The Beauty of the Broken Shells

Chapter 1

Everyone faces difficulties. It's part of life. Part of growing up. Most people lose a loved one, or a job or home. But no, it wasn't me. For me i gained something. It gives me stigma everywhere I go. It's mostly, no stigma in the health community, but sometimes there is some stigma. Sometimes there's even stigma in those that are supposed to love you. And so my story begins.

The year is 2018. It's August and the beginning of a new school year.

I have brown, short, curly hair. I have hazel eyes. I am shy until you get to know me.

"Mel, you need to wake up." Mom yelled. It was my first day of school of my senior year. Every day she yells like this, but today was special. I don't know what made it feel special. It was like no other day in my life. It just felt weird the whole day. But every day of my life was weird from that day on.

"Ok, mom" Mel whispered, "whatever." I got down stairs, and my mom was fixing pancakes. "Mom, you know you didn't have to do this, right?"

Mom just stared at me, and I thought, I heard her say to me in my mind, "oh its okay honey, don't worry about school today, you'll do fine." I have never been a psychic and read minds. I brushed it off though.

I got to school, and everyone was looking at me. Through the halls, in the restroom, and in the classroom. Even the teachers were silent. So I knew something was going on.

(This was all in my head, I was starting to develop a mental brain disorder. But I didn't know it yet.)

In my writing class, we had a writing prompt, if we had a terrible day, how would someone we love change it. And I was like, umm how do I do this? And there's always a time limit, five minutes. Each writing prompt we ever did. And so here I was, thinking and nothing came out. So I scrambled and wrote something. But what I wrote I have no memory of at all. My teacher called me up at the end of class.

"Mel, this is very good." But very off topic of the writing prompt." Mr Penley said. He had his masters in writing, from Yale. He was really good in college. He wrote so well that he got free tuition, if he promised to write for the school newspaper. So Mr. Penley did. Sorry I got off topic. Where were we? Oh yes, about my paper. So anyways, Mr. Penely said that it was about my dog, that I actually never had.

So i said, "I wrote about Sara?" "Oh Sara, shes doing well."

"Mel, you don't have a dog." Mr. Penely said.

I just stared at him like he was stupid. Everyone knew I had a dog named Sara. But what I didn't know was that I was wrong. I was delusional. So Mr. Penely took me to Mr. Fitz.

It's not every day that a student goes to see Mr. Fitz, but when someone does, its the life of jokes. So I was mad. I was like "I don't have a mental illness!!!!" I screamed. Mr. Penely just quickly took my arm and dragged me into Mr. Fitz's office.

It's so strange when the school psychiatrists sees you in his office. His name was Mr. Fitz. Short for Fitzgerald William. But no one dared call him Fitzgerald William. He gets kinda grumpy or ticked off when someone, anyone says his full last name. And yes, I know, it sounded like Fitz was his first name and William his last. But that was not the case.

"Miss Chandler, why do you think you're here?" And I don't remember anything after that. But apparently, I passed out and I woke up in a hospital bed. All by myself.

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I woke up in a hospital bed. And I thought to myself, where am I? So I got up off the bed. The floor and room was cold, ice cold. I walked over to the door, but there was no doorknob. I thought, am I in a psych ward? As if someone heard my thoughts, a nurse came walking in.

"Excuse me?" I said quizzically.

"You're in the state hospital, Athens Behavioral Health." The nurse quoted as if by memory. Then she said they had been waiting until I woke up, to put me in my room. And all I thought was, what have I done?

We walked what seemed like forever, only like ten minutes, and finally came to my room. She went in with me and went over the rules, of which, I did NOT remember. So she wrote on a piece of paper.

Rules: for Mel
1. No going into other peoples rooms, especially guys
2. Rising and meals, and bedtime are set schedule, that's that.
3. No violence towards staff or patients
4. No falling in love ( I thought to myself puff, I'm not doing that anyways)
5. No escaping the premises, unless there is a staff escorting you.

I thought the rules were a little crazy because of the no falling in love thing. Little did I know what was going to happen. But everyone knows when you're in a psych ward, follow not one rule, follow ALL of the rules. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I would later regret how and where I fell in love, but I'm glad that I did.