How To Stop, Drop, And Roll In Mental Crisis
At the height of my mental crisis, I forged a path to stability. Now, I’m hoping my own story can help empower others.
It’s been two years since the height of my mental crisis, when I tried to commit myself to the mental ward because I was suicidal, only to be turned away because I hadn’t performed my “crazy” satisfactorily enough. Instead, I was sent out the door, a mental-ward reject, with a few pamphlets stuffed in my hands, left to navigate the mental-health labyrinth on my own.
Back then, all my days found me contorted on the bed in the fetal position, exhausted of tears, and rail thin as my body had even lost the ability to hold down food. It wasn’t the first time I had experienced a mental crisis — but it was the worst time.
As kids, we were often instructed in sound life-saving emergency disaster training. Handy epithets spoken in childhood — “Do not struggle in quicksand”; “Break glass in case of fire”; “Never run with scissors” — are all intended to see us into old age safe and sound. However, as an adult, I found myself wholly ill-equipped when my life had become a raging dumpster fire. There was no “Stop, Drop, and Roll” poster to draw upon in mental crisis.
It wasn’t the first time I had…
