#3east

15 years ago today, I admitted to 3East. I was 18 years old and absolutely terrified based on the significant trauma I sustained at Island View, a TTI lockdown treatment center I went to from the ages of 15-16 that was the worst 10 months of my life. I was so scared things would be the exact same. The first night at 3East, I had a terrible nightmare that I was hung up in chains bc I had done something wrong. I started crying to the night staff, asking if I had been restrained last night and they said, “Oh no honey, we don’t do that here.” I exhaled a sigh of relief and started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, this was a good place that would heal me. I spent a year and four months there and it remains the best treatment center I’ve ever been to. I credit them with keeping me alive during some of the absolute darkest periods of my life, including experiencing my best friend’s suicide. Out of about 5,000 patients who’ve attended the program, around 30 have ended up dying by suicide. Since virtually every single patient there has experienced suicidal ideation and BPD has a 10% completed suicide rate, the numbers are remarkable. It still devastates me that I knew two of those 30, but the absolute sickest girl I knew there (she was there for three years) is still alive and honestly thriving. There is hope.

Just met up with G this morning for coffee and she noticed my ring right away. She was soooo happy! She said she is really really proud of me, that I have worked SO hard to get here. She said when she met my parents when I first came to 3E, they had given up hope of something like this ever happening. She said there’s something to be said for essentially just keeping people alive until their brains mature and they’re in a better place to work on recovery bc I think that was a lot of it for me. She talked about details of planning for her own wedding and that the diamond in her ring was her great grandmothers. She showed me pictures of her two kids (they’re so big now!). It’s so nice to have this sort of relationship with her! I never in a million years thought I would be meeting her for coffee to tell her about my engagement!!!! Crazy.

I took a walk around McLean after seeing B this morning to say goodbye to the campus and hospital that literally saved my life. I said goodbye to each building, each spot along the walk where I held a memory, mostly from my time at 3East. I said goodbye to the cafeteria courtyard where I would always eat lunch with the day program, the ambulance entrance to the CEC that meant the start of another inpatient stay, the STU where I visited many of my friends, P2 and all the memories and people there, the "bowl" in front of Proctor where I went stargazing with Rob and the other patients, the tree where I picked a huge beautiful bright red maple leaf that my favorite CRC from 3East still has, the tree that Em climbed, the chapel where we found a dead squirrel on the door step, the place where the building used to be that I broke into with Sam, the tunnel bathroom where I hooked up with another patient, the serenity garden next to East House where I smoked countless cigarettes, the Pavilion where my mom went to treatment, the tunnels where we used an Ouija board, Mill St where we found children's handprints in the dust in the basement even though no kids had been there, and the nightly walks we would take with Whitney the CRC as she told us all the ghost stories of McLean. It's so difficult to close this chapter of my life, even though I know I'm ready to move on. It's time. But I will miss this whole campus deeply and fiercely.