On the Anniversary of My Suicide Attempt
By: Gisell Paula
Tags: Trauma, Racial Justice, Racial Disparities, Black Women, Suicide

There’s a scene in Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us where Antron McCray’s father is fighting for the release of his son after hours of unauthorized questioning in detention. The exchange between Antron’s dad and the detective end with the detective mentioning Mr. McCray’s criminal past and a use in power dynamics that clearly communicates to Mr. McCray that in this space, Antron nor his family have any rights. And just like that his power is stripped from him. Shortly afterwards Mr. McCray convinces his 15-year-old son to falsely confess to the act and Antron spends 6 years wrongfully convicted in New York State Prison.

I often times wonder why I didn’t just leave. It’s embarrassing that I so boldly cowered when I needed me most and incredibly frustrating that I didn’t demand a transfer to another in-patient facility. I had health insurance and obviously had the ability to. I knew I needed help, and I knew there wasn’t any way I would get it at the current facility. I made the mistake of asking permission for a transfer, and when they told me I didn’t have the right to, I just let my power be stripped from me.

The following day I was led to the psychiatric unit of the hospital. I saved my dinner for the new space, but no one told me it wouldn’t be allowed inside, nothing was. Maybe it was the hunger, the florescent light fatigue, or the screaming patient walking up and down the hall, but I was not emotionally ready for this. I had lost the fight. It felt heavy, like they had the power to make me disappear and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I felt powerless. And by the looks and sounds of the place, this was even worst than I thought. I cried. Hard. Until a nurse came in to tell me that they would have to sedate me if I didn’t stop crying. So I did what I did best and suppressed.

In the morning I went for breakfast in the cafeteria. After sitting down for my meal, a man was kicking the air 6 inches from my face. There was no confrontation, I think he just wanted to see if he could keep missing my face. From there I felt it best to eat all my meals in my quarters.

Early in my visit, I was strongly encouraged to take a few pills under the guise that I wouldn’t be considered for release if I didn’t take the medication. I didn’t realize how much of a zombie-like effect it would have on me, but I was grateful they had kicked in early enough to offset my one shower experience. Showers were done once daily at 5am. The first few days I slept through the roll call, but by day three or four I finally got myself up. The women lined up in single file to use the multi-shower stalls with no curtains, only the stench of someone who had discharged feces in the stall next to mine.

The only redeeming part of my stay was my roommate. A beautiful and bubbly 17-year-old who had previously been in foster care, but was put in psychiatric arrest after moving back in with her father. She was so gentle in spirit with the temperament one would expect from a little sister. She didn’t have a visitor the entire time I was there, not on Christmas Day, or the few days I called after I left. I’m not sure if she’ll ever know how much of a bright star she was to me those days, but she definitely was.

My entire time in the ward I spoke to a therapist/psychiatrist twice. Cumulatively it couldn’t have been more than an hour. Every suicide watch attendee would tell me that this wasn’t the right place for me. I knew it, but there was literally nothing I could do. I was stuck physically, and after the pills, mentally, without even a stupid stuffed duck to console me. I just hoped they relayed the message.

Eventually I called my family on Christmas Eve and they made the trip to visit me Christmas Day and every day after. It took one very long week before they discharged me. For good measures and a final scare, they released me with a threat of coming to my home or work if I missed any outpatient sessions. It’s easy for me to look back today and realize that there’s absolutely no way Harlem Hospital has the capacity to send bounties out on sad patients, but at that time I believed it.

It has taken several years for me to work through the trauma of that hospital visit. For many nights I had nightmares of being taken or held in an empty space. I tossed out the stuffed duck. There’s still movie scenes I can’t watch or moments of PTSD I experience, like last year when I walked into an art installations with a single bed frame in the room. Part of me writing this very exposing piece is an exercise of working through my trauma. But a larger part is beyond me. It’s about the community that has to rely on this institution to care for them every day. It’s about the fact that this is the designated space for many black people living with mental illnesses or that my young black roommate was so disposable. Or the many people that aren’t believed and get imprisoned or suspended from school because of preconceived narratives. It’s about the structures that continue to harm large populations of people and the fact that we let them. It’s the inability to forget that no matter how successful one could ever be, in a moment of weakness their blackness will always be their most prominent trait.

I could never say for sure whether going to the similarly distanced Mount Sinai Hospital in the affluent upper east side could have made things better. It’s taken several years to be able to talk about the experience without tears, but I can finally be appreciative of the events at Harlem Hospital. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but it’s atrocity has been a pivotal piece of my growth, understanding the weight of racist structures that still operate today, and in making me a better human than I was before. So, if you’re part of a community working to address racial disparities in the health care system, let me know how I can help.