Behind Locked Doors: The Place That Altered My life Forever

March 21, 2025

Hello Friend,

I really hope this letter finds you well. The last time I wrote I was telling you about my 7th grade year. I wish I could say life got easier, better, and things started to turn around. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. This letter will likely be written in two parts, so much happened, so I will write you in another letter so it’s no so overwhelming.

This letter does contain talk of suicide, mental health, and depressing topics. If these are triggering subjects, I advise you skip.

After my 7th grade year did not turn out so well, and it was found I needed more assistance in school than an IEP plan could provide I switched schools. The school was specifically for those with learning disabilities or other disabilities that made learning more difficult. Classes were broken down into smaller ones of about 4-5 kids. It was easier to stay focused and have 1:1 time with the teacher if we had questions. My mom found someone who was going to the same school, an older girl who was a senior. I ended up meeting her before the school year started, so I at least knew someone. Change had been difficult for me, so it was nice meeting someone who I could ask questions and better prepare myself for the new year.

School started off well, I got good grades, and I understood what was being taught. Science was still my favorite subject as well as language arts. My math teacher was probably my favorite. She was from NY and had a fun personality that made you want to come to class. Like the previous years, I failed socially. I was turning 14, and up until then watching other girls my age, I had this idea that boys were the key to happiness. I just wanted to be liked and socially accepted, to be popular. That was never going to happen, even in a school with 200 students.

While school wasn’t bad, my home life was a nightmare. Despite doing well in school, I was now going to therapy, which I never said anything during my sessions. I was continuously going to doctors for more tests. I had completed some of the same tests but this year I had WISC-III, Boston Naming Test, TAT, Peabody Picture Drawing Test, K-BIT MATRICES, and five more tests over the span of one year.  I was diagnosed again, now a third time with ADHD, but we all knew there was something else going on. What was it?

My life was consumed by doctors, tests, and this overwhelming sense I was never going to be good enough. Everything I did was wrong. I journaled a lot, writing about life and wishing I didn’t exist in this world. This darkness took over, the need to feel anything but numbness. I stopped eating lunches my mom packed because control was a big issue. Being fourteen girls talked about weight and body issues. I ate dinner with my family and that was it. I threw my lunches away so my mom wouldn’t question me.

IF YOU ARE TRIGGED BY SUICIDE, SELF HARM, PLEASE SKIP THE NEXT PART!!

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8th grade is when I started cutting. I used a small pocket knife to cut into my arms. Feeling pain, seeing the blood ooze out, was a release. Like seeing my inner pain slowly coming through each cut. Suicide was a constant thought I had, plans forever changed and the need to disappear forever seemed better then living.

It wasn’t until I slept over at the girl who was a senior’s house that my life hit a bottom I never knew could exist. We got drunk, something young people do stupidly and it wasn’t really talked about other than the risks and not to do it, no one safe to turn to in the event it ever happened. I, being the problem child, the impulsive kid who seemed to never do anything right, wound up drunk. I was 14!  She and I  drank an entire bottle of liquor, straight up, nothing with it. My parents were called after her parents found us drunk out of our minds in her room.

My parents cleared EVERYTHING out of my room. My bookshelf was left empty, my computer gone, papers, journals, everything. This only fed my need to escape this world more. I didn’t belong here. I was raised in a strict Catholic family so this sort of thing was super frowned upon. I was 14 trying to find my place in a world that didn’t accept me. My parents were incredibly over protective, and set the bar so high, I would never been able to reach the expectations they set for me.

I played sports and was active, so I really enjoyed it when we were able to lift weights in class and I did well. Of course, I was stronger than majority of the other girls, especially in my class, so I stood out, but I was good at something, and it felt good. It wasn’t something I was forced into like field hockey or playing the violin. I remember one day during gym class and playing basketball, another girl noticed my arm and pointed out the cuts. It wasn’t a secret anymore.

My parents became stricter, limiting my time with friends, asking about school work, and making sure I was keeping up with everything. I didn’t have a life outside of school, doctors’ appointments, therapy, church, etc. I started to sneak out of the house at 3am. I would walk a mile or so down the road to the grocery store and walk around there. I did this for a while, until one night a green car followed me, a guy asking if I needed a ride had pulled over, I said no. That wasn’t enough he drove off and would drive by again. When he would drive off the second time I ran, and I ran like hell back home just narrowly missing him pass by me again. This memory haunts me to this day knowing what people are capable of. I truly believe had I not ran; he would not have taken no for an answer a third time.

I wrote about it in my journal, I wrote about cutting and feeling numb. I didn’t want to exist. I never truly tried to die, I just had constant suicidal ideations that filled my mind. It was comforting during times of stress to think I could escape the hell that was my life. I could just disappear. I had one good thing in my life, and that was a boy in my class. Nerdy, silly, class clown always pushing the limits of the teachers, always making people laugh. To think he liked me, crazy. I liked him too. We would pass notes and send each other little messages on the electronic dictionaries we had back in the day. He made me feel special, seen, I wasn’t alone.

My life was about to change forever. While we were in science class I got paged to the office. How embarrassing, right? My mom was there to pick me up. There we go, off to another appointment. She didn’t really say much to me, we ended up right back at UNC where all my tests had been. Well, no surprise she had read my journal, found out I was sneaking out at night, knew of the green car and the homeless man I met, me trying to buy cigarettes. I was seen on camera, so I couldn’t deny it, and I didn’t. So there I was sitting before a doctor who asked about me about cutting my arms. Me, being who I was not saying a single word. I was so upset my mom would do this to me. I sat there looking at the doctors white, nicely tied sneakers, his silver wedding ring, thinking about his wife, and if he had kids and if they had a better life, and back to his feet.

I didn’t contract for safety which landed me in the acute psychiatric unit of UNC. Because I had written about seeing and hearing things (it wasn’t fully true), I was started on meds shortly after being admitted, Trileptal. There I was again surrounded by other kids like me, troubled, who were angry and felt like they didn’t belong. No one was prepared for what was about to happen. It wasn’t until my mid 20’s that I learned the truth, and my 30’s that I was told the FULL story to this time of my life (so stay turned for that).

For a 14 year old who was told they couldn’t go home, it felt like abandonment. Why wasn’t I allowed home, why wasn’t I wanted, was I so awful that I was now stuck in a psych ward. I had test after test, met with more and more doctors to figure out what was wrong with me. I was growing more impatient and exhausted by it all. I made it up in my mind that I was never going to be good enough. Now I was trapped in a locked down facility. I didn’t go outside for 2 months. I was placed in a foster home for a few weeks until a bed at a group home in Jacksonville, NC opened up. I was going to be living in a level 3 group home with other troubled kids far away from my family and what I knew as home.

My world grew dark, I was placed on even more medications. Ones that I couldn’t function on. I was asleep more then I was awake and then got in trouble for not being functional. I had no control over what was happening to me, and no say. I would complain about how the meds made me feel and was only given more meds, even meds to help counter the side effects of all the medications given. I was the observant kid, so I spoke up and said what was on my mind, and I was placed on so many medications I couldn’t think straight. At one point I remember feeling like I was going crazy, like I was living in this reality that wasn’t my own. It must have been, because how could that be real life. I would wake up, eat, take meds, be driven to the group home school which was located at the office, and then pass out on the couch because I couldn’t function or fight against the medications, they gave me. I would go back, and be in a daze all day, I was kept on red which meant no privileges because I couldn’t think or do anything for myself. I was 108lbs when I entered that group home I was 150 when I left. That was from medication. I tried to run away, but had no idea where I was, so I didn’t make it very far, I tried to kill myself which only landed me in a psych ward for 3 days after being in the ER for many, many hours getting an NG tube of activated charcoal. I was trapped, no way out, I was going to die there, I was convinced of it.

I started swallowing metal objects, anything I could find. They would take me to the ER and I would have an X-ray, oh look there it was, and reassured I would just poop it out. Until one night! I had moved rooms because it was unsafe for me to share a room with anyone else, and in the middle of moving I found a nail in my closet wall. I took that 2 inch nail and went straight to the kitchen, grabbed my drink from the fridge, and if you guessed it, yep I swallowed it. I knew If I didn’t do something crazy I wasn’t leaving there. I was discharged from the group home, placed in the psych unit at the hospital I was now going to have surgery at to remove the 2 inch nail. I was in a room with 3 other girls.

In May 2003 (everything happens in may) I had surgery, and after recovering I was placed at John Umstead Hospital in NC, which was a real psychiatric institution which held children and adults. It was like a prison, with cinder block walls, metal beds that were screwed into the floor, plastic mattresses, no furniture, cement floors with what looked like marble on top but it’s not. Everything was locked down. That perfect place to actually go insane in.

I am going to pause here because this period of my life is very long and a lot to process. I turned 16 in this place so it’s a lot to write about and so much information and stories to tell. I don’t want to keep you, I’ll try to write again soon.

Remember no matter how dark life may get, be your own bright light. Everything is going to be ok. You are never a lone. If you have a child who is going through something similar, please know I and many others understand what you are going through, reach out to me if you'd like. NC mental health is an absolute nightmare. There’s so much more to come!! Stay strong! If you are someone who knew me during this time, you will remain anonymous, but I am trying to learn more about what happened to me, besides what my medical records state. Please help me help others.

Your Friend,

Rebecca