A Beginning

I suppose that an introduction is in order here. In January, 2009, I turned thirty, found a bunch of gray hairs in my already thinning scalp and taught my family how to play Dungeons and Dragons. Shortly after that I admitted myself to Providence Hospital Adult Mental Health Unit.

At the time I was on winter break from teaching at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, so it was a relatively convenient time for a hospital visit, if there is such a thing. I did what I needed to in the hospital, but kept to myself. I suppose it was the stabilization of medicine, often referred to as meds, that got me to the point where they were comfortable letting me out. And just in time too, the spring semester was about to begin and I had just barely been able to prepare for class while I was in the hospital.

Who was I kidding though? I didn't know the material and I didn't have the experience needed to wing it, but I sure tried! Had that been my only obstacle to face at the time, this story would be much different. Not knowing the material for my class was only just the beginning. You see, I have a very peculiar illness known as Bipolar, so the subject of my class was, or should have been, the least of my concerns. Having been fresh from the hospital at the beginning of the class, I was determined to stay on track. I was usually early to class and had done some shopping with my mom for some professional clothes to let people know that I meant business.

But the downward spiral begins so subtly. Like a whisper in the night it echoes through the walls and up among the clouds and fills your mind with visions and dreams both beautiful and terrifying until it all just becomes too much and the whole world comes crashing down around you, with you, on you, grabbing a hold of you and pulling you down with it. Some of you already know what I am talking about. Those of you who don't, that's alright, I'm glad for you, but I will try to be a bit more clear in the future.

Well, the good thing about spring semester is that it has a two week break about a month in, and boy was I in need of a break! My parents have a house in a small town outside of Anchorage, Alaska, called Girdwood, and they were out on a vacation of their own so I headed to their house for the week. Well, my brother and his wife also live in Girdwood, so we tried to get together each night for a movie. The first movie on the list was "I Am Legend". Unfortunately, I have a hyperactive imagination and a very low tolerance for horror films. I assumed that since this movie had Will Smith in it, it would be a wholesome fun movie for all audiences, and if you think back about the movies he's been in, I'd say that was a fair assumption. I lasted about thirty minutes with that movie before we had to call it a night. I decided that it was too late to start another movie and that I would just go back to my parent's house and pick back up where I left off in my borrowed copies of C.S. Freidman's Coldfire Trilogy.

Strange thing about that night, though... It became painfully obvious how many doors were filled with glass or had windows right next to them. Hell, there are even doors made of glass! In an effort to maximize my personal safety on a day to day basis, I had quit carrying pocket knives some months ago. I began collecting knives years ago, probably around 2000 in earnest, but I had been interested in them since I made the move to Alaska with my parents. It was mostly a utility thing, there was just no telling when one might need to cut something, but it was also more than that. There was a camaraderie involved in carrying a pocket knife with the men in my family, including my adopted uncle Mike Howerton, ex-Navy Seal, certified badass. That's funny, I just realized that I stopped carrying a pocket knife shortly after he died...

There's going to be a lot of that in this thing, just as a warning. I mean me getting wrapped up and off topic, but that's okay, because it's all part of the story. Anyways, I knew that my knife collection was hidden in the closet in the Girdwood house, and I had an increasing feeling that someone or something was going to break into the house and come after me. Not the art or the valuables, but me. So I went to the closet and took my pick of the knives. I chose well, it's just my collection that was weird. I grabbed my special edition navy seal Smith & Wesson pocket knife in honor of Mike, because that's the knife he always carried. Always. Mine had been given to me by my father and I had gotten the blade partially serrated and then had my initials engraved on the handle. That knife I tucked into the elastic of my fleece sleeping pants. Then I reached for the biggest knife in the box. I only know it as a kukri, but that is a term from Dungeons and Dragons, so I can't say whether it translates to real world or not. Anyways, it's about a twelve inch curved blade, but the edge is on the inside of the curve rather than the outside. Let me just say that this is one wicked knife.

So, having made my picks, I kept the pocket knife with me at all times, and I slept with the kukri under my pillow. We continued to watch a movie a night, but we switched to the Die Hard series, with Bruce Willis. Meanwhile, during the days and well into the nights I continued reading. One day, however, while I was reading, I sat up from the couch and tried to keep reading, but I knew that something was weird. Now it is harder to remember specific details, but what I do remember is sitting on the couch and feeling as though I, me, my perceptive consciousness was receding into my mind and then I witnessed blood on the floor and was bombarded with hallucinations that suggested I pick up the pocket knife, open it and stab myself in the throat and, before I lost consciousness, jerk it quickly to one side or the other to do maximum damage.

This is the part where I tell you that I have been here before, and as much as I hate to admit it, I probably will be again. I did not cut my throat that day. Instead I called my doctor and told her what was happening. But not right away. I had experienced suicidal hallucinations before, that's what landed me in the hospital in January. I had been staying at my brother's condo in the loft and, for some reason I had a knife then. On two occasions I remember having visions of cutting my throat that lasted long enough for me to visualize blood seeping down through the wood slats of the floor of the loft. I wondered if whoever came to get me would opt for rolling me over the edge of the loft instead of struggling with the cramped crawl space of the ladder. Prior to that I had been in the hot tub at my parents’ house and for some reason imagined that I had acquired a gun and that I shot myself in the head.

For many years I have been having these hallucinatory suicidal ideations. After I graduated with my masters, I went to live with my girlfriend in Canada. I did very well for a while, but then almost out of nowhere, I was up late and she was already asleep. I was sitting at my desk and feeling pretty down when I looked to my left and saw myself crawling across the floor bleeding from the neck. I called my mother that time and she arranged tickets for me to catch the train to Toronto and then for a flight to Anchorage. When I landed, we went together to my psychiatrist and together agreed that I needed to be in the hospital. So I went, and two days later my girlfriend of two years broke up with me, over the phone while I was in the hospital for mental illness.

I guess I could have started there, at the trip from Canada, but that would have started out very sadly I suppose. Well, after the phone call to my doctor from Girdwood, she had me adjust some of my existing medicine to try and help out until our next appointment. When I finally did make it in to see her, she had this new anti-depressant called Pristiq, not sure if I'm supposed to say names or not, but there it is. Well, I tried it and over the rest of the spring semester, my symptoms just got worse. I grew a full on beard for starters, nothing against guys with beards, it's just not what I do. The Pristiq had instigated some sort of reaction in my body that was making my face twitch in weird ways and I was also chewing on my tongue. Not to the point of drawing blood, but bad enough to be in constant pain and deform the edges of my tongue as well. I have always been a movie lover and I was only working six hours a week teaching, so I decided to start catching up on movies. Well, I quickly discovered that Blockbuster's maximum movie rental is twelve at a time. I took advantage of that about twice a week, sometimes more. I was watching three to five movies a day, filling shopping carts with canned mandarin oranges, caffeine free diet Pepsi and orange juice and doing whatever else I could think of to escape.

My landlord was concerned, because I had shut her out. My mother was even more concerned because I had disappeared, and all the while, the second biggest knife in my collection was hanging there on my wall taunting me every night. Every night I fell asleep to visions of cutting my throat. Every night I tried to come up with alternatives. Every night I reached out in vain to the thread of hope that was keeping me alive. Since that last trip in January, that thread of hope had become lithium. Normally, well, in the past, when times got tough I would either mess with my meds or quit taking them altogether. This time though, I was holding on to my meds like a drowning man to a life raft. I don't know how I managed to pull myself together every Monday and Wednesday enough to teach a class, but I did. Towards the end of the semester I just gave a final project and told them they had two weeks to do it and that there was no need to come to class at all during that time.

About a week before the end of school, I heard a knock on the door. Not the front door, but the side door, the one next to my room. It woke me up and I got up and answered the door. It was my brother. I wondered why he was there, but I should have known right away. He wanted to go inside my room I think, but I wouldn't let him. It would be too obvious what was going on if he saw inside my room. He suggested I get a drink. Some orange juice, I thought, would go nicely with this occasion. Once I had my drink, he urged me to sit at the dining table and wait. I did, and I did not have to wait long. My mother showed up at the door and showed herself in. She gave me a hug and then marched into my room, surveyed the disaster and then gave me a choice, which I can no longer remember. The end result was that they began cleaning my room and I was to sit at the table, I think. Still kind of fuzzy on those details.

After the room was clean, we all sat down and had a real talk. I knew what was coming, but I didn't want to hear it. I had missed two appointments with my therapist and one with my psychiatrist very recently, and they had called my mother with concern. We had a hard talk about my circumstance and the inevitable became clear: I was destined for the Adult Mental Health Unit once more. Under my brother's care and watch I was able to make it to the last class of the semester, sit through the critique and put a letter down by each student's name. Then, as I was instructed, I went to the administrative assistant's office and let myself in. When she asked how I was doing, I said, as I was instructed, "I'm not well. I won't be able to teach this summer." I knew the implications of this statement I was making before I said it. I had been given a rare opportunity to teach in the field in which I was trained at a University near my home. I had just handed her my opportunity to give to someone else. Her response was something about taking my fall classes too, but I figured she was just being polite. I actually thanked her and then walked out of the office and found my brother.

On April 23, 2009, I was admitted to Providence Hospital Adult Mental Health Unit or 4 West as they call it internally, 4th floor, west wing. That's how they answer their phones anyways, and when you're in the hospital for any extended period of time, you tend to pick up on things like that. This particular hospital visit was two things: my most dramatic hospital visit, and the longest hospital visit I have ever had. I was in the hospital for 21 days this time.