The last time I’d been in the psych ward was four years ago. Until this October. This last time, I stayed just across the hall from where I did four years ago. Everything was mirrored. Even though it was four years ago, I could remember how it was supposed to be. To get from my room to the community room I would walk north, then slightly east. The drinking fountain was on my left. This time, I would walk south then slightly west, the drinking fountain on my right. Everything is backwards. The same, but also–completely different.
Four years ago I came voluntarily. I knew it was the best thing for me and for my concerned friend. I was scared, but I agreed to go because I knew I needed the help it could provide.
This time was different: my admittance–and stay–was entirely involuntary. It was go by will or go by force. I took the obvious choice of will, but it was hardly a choice at all, and I was far from willing.
Four years ago, I was nervous and sad, but I was also cautiously optimistic. I had a lot to work out–including my sexuality and my very recent marriage. I knew it would be hard and taxing, but it was something I knew I could do. I was almost hopeful. This time– I have never had a situation in my life that has made me feel so overwhelmingly helpless and entirely lacking in hope.
Four years ago my friend Marie asked me to never contact her again and severed our relationship. Sadly, in the four years since then I’ve grown somewhat used to it. Well, you never really do grow used to it. But it happens more often than not. It had almost happened again with two new friends I made during my first month-and-a-half of law school, Paige and Megan.
We had spent the first month or so of law school always studying together. A week or two prior to my admission to the psych ward, however, they had started ignoring me–not just ignoring: aggressively avoiding. It brought back painful memories of my freshman year of college when, at the beginning of the second semester, my roommate moved right across the hall and then spent the remainder of the year pretending I didn’t exist.
Being ignored is worse than being yelled at.
After a week and a half, almost two, of them both saying nothing when we met or passed in the locker room, changing study spots, taking any seat in class but the two open ones next to me, saying “hi” to and talking to people around me, but not to me, I was barely coping.
When I met with my therapist of four years, he told me the best way to cope in the moment would be to accept that Paige and Megan didn’t matter–that they were nothing to me; I couldn’t keep giving them power to affect my mental health or emotions. He, of course, was making no diminishing remarks as to their value as human beings, but only intended to assert that my mental health and well-being needed to exist outside their influence.
As such, I found when it was hardest, when my assigned seat was next to them and they hardly spoke a word to me, that it was helpful to pretend that they didn’t exist. I thought of them as dead only to say that my life would be easier without them.
On a Thursday evening I confided my pain and this image to a service missionary at my church, Heather, someone I thought was a confidant and friend.
I had not, before that moment, considered any course of action–nor do I now. Their being dead was to me an expression of their complete non-existence that no human action could or would bring about. But in that moment, rife with pain, I recalled a scene from a crime show I had watched–a scenario in which they might be caused to feel and understand the pain I felt. There never was nor is any desire or intent on my part to actually hurt them–how could there be when all of my pain existed solely BECAUSE I cared about them and our friendship? If I didn’t care, it wouldn’t hurt that they ignored me: we are ignored by hundreds of people every day–on the sidewalk, on the train, in the locker room–but none of that hurts because we do not know them and so do not care about nor hurt for the relationship we might have had.
Heather quite apparently did not see it this way. Even though I told her explicitly, “It’s just the way I get through class. I’d never hurt them.”
The next day, Friday, September 27th, I called the Assistant Dean of Students, Dean Burton, who I had talked to previously about accommodations and who Paige and Megan had contacted concerning my psychogenic seizures. I asked him if I could meet with him, Paige, and Megan, and discuss everything, hoping to smooth things over.
During our morning class, after my phone call with Dean Burton, Paige sat next to me and passed me a note. In the note, she mentioned that Dean Burton had contacted her, and she asked if I wanted to meet with her and Megan after class, Dean Burton being out of the office. I agreed gratefully, and Megan, who had gone to the earlier session of class, scheduled a study room.
Given everything, the conversation could hardly have gone better. Megan was still rather set in continuing to avoid me, but now, at least it had been communicated why, and I could live with it. Megan left early and Paige and I continued to talk. We resolved our misunderstandings and left as friends. We made plans to study on Saturday at a Cafe, outlining for exams and reviewing for the quiz in Civil Procedure. She texted or emailed Dean Burton with the update that we had met and that, in essence, all was well.
I was on top of the world. Not because we were friends again, but because I had been able to rather calmly communicate with them and reach a resolution. Easier said than done. On the way home I even tried to call Heather to tell her the good news. When she didn’t answer, I left a voicemail that said, in effect, that I had smoothed things over with Megan and Paige, that Paige and I were still friends, that I was headed rock climbing, and that life was good. I then called my mom and told her much of the same. It was the last communication I would have with the outside world about anything that had happened that day or the previous night.
While I was out rock climbing at Red Rock in Draper with my climbing partner, I got a call from the University Police. They said they were at my apartment, that someone had called concerned about me, and they wanted to check in with me. (Heather had called my Bishop, who I assume called them.) I thought it quite extreme, but I appreciated the concern and, knowing that, given the events of the day, I could certainly alleviate any concerns they had, I agreed to meet them when I returned home from climbing.
They asked about my conversation with Heather, and, though I retold to them all the events of the day, being mainly my conversation with Megan and Paige, they didn’t seem to care about anything that had happened after my conversation with Heather the previous night.
You CANNOT imagine my shock when, with my hands cuffed behind my back, the metal eating uncomfortably into my wrists, and an officer on each side of me, they led me out of my apartment building. I vacillated viciously between fury, helplessness, and grief. Nothing made sense.
It was shameful walking out of my apartment complex in handcuffs, escorted by police. People assume that you did something wrong. People assume you are dangerous. People assume you are a criminal. People assume you put up a fight. People assume a lot of things.
When we got to the hospital and while I waited to get checked in, I talked to the social worker who had come in with the police to talk to me back at my apartment. I had myself considered a career in social work–I even took a master’s level class in it my freshman year of college. I asked her why she had chosen to be a social worker. Her response was something like, “I don’t really know. I just sorta fell into it.” That, honestly, was when I first realized that my case was hopeless and everything I’d said had fallen on deaf ears. This was not someone who cared or was here to help me. This was just someone collecting a paycheck. My heart sank.
I honestly remember very little after that. Four days in a hospital room eating the exact same meals, wearing the same scrubs, looking at the same walls, and everything blurs together. I’ll tell you what I remember, but everything is out of order: time here was irrelevant, except for the acute awareness that it was passing. very. slowly.
My room had a bed, a TV, a countertop, and a cabinet equipped with empty shelves and drawers. It was white and tan with a gray countertop beside the bed and a sink in the corner by the door. The door was thick and wooden with a good-sized crack by the handle (someone in here had had a hard time) and a large window from which I could see the desks and computer screens of the small nurses’ station that was just outside my door. It meant that I could also see the camera footage from my own room, the other five patient rooms, and the connecting hallways. It also meant that I could hear almost everything the nurses said. When they left my room and, assuming they were out of ear shot, talked about me or about what had gone down, or what I’d said, or what had happened with other patients, I heard it all.
There was one time in particular that I remember the most. As I mentioned, Paige and I had planned to study together at a café on Saturday, but we hadn’t yet set a time. It was Saturday morning and I wanted to call her so she wouldn’t think–after all the work of restoring our relationship–that I had stood her up. Because I wasn’t allowed to make phone calls on my own, the nurse dialed, put it on speaker, and then held the phone a foot or so away from where I sat on the bed. Paige answered but it was clear from the beginning that without caller ID and a muffled speaker phone held a foot from my face she had no idea who was calling and she was having trouble hearing. She repeated multiple times that she couldn’t hear me. It just so happens that right after I’d said my name for what I believe was actually the second or third time, she hung up. After leaving, the nurse, speaking to others of the hospital staff and evidently unaware or not caring that I could hear every word, said that Paige had hung up because she was afraid of me. (By now she had realized who Paige was and seemed to blame me for even asking to call her even though I had honestly told her the name of who I wished to call and the reason)
She, of course, in her account to the hospital staff, failed to mention that Paige had not been able to hear, nor that Paige and I were honestly, as I had told her, friends. Why would she be afraid of talking to a friend? In speaking to the staff about her “horrid blunder” she ignored all the facts in front of her because of the story she had been told: everything had to fit her pre-constructed narrative. It killed me how close-minded they were. I wanted to scream. At this point, I had not yet been issued the no contact order and I had no way of knowing that they had likely already informed Paige and Megan that threats had been made against them (according to the body cam footage, Paige and Megan were informed by the police while they were picking me up that I had “plans to kill them”). Nevermind this isn’t true—How could I have known? But also, how was that fair? I was stuck in a hospital with no access to phones or internet without close supervision—there was no way I could contact or threaten them, so why did they have to hurry so fast to inform before even investigating if the “threats” were valid?
My first night in the ED, the two police officers who had spoken to me at my apartment returned. They said very little but handed me an unusually long sheet of paper of a material very different from your standard printer paper. It was a notice that, because I had issued “threats” against Paige and Megan, if I stepped foot on campus, I would be arrested for trespassing. I cannot remember a time in my life that I sobbed so hard. It was to be outdone more than once in the coming days.
Before that notice it had been hard enough, but that notice just about broke me. It was then I realized the full gravity of the situation. I had never issued any threats, but I knew threats, when they are issued, are taken very seriously. (We had just read a case in my torts class about a man who issued indirect threats to his wife through his song lyrics.) I had also not considered prior to the notice that it would have any impact on my schooling. I had thought that I would be in the hospital only a few hours–that they would realize their mistake and send me home. If you had told me then that I would be suspended from school and would be in the hospital for five days I would have told you that penguins can fly and I had a pet unicorn.
I stayed up till 3:00 or so, still quite mistakenly believing that at any moment they would realize their mistake and send me home. I was so certain that I refused to take any sleeping medication–I didn’t want to be drowsy getting home. I honestly hadn’t expected to even stay the night. I knew by then that the pink slip they had taken me in on allowed them to hold me for 72 hours (I just didn’t think they would). I would later learn that the 72 hours did not include weekends. It was just one more item in a bombardment of bad news. Since I had come in on a Friday night, this meant they could keep me on the involuntary hold through Wednesday.
I passed the time mostly by trying to sleep, which I did in a sporadic series of short naps during the day since my nights were hardly restful. One day we had a new patient admittance to the room across the hall from mine. The patient came in screaming. By this time Dad had arrived in Utah. He and I listened to the commotion outside my door with nothing but empathy for this poor woman who no one would listen to. (Well, no one except us.)
Someone pounded their door all night that night. I assume it was her. As you can imagine, she was not the only one to have a restless night. I did not sleep either. It wasn’t just the constant pounding that kept me awake–I was thinking about what she had said–or what I got from her screams: that she was being kidnapped, that they couldn’t force her into a completely empty room all alone when she was prone to panic attacks and had severe anxiety, that they weren’t listening to her, that she needed to call her husband to tell him she was here, that they weren’t helping her. My dad and I had both wanted to applaud or cheer. “Preach, woman, preach.” It was all too true to me.
They had kept telling her the same words I had heard so many times by then: “we’re here to keep you safe” and “we’re here to help you.” These words honestly made me want to scream into a pillow and punch the wall. I was safe. If they had been listening at all they would know that I had always been safe–and if I wasn’t, it was certain nothing they did made me feel more so. And here to help me? I had asked them since the moment I’d arrived to investigate the threats–to contact my counselor, the assistant dean of students, my bishop, Heather Skanky, and Paige. Had they contacted any of them? No.
On Sunday I was told of the possibility of my being transferred from the ED to Huntsman Mental Health Institute possibly as soon as Monday morning. That night, someone came to meet with my dad and I, and, in the course of that meeting, he let it slip that Paige and Megan had been informed that I had threatened their lives. I had been in the hospital then for 72 hours and this was the first time I had been told this. Apparently, they had been informed as early as Friday night, while I was still in the hospital under a pink slip and after no investigation beyond the police officers’ initial report. It broke me.
I tried to run, and, because they had a “take-down” incident, lost the privilege, or chance, of getting out on Monday. The doctors agreed this wasn’t fair. Information had constantly been withheld from me, no one was open about why I was there, and then they had dumped on me the worst news of my life all while ensuring that all my normal coping mechanisms were beyond my reach. What did they expect?
In my opinion, hospitals should not be allowed to hold mental health patients without proper facilities: windows, outdoor time, music, books, journals, showers, phone calls, and visits, to say the least. I would have given anything just for my weighted blanket.
Huntsman had all these things and more. Most importantly, it had a competent psych evaluation and medical team dedicated to my care. I met with my team and finally, someone did as I had been asking all along: they conducted an investigation. They called and talked to Bishop Knoll, Paige, Megan, my counselor, and Heathery. The team, led by a forensic psychologist, quickly determined that I was there by mistake, that no threats had ever been issued, that I was not a danger to myself or others, and the best thing for me would be a good night's sleep in my own bed. I was finally released to do just that on Thursday, October 3rd. Over 130 hours later.
Police visited my apartment three times during the next few days to deliver notices of the stalking injunctions both Paige and Megan had filed after being informed of the “threats.” Seeing the police at my apartment again after all that had happened made me so frightened I was shaking. I still panic when I see a cop car on the street. Whoever said red, white, and blue was freedom never had to fight for it.
My parents hired a lawyer who responded to the stalking injunctions. In the meantime, I responded to the two documents I had received from the school during my stay in the hospital by reaching out to April Pavelka, associate director of student accountability at the University of Utah to set up a virtual meeting for October 4th. It was very clear from the beginning that April had an agenda. She was more concerned about protecting Paige and Megan than she was about hearing me. If she had only heard me she would have known that Paige and Megan didn’t need protecting.
April had informed me that the decision that would result from our conversation would be made by a team of higher-ups. I later learned this was a lie. April made the decision on her own. Five days after our meeting, on October 9th, we received her decision. I was put on probation and suspended from school. I was still not allowed on campus and was directed to have no contact with Paige and Megan.
In the meantime, the assistant dean of students at the law school, Brian Burton, had tried to make my continuance in the law program a possibility. He asked my professors to record their lectures and work with me, but, while well-intentioned, since I had been informed that my academic suspension remained in place and no end date or conditions were given for lifting that suspension, this seemed a lot like straining the deck chairs on the titanic.
I couldn’t work or study with any of my classmates, I couldn’t work on the podcast project for my Torts class because Paige was in my group, the few classmates who were my friends were listed as witnesses on the stalking injunctions and had certainly by then heard whatever rumors Paige and Megan had started, I couldn’t participate in class discussion (which is most of the learning process in a school of thought structured on the socratic method), I couldn’t go to any functions or events to network, and most-importantly, because the university upheld the restrictions of the stalking injunctions, which could last as long as Paige and Megan are in school, it could be three years before I could resume attendance. Accordingly, I withdrew from school and moved home to Georgia.
I have been wrongfully accused and suspended from school among countless other atrocities. I am in need of funds to legally refute the claims and their ongoing repercussions. Please share my story and consider donating if you are able. Everything helps.
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