Sonder: Youth Mental Health Stories of Struggle & Strength | Page 63

My mental health story
By Kristen Torres
My mental health story all began in October 2012. This whole
experience felt like meningitis. It came out of nowhere and
did optimal damage in not a lot of time. I didn’t know what to
do, but all I could think about was the fact that I wanted to die
and nothing could keep my mind off of that obsession. October
4th, 2012 could’ve easily been the date on my tombstone. I was
home alone, there were a lot of ways that it could’ve happened,
but minutes before I executed my plan, my grandmother came
and picked me up. She was one of the many people that saved
my life.
I knew I had to tell someone. I had to do something. I reached
out to my high school counselor. Within one hour of requesting
to speak with him, he pulled me out of class. I sat down and
told him everything. He called my parents and we all went into
a conference room where he suggested that I be taken to the
ER since I was a danger to myself.
October 5th, I was stripped of my dignity and my clothes except
for a paper-thin gown. I waited around for about three hours
while nurses came and went, taking various samples. A doctor
finally came in and she seemed nice enough. She put me on
a 72-hour suicide watch and gave my parents a list of local
psychologists that I could start going to.
A couple weeks later, I was taken to a nice office to a therapist.
Therapy is like a root canal. You’re in a tremendous amount
of pain and to effectively treat the problem, you have to tap
into things that are so painful that you don’t even know how to
handle them.
The first time I picked up a blade was March of 2013, eleven
months since my mental health story began. I couldn’t feel
anything and I had heard kids in my school talking about it
and I thought it really couldn’t hurt. I borrowed an army knife
from my brother’s room and made a few lines on my arms that
luckily have faded.
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