by Allison Steinman

Created on: April 20, 2008

My journey's beginning was almost three years ago now, but I don't think it really began until the end of second year. There were always whispered warnings from students in the year ahead of us that second-year was the toughest, but I don't think anything could have prepared me for IT. The breakdown, or as my parents call it, the thing we don't ever want to happen again. One moment I was sipping coffee and the next I was snapping. I remember calling home from outside the school with sobs lodged in my throat and black eyeliner streaking my cheeks. My parents picked me up and brought me to a Tim Horton's, a trip I hardly remember at all today. That night my mom dropped me off still bawling in front of a local live theatre venue. Inside I was falling apart, but outside I was still a journalism student with a deadline. I dried my tears and sat next to a friend of mine to watch an evening of comedy for a review, with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomache. What made me sickest of all was that this was comedy, and on any other night I would have been thrilled. I guess that's when I realized something had gone terribly wrong.

I got so hopeless and panicked and desperate they had no choice but to send me to the place. The place had pukey green floors, harsh lighting and an uninspiring view of dead weeds from my window. The place was supposed to help and to this day I don't know how.

I woke the first day with heavy eyelids, a bad taste in my mouth and the most overwhelming sense of impending doom a worrisome perfectionist like me had ever felt. Immediately not caring one bit about a single one of my twenty years I cried for my mother like a baby.

Finally she arrived a little before ten-oclock looking like she hadn't slept at all, and I imagined it was true. I begged her to take me home with her, I would be better if she just got me out of here, I would! A nurse came soon and informed us cheerily that visitors weren't allowed until designated visiting hours. I clung to my mom's fingers as I'm sure I had on the first day of kindergarten, if that nurse had wanted to separate us, she would have had to pry me away. Eventually she relented and said Mom could stay today, if I promised to go to counselling that afternoon.

During counselling I sat sullen. The therapist, an older man with a white beard hands us sheets and tells us to mark down how we feel today on scales from 1 to 10. I set all my scales at defiant 0's and proceed to say nothing for the rest of the session. I'm

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>