Three Day Stay

                The Psych Ward is a strange place. Neuroscience Psych they call it here, but we all know where we are, we are all in the nut house. They take your stuff that you brought with you as soon as you get into the door and give you blue pajama like clothes to wear until you can get yours back again. You can’t have anything with strings or ties so shoes , homemade blankets that people like to make, sweatpants, hoodies, those types of things are all taken away and locked up for fear of us trying to strangle ourselves or each other, there is plastic around the sinks and the toilets so you can’t bang your head against the metal, they even took away my notebook because it had spiral on it and I was not so happy about that but they managed to get me one I wouldn’t try to kill myself with.  They told me not to be scared when I got there because to be honest I was terrified, I was by myself in a strange place with God knows what kind of people. The tech told me it’s not like the movies but to be honest it was exactly like the movies, not like the horror kind but definitely like ‘Girl, Interrupted’. We all had different “pods” with 5 rooms and most everyone had a roommate, there was a common room with a TV and chairs, they brought us food from the cafeteria and we ate around 4 tables in the common room, and we had groups that were scheduled throughout the day to work out whatever was wrong by talking and crafts.

 When I got there and was checked in, I really didn’t know what to do with myself, so I did a 500 piece puzzle and I wouldn’t really talk to anyone.  I really didn’t want to be there, it was completely out of my comfort zone and I wanted to break down and cry and convince them that I wasn’t crazy and I just want to go home and watch Netflix and lay in my bed like I usually did, Like I could bargain to them that if I signed a piece of paper that said I wasn’t going to kill myself that I could leave but I knew that I had been sick for a long time and I needed to do what they told me when they admitted me, to get diagnosed and be put on meds and watched to make sure they would work well for me. Thank the good lord for my friends bringing me clothes and coming to see me when I thought I was going to fall apart, no one wants to be there alone.

The first whole day that I was there I slept until 3:30 in the afternoon. The tech was telling me that it’s common for everyone to do that the first day they are there, they just want to sleep. Honestly after being up all night in the ER and not being able to sleep plus the fact that it’s a scary new experience I understand why everyone just wants to be asleep. That day though I did meet most of the people that I would stay attached to through the entire experience. My roommate was Tarra and she was the nicest person I could have been roomed with and I was extremely thankful for her, she woke me up for meals and meds that first day when I was sleeping. She had lost two of her children, sons, her husband was in jail for beating her and she was a crack addict, on top of her mental disorders, to me it seemed normal for her to be suicidal as well. Amanda, she was a tiny little thing, she told me about losing her daughter after nine days on Earth, her experiences with doing bath salts, being a teen mom and high school dropout, but she was the most honest, she was there because she was bi-polar and the cops made her come. Mike was a good looking guy probably in his late thirties he was high anxiety and bi-polar, he got checked in because he tried to kill himself on heroin but they shocked him back to life, “talk about waking up pissed” he told me, it was his second time trying that. Charity was who I spent the most time with, her boyfriend came every day and brought sweets, they were both just nice to talk to , she was bi-polar and tried to kill herself by taking all the pills she had at the time. Greg, I’m pretty sure he was a schizophrenic because he would talk to himself, you could tell by the hand motions and the random outburst of laughter, I’m also pretty sure he had a problem with anger as well. My favorite was Eleanor though, she had all timers and her favorite word was ‘Motherfuckers’ and then she would burst out into Gospel music.

I guess the thing that shocked me the most was the fact that most everyone was pretty normal and they just had a rough time in life like me, I guess I expected to see more of the weird disorders and freak outs everywhere but that wasn’t the case.  I felt saner than I ever had in my life, that’s true but I also felt like I found people that truly understood who I was. I love my friends more than life but I feel like I come from a different planet sometimes but these people knew the loss, the drug use, and the disorders that I struggled with. Even in group that day I learned to see the signs when my disorder is going out of control and that I need to seek help because it sounds weird but I never had looked into what was wrong with my body and mind to know when I was sick and it helped me to even understand why I felt these things as a kid.

The last full day that I was there I got to sit down and be evaluated by a psychology grad student, three long hours of her asking me questions and going through the DSM to decide which diagnosis was the best for me. I had to tell her my life story and describe why and how I think the way that I do, things I had never told anyone before. It’s long and hard and some things require a lot of detail just so you don’t get misdiagnosed but after the time I spend with her I got it all. I came in for Depression and Bulimia but she also got Body Dismorphic Disorder (because even though I throw up my food, I don’t eat enough to be a full bulimic), Borderline Personality Disorder, and PTSD. Although it is hard to be sat down and told that you have all these disorders it’s kind of nice knowing what was going on with me all these years. Simply saying and thinking you are ‘Crazy’ just isn’t a thing, they are disorders, they are real and once you know they are there and have been there for years it really makes sense. Also, for years I thought I could have been bi-polar but after interacting with a bi-polar person going through a manic episode, I know that I can say with certainty that that isn’t me.

It’s interesting, I’ll tell you that much. In the morning you wake up and everyone lines up for food and the nurses are running around trying to give everyone their meds with these huge carts in such a small area, you aren’t allowed to watch TV during the day because of groups so that’s how they get you to go because why not there is nothing else to do, you sit and talk to the people going in and coming out and it’s like jail because you ask ‘What are you in for?, How long are you in for?, How Long have you been here’, and if you are lucky you can call home for fifteen minutes. That’s all it is all day long, groups talking, food, and meds, that’s how you get to know everyone so well so fast.

Most of all the nurses that I talked to were nice but none as much as Sheri. She sat me down in a room they use for private conferences with your doctors, and we just talked about her life, about my life and what was going on with me. If you are wondering I will tell you too, I was suicidal and depressed. I didn’t want to go on anymore, so many friends and family are on the other side and I want to be with them so bad and when things like not knowing what I want to do with my life, convinced I will never truly fall in love, things like that along with the depression not being able to rationalize it, it gets rough but I went in because I knew it wasn’t the answer, suicide.  But, Sheri helped me understand my disorders and why it is that I might have them and just listened to me and I guess I need that every once in a while.

The last day when you know you are going home in an hour or so is scary and riveting. All my friends went home on Thursday like I did, I was the last so I had to hug everyone goodbye. It’s scary though too because you are going to be back in the real world and you don’t know what’s going to happen to your new found friends or yourself. I will never see them again but I will always hold them in my heart and hope that they are ok. There is so much I wish I could tell you and write about this experience and what it meant to me but for now, this is all I have. I can’t say that I will never be back there or in a place like there and I know I can never say that I won’t feel like that again because I know I will. I guess my reason for writing this blog is for everyone that struggles with a disorder and feels too scared to go and get help, just know that it is not that bad and for those that have gone through this experience before, you know that you are not alone.

If you feel like you would like to share your experience with me or have something you would like me to talk about in the blog email me at: a_song4hope1123@yahoo.com

God Bless

-          Adriene Song

Over it .

Break-ups. Most everyone in the entire world has gone through one and can relate to this post, I know that not a lot of you can relate to everything that I have been through but most everyone has been through a break-up or had their hearts broken at some point in their lives.

                This week me and my current boyfriend decided to end our relationship and it has been very hard for me. I knew it was coming and it was a mutual decision but neither of those things make it any better or easier on me.

                Just to tell you a little bit about the situation, I met him at a bar a week before Christmas. I had known him basically my whole life because we were from the same hometown and one night he came back from Navy basic and back for the holiday leave. He noticed me first, I was looking ravishing in my sweatpants, zip-up jacket, no make-up, and hair up and a mess. The bartender came over to me and I was bitching about my boyfriend and waiting for my best friend to get to the bar and she told me that he wanted to buy me a drink. I didn’t really know why or if I should let him because I had a boyfriend but soon enough he came up to me and started talking to me. He was drunk and I was almost positive he wouldn’t even remember talking to me or making out with me that night but I added him on facebook and sure enough he did and we got to talking.

                I hung out with him twice that week and ended up breaking things off with the boyfriend. One night we got margaritas and played beer pong with some friends of mine, and the other we just hung out and played video games. I enjoyed so much the time we just got to spend together and everything was so easy, I don’t think that I had ever had that much fun just hanging out with a guy and playing stupid games with friends. The last night he was home I had sex with him all night before he left even though I told myself I shouldn’t because he was going to be leaving to go to California.

                I thought it would end after that night, but it didn’t. He called me every day and we had so much to talk about and I really got attached to him. It was exactly what we didn’t want to happen, we knew it would be hard for both of us to be so far away and to try a relationship but we did.

                I can’t describe exactly what we had because unless you have dated in the military, you won’t know. You wait for calls that won’t come, letters that don’t have much to say, and when you can talk and write you try and keep everything up beat and cheery because it doesn’t matter what you have to say, it’s about keeping them ok.  Navy was the worst because I couldn’t talk to him sometimes for weeks or more because there is no service when you are in the middle of the ocean, yay. Somewhere in all that though we had a perfect relationship in just talking, it couldn’t be about sex or lust, just pure like nothing else I had ever experienced. Falling in love with someone purely but likes, interests, jokes, things like that.

The calls got further and far between, he was stressed with Navy things, I had school and activities and not to mention the mental illness I have been battling. We wanted it to work more than anything but I just sat and cried and told him that it was just too much for me and he agreed that we both needed to focus on other things and that we were trying to trick ourselves into thinking that time and distance weren’t that  big of a deal, but it was. So we ended it and that was that.

                It’s funny how you plan a future around someone even if it’s silly after the time we were together, it was only a few months but I could really have seen myself with him doing the Navy wife thing. I bared so much of my life to him and he told me he would be heartbroken if he lost me. So where is that now? And why was I the only one crying? To invest so much of yourself to one person and in one instant with 5 words, ‘We should break this off’ everything is done and over with, like nothing ever happened at all, like I didn’t either talk to you or write you every day for the past three months, like all the phone calls telling me that you loved me were fake.  It leaves me always to question, What exactly is love and how can we just throw people away like that?

                I have a habit of never forgetting anyone and when it comes to my friends, if I loved you once no matter what, I will love you always, no matter what happened between us. So I guess I never really understood how break ups work simply because I attach to people like that. I don’t understand how you can just wake up and decide never to see someone again.

                I kind of have hope in this situation though. He comes home for a break in a month and a half and I am going to go to California for the summer still. I believe in love, I’m not sure about a lot of things but I know that if he’s really meant for me, we can make it through all the Navy bullshit because I see people do it every day, and God love you  women, because you are a million times stronger than me, and most other women out there. 

If you feel like you would like to share your experience with me or have something you would like me to talk about in the blog email me at: a_song4hope1123@yahoo.com

God Bless

-          Adriene Song

Eating Me Alive

Eating Disorders. I’ve had a about every eating disorder you can imagine.  I have always hated the way I looked, so IF you happen to think that the girl writing this is a skinny little blonde girl, you are wrong.  I have mentioned that I was abused as a child, one of those forms was starvation. My mother did not make very much money and my step-father HAD to have his precious comic books so a lot of the times I was not fed and if I was it was peanut butter and jelly which I still hate eating to this day and I was four and five years old. Anyway the reason that is relevant is once my mother  ”died” and I was put in the care of my grandparents and got to eat regularly again, I gained quite a bit of weight and mixed with bad genes, I was a big child most of my life. As you can imagine I was made fun of a lot and one extreme I remember the boys who lived down the road threw rocks at me and called me ‘fatty patty’ but it only happened once, it wasn’t a reoccurring thing.

I cannot remember a time in my life when I didn’t hate the way I looked.  They say that you start to notice your weight and the way you look around puberty, 10-13, but I always was aware. Why does it matter to us? WHY do we think that the amount of love we deserve, the way people perceive  us, what kind of job we will have,  who we are as people all depend on what size jeans we fit into? It’s not right and we can’t condemn the media to hell for something that has been going on for many generations. We fuel it ourselves.

The first thing that really happened was freshman year of high school. In the spring I started track and field and my coach Bill wanted me to run three miles a day, at first I thought the man was crazy but at the time after going through my first ever breakup and when my grandpa and two of my aunts having cancer, it was how I dealt with everything in my life. It was therapeutic and still is to this day, it’s a very important part of who I am now and my theories in life but with it came the bad too. I started to lose weight and I liked the feeling of people complimenting me. I also was being put in races in track instead of just throwing Discus like I was used to. I wanted to be fast, I wanted to be complimented, I wanted to be good at something, I wanted to win metals, I wanted to be cheered on, I wanted to beat someone, I wanted my ex-boyfriend to come back to me,  so it started. I ate a snack pack of crackers a day and a flavored sport water, that was it, that was all that I allowed myself, essentially maybe 100-200 calories a day.  I would run 2 warm up laps with the whole team (1/2 a mile), go run around town for practice (3-4 miles),Lift weights for an hour,  after practice I would run laps with my friend ben (1 mile), go home ride my bike (3-5 miles) and sometimes if I had eaten something besides the crackers and water I would run in the loop around my neighborhood (1-2 miles). That was a normal day for me. Once at a team meal I was so hungry because of my routine that I ate a large pizza to myself and I didn’t know what to do with myself, I had never felt so ashamed in my life.

The funny part of it was not only that the only person who seemed to notice was my track coach because I lost so much weight so fast but the fact that I did not see what I was doing as an eating disorder, because I was still eating a little bit. Turns out in English class we had a talk about eating disorders and I had Bulimia. See I also learned that I didn’t have anorexia because you have to be so much underweight already and stop eating to have that, everything else is bulimia if you stop eating, which to me is total and complete bullshit, I was “Too Fat” even to have my own disorder.  

I just started eating again slowly, after that, I never had therapy like so many of my friends did. Maybe that’s why it never really “went away” but really I truly believe that things like this just go away, I feel like no matter what it is always a part of how you act and do things. It’s been 6 years and every bite I take I still think about the calories that are in it, if I splurge on cookies or cake I have to go running, and when I don’t work out or feel like I have worked out hard enough I feel disgusting, every morning I look at my stomach in the mirror to see if I look bloated, flat, ect., I wear mostly just baggy t-shirts with jeans because I feel fat in fitted shirts, I am most comfortable in sweats not because of the material but I feel like people can’t see my fat as well,  if I know I am drinking alcohol that night I won’t eat as much food, I try to only eat veggies, those are all mostly ritual things that I do.

I do try and keep my eating disorder in check as much as I can though. I try and work out so that I won’t feel as gross and worthless for not trying to lose weight by dieting because I hate diets and refuse to do them. I try and not look at my body in the mirror when I get out of the shower or unless I am clothed, if I have to be weighed at the doctor’s office I do not look at the scale and I ask them not to say the weight out loud for fear that it will send me into a fit (as I like to call them), sometimes I care what I look like, most days I don’t, I guess it’s also a mood disorder for me. If things are going ok in my life I don’t care but if I am stressed or sad that’s the first flaw I look to even if it is totally irrelevant to the situation. I also have tattoos on my back and I got them so that people would see that art work and not the fat rolls and for that very same reason I got my navel pierced, twice. It may not make sense to most people but it does to me and most other people with a eating disorder of some type might say that this makes sense to them as well.

I did have a rough time last fall. I left one college of another and I really wanted to fit in and so I looked to Greek life. Two weeks before rush I started tanning, working out for two hours a day and of course throwing up everything I ate. It wasn’t the experience I wanted so I got more depressed and ended up not being able to eat because everything I ate made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t eat anything for three weeks and I didn’t leave my bed that often. Depression meds helped a lot and I moved back to my home college and I am doing much better now.

I want and try to challenge you all to do something in every post and the challenge in this one is to never ever ever ever under any circumstances compliment a friend for losing weight. Why do we do this? You never know why someone lost so much weight or what the person is going through, it should be as faux pas as asking someone if they are pregnant. I know my friends have unknowingly said “oh you look skinny” or “oh you look like you’ve lost weight” and it’s like fuel for the fire. It makes me want to lose more and more and it’s not good. So don’t, instead comment on personality or ANYTHING else. 

If you feel like you would like to share your experience with me or have something you would like me to talk about in the blog email me at: a_song4hope1123@yahoo.com

God Bless

-          Adriene Song

To All the Mothers and Daughters

I got the idea to write this blog after discussing life with my boyfriend. I want a family someday. As much as I think adoption is a beautiful thing, I want my own children for me and my future husband.

                I was never technically adopted but I was taken in by my grandparents when I was five years old. They were my father’s parents and that’s important because I did know my father and I loved his limited role in my life until I was thirteen , but I knew nothing about my mother. I remember her briefly and I think about the good and the bad times a lot more frequently then I let people know about but I do not remember her face or much about her, just what my young me has in memories. In fact I have only one picture of her and it was the side of her face.

                My entire life I have struggled with the fact that I didn’t have a mother and that my father was around while I was growing up (he also passed away when I was nineteen).  It seemed from the moment I lost my mother, you never know how important of a role your mom plays until you don’t have one around, and it’s things that most people, especially daughters take for granted. Making mother’s day cards in school,            mother daughter dances, days and activities were hard especially when I was in the girl scouts, I was never able to talk about my first kiss, first dance, first crush, first time I had sex, or my period with my mother, even as I have gotten older I struggle with it like prom dress shopping I went alone, they talked about having a mother’s day when I was in a sorority, I see pictures all the time of mothers helping to dress their daughters at their wedding and notes they write when you are about to have your first child. I guess all of these moments I have missed out on and will forever miss out on. You never really stop missing or loving someone after they die, and for me maybe it was more the idea of a mother that I missed but I always would imagine what she would be like and how she would talk to me and the advice she would give me.

                My mother was the victim of domestic abuse and I was a victim as well ( and will talk about it in another blog post) so there was always this looming question of whether she killed herself and I have cried so many times asking myself, screaming to her, and asking God why she didn’t love me enough to stay on this earth for me, to love and raise me like I deserved, But I will always wonder and just come to my own conclusion that she knew someone else could raise me and she thought there was no other answer for her.

                I have however, been very blessed to have amazing women in my life to take over the mother role at different times when I needed them. My grandmother took the biggest by raising my but to be honest we were not close until after I left for college but now I couldn’t be more blessed or thankful for her, she is my absolute best friend. Other women like Pastor Bonnie who I like to call Pastor Mommy, was a special women and will always be a role model to me. She was my best friend’s mom and her family basically took me in as their own when I was around 8 or so years old. I am just now starting to realize the amazing love and sympathy they must have felt for me to love me like they did, and for the Peltomaa family I will always be extremely thankful and blessed beyond words that God sent me into their lives.  There was always Mrs. Phyllis, Mrs. Charla and Mrs. Roberta too along the way as well that gave me love, encouragement and advice that I needed and am extremely grateful for and will never forget. And last but not least were Tammy Lucius who gave me tough love but made me into the “bitch” that I am and Tina Pollock who loved me and I knew I could always go to her for advice.

                The point of the matter is I want my children to know their parents, both of us, no matter what the love situation between us is. I want them to know that they were conceived in love and I will always be there for them. I want them to know who their family is not come home crying every time someone gives them a family tree assignment. I want them to be able to look in the mirror and say, I look like my mom or I look like my dad. I hope that I can give my daughter everything that I was missing in my life and my sons the same as my brothers wish they had from my mom.

For everyone reading this that knows how I have felt, I hope that you understand that I am sitting in a boat with you and I will grab a paddle if needed. You are not alone in this, there are so many people like you. 

If you feel like you would like to share your experience with me or have something you would like me to talk about in the blog email me at: a_song4hope1123@yahoo.com

God Bless

-          Adriene Song

Losing Daddy

When I learned that my Dad had cancer in the summer of 2010 I didn’t know how to deal with it to be quite honest. I hadn’t been close with him since I was 13 because I didn’t get along with his wife but before then I had always been a daddy’s girl and I loved him very much, on my 18th birthday he didn’t call me so I called him and we got into a huge fight and he basically told me that everything that went wrong while I was alive was completely my fault and I hadn’t talked to him since that day (sept 2009). After I found out I kind of swept it under the rug, the fact that he was sick and how I felt about it, when I got home that summer I cried about it once and I went to see him at the hospital but he didn’t see me, he was just sleeping because of all the pain meds they were giving him at the time.

                After a while though I decided to forgive my father. The more I thought about losing him the more it got to me. I heard this song on the radio it was called 7X70 (A Christian song.) and I really felt as if God were calling me to love and forgive this man no matter what he did in the past, he wanted to love me now, did it really matter at all?

                It started out slow at first, he got hospitalized and I went to see him and I brought pictures of my high school graduation because I made sure at the time that he was not to be invited (it was kind of my peace offering and I cried as I showed him and told him how sorry I was that I didn’t invite him), I ended up running out though because it made me think of losing my grandpa and I didn’t want that again. I didn’t want to get so close and love this man that I knew eventually I was going to lose but at the time I decided that maybe I would get more time with him so I stayed in his life and I don’t regret it at all.

Anyway, I was close with my dad for about three months from April 2011 until he died in July 2011. I visited him at the nursing home and I would just sit and talk to him about life and I discovered that we actually had a lot in common and I learned to love him. I never told him that I loved him though,  and that’s one of my biggest regrets in life is not telling my dad that I loved him and I hope he knew.

                The day my dad died I went with my sister to Cleveland Clinic and we went from thinking that he had months to live to being taken out of the room and told to eat while they ran tests, to weeks to live after the tests were done only an hour after, to days as 6pm rolled around to, get your stepmother here, to gone at 12:53 am. I just remember one day saying I wouldn’t care if he died to crying my eyes out at 8pm praying to God that I wish I had more time because I wasn’t ready to tell him goodbye. Sobs so loud and heartbreaking I wish I could describe them to you, but if you have ever lost anyone you know what they sound like as you bargain with God for just a little bit longer.

                When you lose someone that you love that fast you start to reevaluate the way you live your life. I take more chances, I do what I want to do, love who I want and how I want because I have experienced so much in my life that I know for a fact that one minute you are planning your future and the next it’s gone and you did nothing with your life. I just want you to understand me, and who I am, and why I do the things that I do because a lot of people are quick to judge me and the things that I have done        

If you feel like you would like to share your experience with me or have something you would like me to talk about in the blog email me at: a_song4hope1123@yahoo.com

God Bless

-          Adriene Song