This is turning into such a lengthy rant, I’ve decided to post it in segments. This is part one. If you’re the judgmental sort, kindly refrain from reading and/or commenting on this particular post. You have no right whatsoever to judge me. And I will delete nasty comments. By all means, judge me over at your own blog, but not on mine.

A brief history of me and my experience with the Baker Act Law
In July of 1998, I divorced my abusive ex-husband. I was twenty-one years old, and I went through what can best be described as a belated teenaged rebellion: stopped going to church, started going to bars and clubs, became rather promiscuous. The weekend of November 9, 1998, I did a lot of - um - living. I utlized a few illegal substances; I had sex with a few different guys; I imbibed various adult beverages; and then I tried to kill myself.

That was a long time ago, and I did not write about it in my journal, so I can only offer snippets of my memory of that weekend to you. It was a Sunday night when I decided it was time to die. I recall waking up Sunday morning with a strange man in a bed in some random hotel room, and there were two other guys in the room with us. We had done cocaine the night before (it was my first and last time), and played cards, and drank, and probably had sex (based not so much on memory of the sex — because I did not remember sex when I awoke — but how sticky I was in certain areas). After I woke up I left those men, whoever they were, and drove back to my studio apartment. I don’t know what I did for most of the day, probably homework since I was a student. And I imagine I typed and printed a suicide note. As evening neared, I visited my cousin at work and killed a few hours online in chat rooms while she worked. Then, I headed to a friend’s apartment. We smoked pot and drank. He came on to me; I denied him; he passed out; I went home.

Sometime around 2a Monday morning, I went back out to buy sleeping pills. I went to four or five different stores (because the first two stores were closed for maintenance) to buy three bottles of sleeping pills. I went home, wrote a few additional thoughts on my suicide note (what music I wanted at my funeral and similar musings), called in dead to the receptionist’s voicemail at work, and began taking sleeping pills one at a time. I was not an efficient pill taker. Now I am able to take at least six caplets at a time, but back in 1998, I could only swallow one pill at a time. My three bottles of sleeping pills yielded eighty pills. I grouped them in piles of ten before consuming them. Let me tell you: swallowing a ton of pills one at a time is time-consuming. I remember lamenting I had no alcohol on hand to take them with, as the water was just going to dilute the pills while alcohol would surely add to the body-killing effect I was trying to achieve. After my fifty-second pill, I was unable to keep my eyes open. The sleeping pill package read “fast dissolving,” and it was. I put my remaining twenty-eight pills back into an empty pill bottle, set that beside the bed, and lay down. It was probably around 330a, or maybe 4a.

Sometime later, probably not too much later, I awoke with an urgent need to pee. All that water I drank while taking pills. I was unable to walk, thank you Nytol. I remember it was an agonizingly long crawl to get to the bathroom and how high up the toilet seat was from the floor and wondering how the heck I was going to get my body up there to pee. I remember thinking I could pee in the shower, but I managed to get myself up off the floor and onto the toilet. Then came the agonizingly long crawl back to bed.

WHY DID I DO IT? I guess I did an awful lot of living that weekend and I was done. I felt like I was a huge disappointment to my family, I had failed in my marriage, I had taken a dramatic turn from my former Christian self, and I was done. Also, I truly thought I was doing to right thing for my younger brother. I was clearly a lousy big sister role model. He was, at that time, not yet three years old. I figured he would not even remember me, so my death would not be very traumatic for him.

I imagine it was around 8a when my cousin showed up at the apartment. We’re a lot alike and she knew something was wrong. She had called my office to see if I was at work (I worked 7a-6p four days a week), and the receptionist was upset because of the voicemail message I left her (“Hi Jenna, it’s me. I just want to let you know I won’t be in today because it’s a good day to die.”), and said the office manager was going to go break down the door of my apartment, if necessary, to check on me. My cousin assured Jenna that she was on her way to the apartment and had a key. My cousin got there first. She said I was cowering in a corner, clawing the wall, terrified. She managed to coax a very drugged yet somehow conscious me into her car for the mile drive to Winter Park Hospital.

I don’t remember that. My memories of my time at WPH are snapshots: a few seconds here and there. Not worth listing in this already-lengthy post.

I think I was at WPH for under twelve hours, I don’t think they kept me overnight. It was so long ago, I just cannot remember. After I was medically cleared for transfer (which included me proving my kidneys were functioning by peeing with supervision), I was taken by ambulance to South Seminole Hospital, and their psychiatric ward.

I. Was. Livid. They Baker Acted me because I was a danger to myself or others. As soon as the people at WPH told me I was being transferred, I became very hostile toward them. I was not crazy and told them so. I sent my cousin back to my apartment to retrieve some bills and my checkbook because I had to pay them now that I was going to continue to live. The nurse did not understand. I remember her quizzing me about it. She wanted to know why the night before I didn’t care about anything and tried to kill myself, and a few hours later I was being responsible and paying my bills. I remember telling her, “well, now that I’m still alive, I can’t be late with my bills. When I was going to be dead, it didn’t matter.”

I spent the required thirty-six hours in the psych ward before they released me. I had developed the Social Plague and found it very difficult to return to work and school, mostly work since people at school didn’t know why I had missed classes all week while people at work all heard my chipper voice mail message calling in dead.

This thought to be continued in a new post.

wRitErsbLock