Very early Sunday morning (Sunday being St. Patrick's Day) I started having a violent panic attack. I'm at the apartment with Amanda, Jeff, Justin, Cletus, and (unfortunately) Amanda's drunk ex-girlfriend, Tara. (Amanda's now moved into the apartment officially.) She finds me spazzing on the floor of the bathroom, and proceeds to stay with me until I calm down. I eventually do. However, I am extremely jittery after that, and can't fall asleep until an ungodly hour of the morning. The rest of the day was spent at the apartment with Amanda and Tara, as everyone else had other things to take care of. I start having another violent panic attack, this one being the worst I've ever experienced. Towards the end of it, she leaves for another room, saying "There's not much more I can do for you." I calm down, and find her on the computer, looking at hotornot.com with Tara. I end up calling into work and saying I have car trouble or something stupid like that. Since Amanda and Jeff had plans to go to Deja Vu (as a "guy's night out", since she's considered one of the guys...they're just jealous that my boobs got more attention from strippers than any of them did), the 3 of us head back to campus. Still jittery, I inform Amanda that I need to see a doctor as soon as possible, thinking that she'll take me there. No such luck. After dropping me off, I'm in my room for not even 5 minutes total when I decide to call Jess. She agrees to take me to St. Joe's (the nearest hospital). We get there, and I tell the nurse checking me out why I'm there. She starts asking me some other questions, mainly if I'm suicidal and have a plan to kill myself. Honesty being the best policy, I say yes to both and detail my plans. This doesn't go over very well, so they send me to the critical condition hall of the ER (there are 2 halls: one for urgent care and one for critical care), where I see the mental health specialist on call that night. I don't think I helped my case any by saying to him "Give me a blade and I'll slit my wrists right now." (Note to self: never say anything like that to a mental health specialist, even in jest, again.) They decide to sign me into the psych unit, where I stay until Wednesday. I should mention that the whole time I was there, I did not get one visit or call from Amanda. However, my mom drove all the way to MI to be with me.

After showing some signs of improvement, they release me Wednesday afternoon. Feeling a bit borderline mood-wise, I decide after running errands with my mom that I'd rather go back to my dorm room than to Mark's basketball game with her. She drops me off, and I proceed to check my email. I get one from Amanda, saying that she can't handle a relationship right now and that it's over. This causes me to snap. I completely lost it. I headed down to Kampus Korner, buy some Nyquil geltabs (3 2-packs, to be precise), and head back to my room. I take all 6, plus the rest of my old Celexa prescription (about 12 or so), then listen to "4 AM" by Our Lady Peace about a dozen times. I write my suicide note, which contained the lyrics to that song and my favorite Anne Sexton quote ("When a life is over, the one you were living for, where do you go?"). The meds start taking effect, and I lay down to sleep. Just as I'm about to fall into unconsciousness, Amanda knocks on my door. I tell her I OD'ed, and she sees the empty pill packages next to me. She stays for a little while, not realizing just how close to death I am. Then she leaves because she had other places to be. Freaking out, and doing her typical reaction of running, she insists I call my mom, then heads out the door. I call my mom, who's just about to leave the game anyway, and she calls Greg, who calls the paramedics. When they arrived, my pupils were so dilated that all you could see of my blue eyes was a thin rim around huge black. (When you die, your pupils fully dilate, so you can imagine how close I was to dying.) The ambulance arrives, and they take me back to St. Joe's. I'm in there for god-knows-how-long, having them poke me with needles, cut off my circulation with the blood pressure thingee, giving a urine sample, checking my temperature, and being seen by specialist after specialist. They make me drink liquid charcoal to rid my body of the toxins I put in it, which tastes absolutely horrible. I get lecture after lecture from my mom and Greg, who were very scared about my fate. I'm informed that if I'd fallen asleep, I probably wouldn't be alive. I ended up being readmitted to the psych unit, and I head up there once more. I'm not released until Tuesday afternoon. Once again, I should mention that I did not receive one phone call or visit from Amanda. I did get a visit from Jess and Jackie, which made me really happy. My dad also came back from Afghanistan, and since there wasn't much going on there anyway, they let him stay in the country.

While I'm there, I learn quite a bit about myself, since I did some major self-reflecting. (Not like there was much else to do, since we couldn't leave the unit.) My poetry gets better and better, and when I get around to it I'll post some of my recent work in here. I also realized that a lot of things I was doing (i.e. drinking) were self-destructive. I picked up a new hobby, though: making hemp jewelry. I also met some great people.

Anyway, I call Amanda after I'm released. I forgive her for what she's done, and tell her my plans, which are to drop out of EMU and move back to NNY on Thursday. We agreed to meet Wednesday while I'm on campus packing and taking care of things, which does NOT please my parents or Greg, who are still livid that she left me to die. I go through with it anyway because I needed closure. We decided that neither of us are able to handle a relationship right now, although we still love each other. She leaves and I finish up.

I'm now in NNY. I'm going to go to JCC and get a job as soon as I can. But right now, I need to take my medication, so I'll elaborate on more later.