I know it has been a while.
I have been lacking the inspiration or creativity to write.
The past few days have been particularly interesting in my head so I thought I might try to get the words out.
So here it goes.....
There has been a common theme around the internet this week. Four days ago the world learned that the person who inspired us to live our lives to the fullest and taught us how to make the best of a terrible situation, was taken by his own illness he helped so many fight off. Depression is an illness, just like any other life threatening illness. It is an invisible killer, so easy for others to dismiss as "attention seeking behavior." It is terrible that even today, with all the knowledge we have about how humans work, some still think depression is a choice.
I may not have ever met Robin Williams but he was still so dear to me. As a child he always made me smile. I remember seeing Flubber when it came out in theaters and it was the most amazing experience to me as I rarely was allowed to go to movies. Patch Adams is still one of my favorite movies, it inspired me to work in the medical field. We watched Dead Poets Society in my Modern Poetry class in high school....
Robin Williams is the first hollywood death I have actually cried about.
July 21st was my 10 year anniversary of being sent to Spring Creek. It was a particularly rough day for me because nearly the entire day I couldn't stop myself from reliving the events that happened that day a decade previously.
This week, however, my thoughts have been with a girl I only knew in passing while I was there. October 7th will be 10 years since this girl lost her battle with the monsters she'd been fighting for years.
Here are some basic mechanics of how things worked to help things make a little more sense...
Our cabins were split into four dorms, two upper and two lower. Same floor dorms had adjoining doors between them in the main cabin and in the bathroom. This made it so only one night staff was necessary for two families. My family, serenity, was on the left lower cabin in D3 while the adjoining cabin belonged to integrity family in D4. There were six female families and eight male families. Our six families were split into two shifts and the adjoining cabins always had opposite shifts. We shared everything with integrity except our physical cabin. Our classroom was the same and our table for meals was the same. We just did everything opposite of each other. Days were broken up into different activities; group sessions, 1-2 hour independent study sessions (I believe it totaled six hours a day of school), meals, 30 minute fitness session, more group sessions, free time (which was most often spent in our cabins), quiet time, and bed. During hygiene and sleep was the only time both families were in the cabin at the same time.
When entering and exiting any building students had to count off to make sure all students were accounted for. If your bunk buddy was missing you needed to know where they were. Most importantly, family parents needed to know where their students were at all times.
Anyway......
On October 7th my family was coming back to our cabin from either class or a meal. Integrity was gone so the cabin was quiet. It must have been our quiet time because I believe we were all on our bunks reading or journaling. Often, during school hours, family parents would come back to the cabins to get some time to themselves. Typically each family would have only two family parents and they would work in shifts. Two days on, two days off, three days on. Often families became too difficult for some staff to control so sometimes they would change staff members around. I don't believe, at this time, the staff member that Integrity had was a regular.
While we were sitting in our bunks we heard the Integrity cabin door open and close. A few moments later we heard screams coming from the bathroom on the other side. Naturally we all panicked. The woman came over to our side and screamed for our family parent to call medical staff. It was an emergency. We didn't know what was going on. We could see out our windows people running to the other cabin. Through the door we could hear "Come on Karlye! Come on! Don't do this!" There was so much yelling. No one knew what to do. Karlye had hung herself.
Somehow a proper count wasn't taken when the family left the cabin. Somehow this girl slipped through the cracks. She had been on "high risk" which basically meant that she was on suicide watch for quite some time prior. She convinced her family she was no longer a risk, that she was better. She was taken off high risk and placed on "observation". Still supposed to be watched but not as intently as high risk.
I could not believe what happened. I had only been there for two and a half months when the incident occurred. I was appalled at the lack of care that had been given to this family, to this girl. People were so angry, not only at the staff member but at her as well. We were told she was weak. She took the "easy" way out. I do not believe this is the case.
This is a quote from David Foster Wallace that I believe does a great job painting a picture for those who have never suffered from depression:
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
So here I am today remembering those who could not fight this invisible terror.
I will remember the lost in my silence, in my words.
I will pray for the families and friends who lost a soul so dear.
But most of all, I will hold close the memories and stories I have because those will be with me the rest of my days. Those are what will keep me always moving forward.
I will fight for them.
O captain! My captain!
I will stand for you!
