[self-portrait]

Did I ever tell you about the time I checked into Hotel Crazy? No? Well, there’s no time like the present, and it helps that I care less and less every day what other people think of me.

Let me preface this by saying I’m still kind of nuts (obvs). (Also, I’m not one who usually uses “obvs” or “totes” or any of those slangy cuteisms, maybe because when I do it I generally feel like I’m being a fake version of me.) But back to the nuts: I have to say, that just because I am not currently checked into Hotel Crazy, it doesn’t mean I’m a better person. Just like losing weight doesn’t make you a better person. Crazy fat people are just as good as supposedly sane thin people. However. Calming your crazy down—just like losing weight—has much to do with feeling more at home in your head, in your skin, in the world. And that can be a really good thing.

It was early November about four years ago, and I wanted to hurt myself. And in small ways, I already had. I had also gained over 30 pounds in about three months. I was in over my head at a new job, still feeling the after-effects of family drama, and on top of it all, I was just innately depressed as I had been off and on for years . Only this time it was worse. I lived alone in an apartment that was very nice but relatively distant from my few friends in town. I had no boyfriend, no hobbies other than eating too much fast food while watching The Biggest Loser, and on the weekend there were times when I went two days in a row without speaking to another living soul, except maybe a cashier. I was also over $40,000 in debt.

Life looked like shit, and if it hadn’t been for one of my best friends at the time and my own primal instinct for survival, who knows what would have happened. I was already playing little paper-cut games. I didn’t want to die, I told myself. I just sometimes wished I hadn’t been born. In short, I was not appreciating the Gift of Life. I felt this rage and helplessness build up inside of me as I sat there alone in my apartment, and I desperately needed some kind of outlet. I’m terrible at expressing anger effectively; instead I turned it viciously inward and was generally messy and moody and relentlessly cruel to myself.

One evening my friend decided she was too worried about me to let things continue this way. We drove to the mental hospital and the woman who assessed me recommended I check myself in. I was utterly exhausted at this point. I didn’t care about the cost. I couldn’t see further than the constant menacing darkness obscuring my view. I said okay.

They took away all my sharp objects, and I slept in a plain dormitory-style room with two beds in it that was located in a locked-down part of the hospital. The mattress was rubbery and thin, and orderlies with flashlights made rounds twice an hour, but I slept as I hadn’t in ages. I slept, and dreamt about nothing. The next day I called work and said I was sick, and didn’t think about it very much for the rest of my stay.

And that was really what the mental hospital gave me: a rest. The therapy, frankly, was mediocre and harried. Too many crazies, too little time. They decided I was some version of bipolar based purely on my accrued debt, and changed my meds. I dutifully swallowed. They made me go to art therapy, where I wanted to laugh as I stuck stickers on a piece of paper. I sat surrounded by catatonics who needed help sticking the stickers and schizophrenics who kept repeating themselves and the manics who couldn’t stop chattering excitedly. I wasn’t laughing at them; I was laughing at myself, laughing at my presumption that I was truly crazy, when compared to my fellow inmates I was just having one really long bad day.

I thoroughly disliked group therapy. Watching other people cry and talk about their personal horrors made me uncomfortable for them. Hearing about suicide attempts and psychotic episodes did not cheer me. Perhaps I was not as empathic as I’d always fancied myself. There was little dignity in group therapy, just snot and messy feelings splattered all over the floor, which should have made me feel Less Alone but instead made me want to grab a mop.

On the second or third night, I got a roommate. I’d had the relative luxury of a room all to myself up until then. For better or worse, though, we did not become co-conspirators or confidantes. In fact, she spent most of her time in the bathroom squatted down, crying and rocking back and forth.

The food was mediocre, and I couldn’t go outside, but I didn’t want to. It was November, gloomy and chill. I was one of the lucky patients who had visitors, which was nice because I was still in a head space where I couldn’t understand why anyone would give a damn about me.

I was in the hospital for five days, at which point the reality of the thousands of dollars I was spending on my “rest cure” hit me and I figured I was well enough to check out. Fortified with Lamictal, Effexor, and the phone number of some anonymous doctor in a local behavioral health clinic, I checked out.

The Crazy House didn’t fix me, but it jolted me enough to realize that sometimes a dramatic decision like checking in interrupts the flow of your insanity long enough to open your eyes. What happened in the next year was this: One morning two months later, I got in my car without warning and drove across the country back to my parents’ house, leaving the job, the apartment, all of it behind. The drive took two days, and I drove through snow and dark and strange highways and tried not to think too much. When I arrived, I cried a lot and slept too much. This lasted weeks. My parents were very kind to me.

Eventually I started walking for a few minutes here and there on the treadmill, joined Weight Watchers, took on some light freelance work. I gingerly began to pick up the pieces as I filed for bankruptcy and lost about twenty-five pounds of fat representing my dread and anxiety and fear. After about six months, I thought I was ready to return and be on my own again, this time without the high-pressure job and debt.

It turns out maybe I wasn’t quite ready, as I continued doing private battle with the bad voice inside my head. Not an actual voice, but a hiss through my neurons that prompted me, ironically, to alienate the friend that had been my saving grace and to close my world up tight around me once more. I gained the weight back. But still, I fought.

You have to fight, you guys. You just have to! There’s nothing for it. Last year I very slowly began the process of breaking down a tiny chunk of the Great Wall of Fear, and let someone in. He has become closer and more dear to me than I ever dreamed was possible. But now it’s time to take another step forward. The Fear Pounds are weighing me down and remind me on a regular basis of the bad old days, even though the worst days are long gone. I want to drop them like the heavy stones they are, leaving them behind me and never look back.