“You need more help than we can give you.”  That’s what he said.
  It was a dreary Monday afternoon when I heard those words come out of Jim’s mouth. Jim was one of the counselors for the runaway shelter I had ended up in the night before. The words I had heard before. And now heard again. “Need more help than we can give you” and “in need of psychiatric treatment” and for the first time “immediate hospital care” was brought up. I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to understand.
  I ran away the night before. My dad was yelling about my mom. At my mom. But she was gone. Some business trip. He was staying with us for the week. I couldn’t take anymore. He wouldn’t understand that I couldn’t go back to that school. That bad things were going to happen to me. That I couldn’t leave the house to go to school. I couldn’t talk to people. They didn’t understand what I was saying. He was going to make me go and I couldn’t.
  So I ran away to across the street. I’m so daring. But I’d only been in the state for two weeks and didn’t know where I was. Didn’t know who to call. Who would understand. The drug rehab I’d just been released from three weeks before. They would understand. I called them. After trying to explain to them for two hours they called a woman who called the sheriff who called the store and then my dad. The store clerk came out and got me and the sheriff went and talked to my dad.
  I wasn’t in danger from my dad. Again, no one had understood me. It was the school. The people at the school that were going to hurt me. I couldn’t go there. It wasn’t my dad at all. He just wouldn’t understand. He hadn’t and wouldn’t hit me. The lady finally came at two thirty am and took me to a runaway shelter.
  I got to bed at three am. Back up at six am. Breakfast at seven. School in the big room at eight. I was ushered in to see a counselor at nine and talked to him for an hour before my dad got there.
  He tried to tell me I had to go to my regular school. I tried to explain to him that I couldn’t go there. I would be hurt. I could not go there. I tried to tell them how much I couldn’t go back to that school. I’d rather be dead. At least I couldn’t be hurt. But no one seemed to understand that. My only problem was the school. I’d be just fine if I didn’t have to go to that school. I asked to back to the school I had transferred from. No. I asked to go a new school, another school. No. I asked to go the school of creative and performing arts. No.
  My dad came and I was asked to leave so they could talk. I waited. They talked. I waited some more. Finally I was brought back in and talked to some more. That’s when I heard those words. The ones Id heard before at the drug treatment center. All about how I needed psychiatric care. But it wasn’t true. There wasn’t anything wrong with me. It was just a mistake. It wasn’t me at all. There was nothing wrong with me.
  And now we were having that same mistake. I tried in vein to make them understand but no one seemed to get it. Finally, just before noon I agreed to talk to a Dr. A Dr. would surely know there was nothing wrong with me.
  We walked across the street to the hospital emergency room. Sat in the waiting room. My dad on one side of me, Jim on the other. I didn’t have to wait long. I was taken before some others even. I asked Jim to come back with me. I was scared and crying and I didn’t want my dad to see me like that. They took me back and put me in a room. We waited. And waited. Finally a Dr. came and I talked to him a little bit. Then he left and left me there. But I wasn’t admitted.
  Jim had to leave and he was leaving me behind? My dad was coming back and for the first time, they locked the door to my room. From the outside. Like I would run away. My dad sat with me until the other Dr. came. It took a long time for him to come. I don’t know how long, there was no clock in my little room. Just a bed and a chair. The second Dr. came. A psychiatrist. I talked to him. Still I wasn’t admitted. Not then. I waited. Dinner came and went. I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten all day. And still I had to wait to find out my fate. I was the last to know.
  At just after six pm on a rainy evening at the end of October in 1988 I was admitted to St. Elizabeth Hospital North Adult Locked Psychiatric Unit 5C. I was fourteen years old