2 Year Anniversary

my two year anniversary with the hospital      
       
I insisted I didn't need to go.        
       
"I just want to go home" my monotone voice rang with alarming-anger as I stared at the cheap tile floor. My throat swelled with anxiety and my eyes burned with defeat.. They didn't understand. I needed to go home.        
       
Yet I found myself moments later in a painfully silent drive with my mother to the hospital.        
       
She'd make a small comment every rare moment. Despite my desire to hug her and reassure the okay-ness of the situation, I couldn't help but snap at her with everything she said. She'd swallow the tears and pull a strong face because we both knew if she started to cry she wouldn't have been able to stop, and we both would've felt worse. And we both knew that we both knew that.        
       
Dmv.        
       
We parked. My heart pounded.        
       
We stepped foot in the doors (that over a year later were still broken and being worked on by maintenance.) My entrance knocked the wind from my lung.         
       
Everything.. The counters. The aged, tacky floor. The saggy, faded-color seats that wreaked of fever..the loud babies crying in every direction.. The room spun and my heart did race yet on the outside I froze and my tired face held its emotionless gaze.        
       
The line was.. as you would expect in an emergency room.        
       
Kids with fractured bones and swollen limbs, babies with fevers and parents trying to soften the noise barrier..        
       
And there I stood. Nothing visibly wrong; nothing audible. The only wrong thing was being there to begin with.        
       
As I looked around the dancing room, my breath heightened as my frame went into a frenzy of violently shaking; tunnel vision and choking back tears. I have returned to the very place I swore I never would again. I had become the person I thought I'd never have to see again.        
       
After waiting and waiting in slow-burning increments, hearing my name called felt like a miracle, despite that being the last thing I desired. I sighed and praised the Lord in my mind that I got to skip security this time. Slowly, we were led to the patient room. The same room I was in the first time. And my heart broke. And my shoulders sunk. And my eyelids gained 5 pounds.        
       
Behind a closed door with blinds momentarily drawn down, I involuntarily undressed myself trying to not yell in a fit of rage. A new curse word formed in my head with each article of clothing I shoved into the plastic bag; my body became more naked, and my cuts became more exposed.        
I hated every bit of it.        
I couldn't even keep my socks.        
       
And that is when I lost the rest of what little self I had.        
       
They took away my phone        
(they took away my friends).        
They took away my belongings        
(they took away my comfort).        
They took away my clothes        
(they took away my dignity).        
They took down all my walls.        
       
Forced to sit in this bland room, I wore a giant napkin tied shut with two delicate strings, and a pair of socks that felt like two washcloths sewn around rubber bands.        
       
The blinds were lifted up and outside my door a person sat there, watching me and writing down my actions. nothing has changed. The wait for the social worker was so long I remember many occasions in which I prayed, mentally crying and begging on my knees for somebody to just finally.walk.in.        
       
We waited for a total of almost two hours, of which I stared at the corner of a cabinet the whole time; my eyes never left their spot, not once. I remember the colors around me swirled and every dimension was outlined with bright laser chaos. My mind was blank. Absolutely blank. I can't recall any other time where I didn't think at all. (Beforehand I didn't even think this was a possibility) My mind just collapsed in that moment and as I stared at this corner for minutes consecutively, I (sub)consciously knew I looked like a freak. I didn't care. I needed to escape.        
       
So I shut down.        
       
When the social worker did eventually enter, she had a nice light voice and a cheerful demeanor.        
I wasn't going to take any of it.        
I answered her questions with nods and occasionally one-word responses in which many I had to repeat myself. The questions started off standard to the many medical surveys I've had to fill before, but soon they became very personal. I felt like she was somehow, undressing me even more just by speaking.        
       
As if I didn't already feel like a creature held for observation and experimentation.. wrapped in cloth and placed under exposing tungsten lights.. they pried into my life with their questions and if I refused to answer or simply shrugged, her patience grew short (which her voice showed.)        
       
The words "blood" "test" and "pregnancy" appeared together in one sentence and I about lost it. After her prying questions I didn't think I could be any more exposed. A simple blood test but I felt disgusted. This had nothing to do with me trying to kill myself. I explained how it was impossible for me to be pregnant. What was the point in answering their questions when they wouldn't believe me anyway? I refused to let them stick a needle in me. But that didn't matter.. Free country my ass.        
       
As the needle plunged into my arm, she continued with her questions. I was a robot. Answering her questions as I still stared at the cabinet.. I couldn't connect. No eye contact.        
       
Question after question after question, she left to have a "chat" with my mother. Still I was being watched by the rotating nurses with a notepad. Still I stared at the cabinet. Still I wanted -scratch that -needed, to go home.        
       
For the last time the social worker came in to talk to me.        
She made small talk. i held my position. I kept numb, my gaze not leaving the cabinet as I had managed the whole time.        
       
And then she said this to me..        
"It's hard to be here.. isn't it?"        
And for the first time I looked up and saw her face.        
       
It sure was.