Reading "The Quiet Room"

I first read this book when I was perhaps 12 or 13, before I identified with the content so intimately. Now, seven years later, her words of the quiet room bring about my own recollections of being thrown in seclusion. Strapped to a board with my body bound in a thick vinyl pad. I recall being brought into the room, hearing the countdown from three before the team unfastened the velcro that held me and bolted from the room.

I remember my hair, wild from struggle, being plastered to my face with sweat. Caught in my mouth, my eyes, tickling the inside of my ear. Tied to the bed in five points my only hopes of relief were to drag my face across the bedsheets, with luck I could clear my tear soaked face. And in the following days, bruises on my wrists and ankles, constant reminders that control was no longer mine for the taking. 

I can still feel the slight pressure of the cold handcuffs on the gurney. The harsh tug of the Welbutrin as I stared through the ambulance window.

I remember it all. The searches, restraints, incarcerations, and in these seven years I’ve learned that you can never promise you won’t return to that dark landscape, but you can promise to come back, and I will never make depression my home.