Facing Trauma: I was admitted at 6 years old to a mental hospital

To become the man I am today, I've had to face past traumatic experiences but there is one that I've been avoiding for decades & even blocking those memories.

When I was 6 years old, I was admitted to a mental hospital because I told my mother I wanted to kill myself.

Years ago, I was talking to my sister and she brought up this experience. She asked, "Adam, you don't remember that?" Suddenly, everything came back to me in a rush of emotions and I couldn't stop crying. I had blocked out all of those memories and never dealt with them.

In less than two years we moved from Michigan to Virginia to New York. We ended up staying with a relative of mine and I remember being fearful of her. One day my mother came home to find out that I peed myself because of her verbal abuse.

The next day, we left & were homeless.

My interest in school rapidly declined. I went from raising my hand to not even being interested. With everything going on, it was a lot for a 6-year-old to manage. Bouncing from hotels to staying in a lady's trailer until my mom got back on her feet.

One day, I told my mother that I didn't want to live and my plan was to go under my bed and hope for my bed to fall on me. I had quickly gone from being depressed to expressing suicidality, even as illogical as my plan was for me to die.

Not long after this incident, I remember my mother driving us to a place that I wasn't familiar with. We went inside and I was confused as to why I was there. I remember her handing me off to strangers and looking back confused as to what was going on.

I was being admitted.

They brought me to this section of the mental hospital for kids and into a specific open room where it had kids stuff and in the back area there were a bunch of beds. I remember asking when I could go home and no one would give me a straight answer.

In this open area we would have group therapy sessions with other kids I didn't know. I didn't want to be there but I knew that if I were good, I would eventually get to go home. I don't remember having any friends there because I didn't want to be there, so I kept to myself.

I do remember one boy who was kind of friendly to me and he was a little older than me. One night, he tried sneaking into my bed and got caught by an attendant. I pretended I was asleep and I never saw him again. I didn't want any trouble and I just wanted to go home.

My mother would visit as often as she was allowed to and I remember asking her "can I go home today?" and she would have to tell me "no". My sister recently told me that my mother would cry the entire ride home after our visits. I think I cried too.

I was there for 3 months, which felt like forever not knowing when I'd be able to see freedom and my family again. I remember my class sent me "get well" cards and I believe they were just told I was in a hospital but not what kind of hospital.

I vaguely remember leaving that place but I remember feeling like I never wanted to come back there. I don't think I was ever the same afterward and I kept my emotions mostly to myself because when I expressed them, they got me put away in a facility.

Part of the reason I'm obsessed with expressing myself today is that I spent most of my life not expressing how I felt. I kept everything inside and not healing from these experiences and in this case, I completely blocked it out so I didn't have to deal with the pain.

I'm writing about this because I'm tired of having this experience from 32 years ago having such an emotional hold on me. Even as I'm writing this, I'm crying but I need to get it out so it doesn't control me anymore.

Everyone has a struggle and in order to move forward, you have to face these experiences head-on and accept that you can't change them. You can only learn from it and use it as a baseline for how far you've come.

My hope is that this story can be someone's influence to keep striving and understand that they're not alone. I always felt alone in the world, like I'm the only one going through something painful when that's far from being true: that's the depression talking.

Today, I'm happy, confident, and have a lot to live for. I'm striving to be a better man and I can't be that man if I keep avoiding what I'm afraid to address.

I already feel better. The emotional hold this situation has had on me is already losing its grasp.