So there we were, sitting in the psych ward.
Ok…no, I wasn’t really in the psych ward. No, really! I was not! I am not crazy! I do not need to be locked up! I don’t even need counseling! Hee. It was actually the waiting room for the part of the hospital where they take people who come to detox and stuff like that. So I’m not entirely sure what they call it.
Anyway – so yeah. There we were… Wait, let me back up.
I have a friend who has a pretty bad drinking problem. He’s had it for some time now. He is not a close friend…so up until recently, I had no idea of the severity of it. Upon finding this out…I also found out that he is a cutter. For those of you not familiar with this term, it’s self mutilation. It’s people who cut themselves due to psychological issues. I thought this was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard of until I met some people who had this problem and found out that it’s just as real of a problem as depression, anxiety and other psychological issues. So put these two disorders together in a guy with no job and then have his girlfriend of several years get fed up and leave him…and you have suicidal man on the edge. For the sake of privacy…I will not use his real name. For the sake of keeping this at least a little light hearted…I’ll take a ridiculous set of interlinking things that make no sense to anyone but me and use them to name him “Dog”. It’s funny… but you’ll have to trust me on that.
So, Dog has been calling me a lot since the break up. We talk for hours at a time and I try to encourage him to get help and that things will get better and that suicide is not the answer. I watch his Facebook posts grow darker and scarier and I try to keep upbeat and positive and I begin to call him on his BS because this misery is going on for too long. It’s time to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try to get on with your life. I only allow so much wallowing. He continues to get worse.
I end up talking to a couple of his other friends; friends who actually know him quite a lot better than I do and have been through similar situations with him. They tell me not to worry…that the suicide threats are mostly empty but he does need some help because when you mix drinking and cutting…accidents can happen.
Between me and two of Dog’s and my mutual friends…we talk about having a sort of “intervention” with him and telling him he has GOT to get into rehab and get better before he kills himself. Ok…since this story heavily involves these two…let’s use convoluted interlocking nonsense and name them too. George and Mustard. ::giggling:: Yeah, only makes sense to me…but works to get the point across. I’ve known George for a long time and we are very close friends. Dog and Mustard, I have known less time and am friends with them both but not close. Ok, now we have that covered.
Cut to one Sunday afternoon as I am walking about the grocery store in a stupor from being tired. Phone rings…it’s Dog. He tells me that he has just gotten off the phone with George and that he’s on his way over to pick him up and take him somewhere to get some help. I am ELATED at this and say “That’s wonderful!” He says “No, it’s not!” He’s almost in panic mode. We talk for a little while as I’m finishing my shopping. Finally, he tells me he’s really scared about George heading over so I ask him if he wants me to come too. He says yes with no hesitation. So I call George and tell him I’m coming too. He tells me he is on his way to get Mustard too. Dog doesn’t know this.
So off I go out to BFE where Dog has been staying. I’m on the phone with him when George and Mustard show up. He freaks out a little when he realizes that there are two of them. My personal thought on that…is that George is a very calm, very unflappable, very non-confrontational guy. So I think Dog thought he could talk his way out of everything with George. Mustard, though? Not so much.
I got there shortly after that. It was dramatic. He cried…he leaned on me and a couple of times let his knees go weak and almost hit the floor. He argued that he didn’t need help. He just generally flipped out. I wouldn’t let him go to the kitchen alone because I didn’t want to see him cut himself. We had to just manhandle him out of the house with a plastic grocery bag containing socks, shoes and a baseball cap. We got him in George’s truck and I told him I’d be right behind them.
So we took him to Parkland. He flipped right the hell out when we got into the waiting room and said “This is STUPID.” I grabbed him by both wrists, flipped his arms over to face palms up and show his worst cuts and I looked him in the face and said, “No…THIS is stupid.” We touched our foreheads together and I told him, “Dog…you need help.”
They got him in for assessment pretty quick and that was a whole other bit of drama with some yelling and lying on Dog’s part and some “Come to Jesus” comments on my part. I sold him out to the nurse and the cop. I told them everything. I want him to get help so I totally ratted him out. They ended up putting him in handcuffs (procedure) and taking him to talk to the doctor.
So…they let us come to the waiting room…thinking we will get to see him again after he sees the doc and the cuffs come off. But they never let us talk to him again. We didn’t know that…so we sat in the waiting room…from somewhere just after midnight until 3AM. George and I both had to be up at 6:30 the next morning. But it was for our friend so we stayed.
This is where it got silly. The three of us had nothing to do but watch people and nurses come in and out…and wait. We were interviewed by a student doctor about Dog’s situation but other than that…we just sat around and waited. And being tired and having nothing to do…we eventually got a little punch drunk and started laughing. We talked about Mardi Gras…and out of town trips…and how cute the student doctor was. We told a few crazy stories about Dog. We got really silly and just started giggling about some incredibly ridiculous crap. One of which was Mustard stating that while he didn’t want Dog to get hurt…it would have been really funny if he had gotten out of control and they had tazed him. I did not want to laugh because it seemed so cruel but we were so tired and the mental image really WAS very funny.
Leave it to me to find a way to have fun in a hospital waiting room outside the detox day room. Leave it to George and Mustard to make me laugh about inappropriate things.
This just goes to show that I will never be one of those people you have to talk down from the ledge or put on suicide watch. I can find the funny in almost anything. I try to make the best of my bad situations. I don’t always succeed. I get sad and I wallow in self pity occasionally. For the most part, though…I’m a pretty upbeat gal with a pretty good outlook on life. Now if I could just figure out how to share it…or better yet, bottle it and sell it…and live off the profits.
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