdose reaction at any moment and traumatizing this innocent man doing his job than the fear of me dying.

So that is how at 18, I ended up in the pediatric ER waiting area because the adult section was 19+. I was the only one there watching Max and Ruby on the waiting room tv as I just suffer silently with waves of nausea. After like 40ish mins of me waiting alone a nurse called me.

Shes says “hi [last name] right? What bring you in today?”

I dig in my jacket pocket pull out 2 empty bottles and answered, “I took a whole bottle of Midol and whole bottle of this Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc mixture”

She almost didn’t believe me.

So after going through the whole charcoal drain, and me getting my EKG done multiple times being in the hospital monatering for 3 days, they finally let me know they’re putting me in a psych hold.

The after 2 days they take me to their own psychiatric unit, it felt like every hospital I’d been in as a kid—same vibes, different walls. I’d broken my four-year streak of staying out. But this time, something shifted. In front of my assigned therapist, I didn’t just smile and say, “I’m okay.” I broke down. I told her I was tired of shoving my thoughts—my worthlessness, the belief no one, not even my parents, could love me—into the back of my mind or numbing them with substances. I’d been called “mature for my age” since I was 11, explaining my trauma to detectives, all the way to small talk with an Uber driver about my college plans. That “maturity” was just survival, deep down I was just still a kid who wanted someone to show them that they were wanted and loved.

My sadness turned to anger, and for the first time, I got involuntarily sedated. I spent two months in that hospital—the longest stay ever. But the therapist listened. She eventually suggested I might have BPD, not officially diagnosing me but referring me to outpatient care. I was discharged with an appointment the next day.

I almost didn’t go. I lay on my bed, thinking, “I’m not suicidal anymore, so why bother?” But a passing thought hit me:

18 and in the pediatric section of the ER at 2am because I tried OD again.

Sitting there I don’t know what I felt more embarrassed about. Was it the fact that I broke my 4 year streak on not attempting suicide. Or the fact that I called myself an Uber to the ER alone at 2am but when I got there, since I wasn’t 19 yet the front desk made me wait to be seen in the bright rainbow pediatric section instead of the adult section.

I was remembering the small talk with my uber driver, we got to to a point where we were talking about college and he stated praising me for being so mature and smart for my age, as I got done explaining how I got into college 2 years early.  The laughable part is that a short while after that, I was staring face to face with Micky Mouse playing on the waiting room tv as I’m just surrounded by colorful children themed wall art in all corners.

“Huh, I actually 18?” As a kid, I never thought I would survive past 18. So, I dragged myself to that appointment. Therapy was different now. As a kid, I saw it as a nuisance, not wanting to burden Mom with taking me to and from appointments. But at 18, I could take myself—and quit if I wanted at any point tight?

Three visits in, a week before my 19th birthday, I got my “gift”: an official BPD diagnosis. Yay, right? Sarcasm intended. It felt like my entire life—every struggle, every thought—boiled down to three letters for insurance and doctors. But I kept going. Now, at 20, I’m doing four group therapy sessions and two individual ones a month. Group therapy shows me I’m not alone and teaches me ways to cope before things spiral. Individual sessions help me unpack years of buried trauma.

Getting out of bed for sessions is hard, but I do it. Despite the judgment—from online strangers to my own family—who think those three words define me, I keep going. They don’t know the small child inside me who thought I’d never make it past 18, who felt I had no home.

But I can tell them myself: Well, I guess I’m 20 now.