By Emily Hamilton
Guest Writer ’06

Consider the consequences of reading this article. It’s pretty safe. This is just a little something to make you think. And so the story begins. Friday, December, 26 my boyfriend, Dan, arrives from Wisconsin to visit for a few days. That night, my family and relatives go on an outing to Stone Mountain. On Saturday, we go ice skating at Centennial Olympic Park with friends, family, and relatives. We go to church with my family on Sunday morning then go out to lunch. Late afternoon: the plan begins to unfold. I start packing and prepare to leave. Sunday night at 1 AM I move my bags down to my boyfriend’s room on the basement level. Dan, my brother, and I are watching a movie on T.V. I say I’m really tired and pretend to go upstairs but instead go downstairs. Dan stays up a little longer so that everything seems normal. At 2 o’clock he tells my brother to tell my dad (when he wakes up) that we both went to bed because we were tired. We don’t go to bed right away though. I fall asleep around 3. He stays awake so someone is always watching the time. When I wake up at 5, he goes to sleep for about an hour. At 6 we get all our stuff together and leave the house at 6:30. We walk a few hundred feet to my neighbor’s yard (they happened to be on vacation.) We put our luggage behind a big green power box and sit down to wait. It’s now 7 o’clock and the ride we were expecting at 6:30 still hasn’t come. Coming to the conclusion that there would be no ride we called for a taxi at 7. The taxi service calls back at 7:30 to say they can’t find the address where we are. I explain it as well as I can and at 8, the taxi finally appears and we drive away to the Greyhound Bus Station in Marietta. We arrive at 8:30 and luckily the 8:25 bus to Milwaukee was late. At 8:45 we board the bus and leave Marietta. Late afternoon, we arrive in Nashville where we make our first transfer. We also telephone my Dan’s mom. She keeps asking where we are, but we refuse to tell her. We only tell her where we will transfer next and what time that will be. Finally at 12:00 AM we arrive in Chicago where his parents are waiting to pick us up. We decided we were too tired to transfer and then go to Milwaukee so we asked them to pick us up in Chicago. At 2 o’clock we arrive at Dan’s house. We all eat a little bit of food and go to sleep around 3. It’s Tuesday afternoon and Dan comes in and wakes me up around 2:30. We just wander around the house all day in our pajamas. After we eat lunch with his family we both shower and get dressed. Around 5 or 6 his niece and sister-in-law come over for dinner. We listen to David Bowie in the living room and sing along for fun. Then, we watch “Finding Nemo” after dinner with his niece and she and I create a zoo of stuffed animals on the couch. At 9 they leave and a little later Dan, his parents, and Iwatch “Bruce Almighty.” Then, we all go to bed. I wake up at 9 the next morning and dye my hair while Dan is still sleeping. He comes downstairs at 9:30 while I’m eating breakfast. We shower and then we both go upstairs to get something. The doorbell rings and when we come downstairs my parents are standing right in front of us. I refuse to go home and Dan and I are both crying and I threaten suicide if I have to leave him and go home. To which he says he will join me if I do that. My parents end up giving me three choices: go home QUIETLY on the plane, have the police take me to a juvenile detention center, or sign myself into a psychiatric hospital (in Wisconsin it’s voluntary). I pick the last choice because I don’t want to go home or see the police. Dan and his family come for support, but he ends up talking to an admittance person too. On Wednesday, December, 31 I sign myself into the hospital for severe depression, cutting, suicidal threats and attempts, and running away. I ask to say “goodbye” to Dan but he’s still talking as I’m going down to the unit. I see him through the window of the room he’s in as I walk down the hall. His parents are talking and he’s lying on the couch crying and all I want to do is tell him how much I love him. He gets admitted on the same day but somewhere else. He leaves on Saturday, January, 3 and starts school on Monday like he’s supposed to while I’m still stuck in the hospital. His parents come to a family session with me and my parents on Monday morning. They say a few things, I don’t remember what, and my dad reads off the rules when I go home that all 4 of them have decided on. One of them is no communication between me and my boyfriend or our families until he and I are both “doing better.” But who determines that. His parents tell me they love me and walk out of the room and away…maybe forever. The hardest part is knowing that, from the hospital, he’s only 8 miles away from me in the direction that my window faces, but I can’t reach him. During my remaining days at the hospital, I spend a lot of time looking at the snow. Luckily enough, because I was from Georgia and didn’t see lots of snow, the staff let me go out on the fenced in adolescent patio to play in it. I threw it up in the air, made a snow angel, and a pathetic snowman. But I had a great time. On Sunday, January 11 I exit through the front doors to freedom. My parents and I go back to the hotel so I can shave and pluck my eyebrows (definitely a must). At 11:30 AM, we get all of our luggage and by 12:45 we are in downtown Milwaukee. We stop at the art museum and drive around looking at the old houses and the magnificent lake view parks. At 2:30 we’re at the airport returning the rental car, checking our baggage, and going through security. We watch the Packers game for a while and at 4:45 we board the airplane (this is my very first flight.) I watch the lights of all the cities below me and listen to David Bowie and Eve 6. We land in Atlanta at 7:30 and start home around 9 o’clock. I did nothing all day today. I begin the outpatient program tomorrow morning. After I’m finished with that, I will return to school, attend family therapy, visit with my regular therapist, and continue taking my anti-depressants. I don’t know when I can talk to Dan again. I never got to tell him I love him or say “goodbye.” I miss him so much and I miss all my friends at school. I have no way to talk to them because my dad got rid of the internet for awhile and I now get no privacy on the phone. If you hated this article all the better, I just hope you learned to seriously look at the consequences that come along with choices that you make. Dan and I had so much going for us. We ran away to be together, but now the tables are turned and we’re farther apart than we’ve ever been. I only hope I can talk to him on the phone by Valentine’s Day. Remember this, before you make a decision about something consider the consequences and ask yourself if it’s worth it to risk so much. Everyone makes mistakes. No one can see into the future and then make all the right decisions. You just have to learn from the mistakes you make because if you don’t you’ll repeatedly make the same ones over and over again. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade or in other words make the best of any situation and you’re more likely to come out of it with your life intact.