I have been to the mental hospital twice: once when I was 12, and again this March. For whatever reason, the first trip was much more eventful than the second. It may have been that I was in the adolescent wing for the first trip, even though I was 12 and only teenagers are supposed to be in the adolescent wing. Hormones were pumping, not just for me, but for all of us. There was a hot head who fought people, and had at one point apparently shot himself in the pelvic area, missing his femoral artery by mere centimeters. There was the ginger girl with a lisp and a bad anger problem. There was another girl who was addicted to heroin and had had eight miscarriages by the time we crossed paths.
Then there was Emily.
Even though it was some eight years ago, and my memories of that time are spotty, I remember Emily clearly. I remember her brown hair, as straight as hair can possibly be, that thinned out the farther down her head it fell, so that by the time it tapered off at her shoulders, it was wispy and wiry. I remember her dark eyes, so dark that you could call them beady, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; they were deep, black and endless. I remember her blemished, oily face, but she was still pretty; she had a soft smile that made you feel warm. And I remember that she had an athletic figure, muscular legs and toned arms, which boldly contrasted with the deep cuts covering her body from the neck down.
They were horrific. Since then, I’ve been around many cutters, but Emily was one of the first I saw, and she’s still the worst. It was not the volume—which was still there—but rather the cold, mathematical placement of each incision. Invariably, her cuts were two inches across, flawlessly spaced two inches apart. Bands of inflamed cuts completely covered her arms and legs, spreading to her chest. These cuts were not impulsive; they were planned and calculated, and performed with surgical precision.
When I first saw Emily, I did not expect her to be so kind. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but I figured she would be more doleful and less conversational. This was not the case. Emily was easy to talk to, especially with that smile. She made good eye contact. She was funny and soft spoken with an even softer voice, but whenever she talked, it was easy to hear just how broken she really was.
We talked about music while we ate lunch. Shared some stories. I thought she was cool, but we only became friends when were taken down to the gym for recreation hour. The gym had hard carpet floors and a basketball goal. I was already obsessed with basketball at that point, so all I did—every day—for that one hour was shoot around; it was my favorite part of the hospital.
I had been shooting for a few minutes when Emily walked up to the three point line and asked for the ball. I was intrigued and snapped a bounce pass her way. In one fluid motion, she caught the ball and shot a three pointer with beautiful form—swish. My jaw dropped. I rebounded and passed it back—another swish. I kept feeding her as she worked her way around the arc; she didn’t miss one shot. After she sunk her last three from deep in the corner, I held up my arms in disbelief, and she smiled smugly to herself. She played basketball when she was young, she said. She was always good at shooting.
For the rest of my stay, I played HORSE with Emily every time we went down to the gym. She mostly crushed me. We bonded over those games. It was an escape—the cuts on her arms didn’t matter as much when she was draining threes, neither did misguided suicide attempt that landed me here, the hopelessness that followed. In some ways, those shoot arounds were more therapeutic than any group session or motivational speaker could ever be.
When I was discharged, on Christmas Eve 2008, I said goodbye to Emily and her broken voice and dark eyes. I wished her good luck and offered some encouragement; she didn’t say much back, only a quiet goodbye and a gentle hug. That was the last time I saw Emily. I think about her often. I think of her silky smooth jumper. I think of the possibility that she succumbed to her illness. I think of the possibility that she conquered it. I think about those perfectly placed cuts on her arms—those awful cuts. I wonder how those scars would look now. I hope they’ve faded with the pain in her heart, at least a little.