
by Mira Sunwon Goldstein
My name is Mira Sunwon Goldstein. I’m 17 years old. I love cats and the color purple. I run for fun along the beach. I sing in the shower, I listen to records, I go to museums to sketch. I take pictures with my friends, I shop online, I have an affinity for misunderstood loners in movies.
My name is Mira Sunwon Goldstein and two years ago, I lived in the hospital for nine months.
Before I was hospitalized, I didn’t know what the inside of an ambulance looked like, much less seven. I used to think you receive care at one hospital, not nine in one year. I didn’t know what bone density tests were, or EKGs, or orthostatics.
I did not used to know how an IV felt, or a feeding tube when it was inserted up your nose and into your stomach. I didn’t know the pain you felt when your liver was on the brink of failure.
I used to think I knew pain.
I don’t know what to think anymore.
The night of February 12th, 2019, I walked out into a blizzard at night and didn’t come home. I spent hours out in the cold, snow crystallizing in my hair. I sang to myself and shivered, saw a bus and took it to nowhere in particular.
At last, I came to a CVS, lit up and warm inside. There, I stole a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol and took it with hot water from the sink in the staff bathroom. I sat down in the store, and I was okay. Until I wasn’t.
Pill shards came up, burning my throat and my nose. My vomit was red. I called my mom. She called the police. A store worker locked me in the bathroom where I had previously overdosed until the police came.
I was strapped onto a stretcher, bundled up because I was shaking. Other customers crowded around it anxiously. I was freezing, but the doctors said it was shock. I vaguely remember asking the EMTs if they could turn the ambulance siren off.
We pulled up to C________ Hospital. I was told to drink activated charcoal and given an IV. I walked to the bathroom to pee out the fluids until I couldn’t stand anymore.
That night was blurry and unfocused. My stomach hurt. I was completely indifferent to life itself. I wanted the pain to dissipate; I wanted to go to sleep.
Hours later, I was transferred to B_____ M______ Center because the doctors thought I needed a liver transplant. I didn’t. I fell asleep in my bed at the pediatric ICU. The next morning, the pain went away. I watched TV and drank vegetable broth and went on walks with women who bathed me in bed with washcloths.
My liver began making proteins again. After three days, I didn’t need the IV anymore. Doctors began talking about psych hospitals I could go to. There weren’t many that would accept me because of my dual diagnosis - suicidal ideation and an eating disorder. Later I realized this meant there weren’t enough hospitals equipped to restrain and tube.
The doctors said there weren’t any good options. I said I would stay in the ICU. My parents pulled a few strings and found me a bed at the adolescent unit at F________'s. I came in on a long weekend, so I didn’t meet my social worker or psychiatrist until Tuesday.
For two weeks, I cried every night. I couldn’t bring myself to swallow pills. My eating got worse, and the self harm started up again. I paced the halls, foolishly waiting for somebody to ask if I was okay.
The doctors weren’t happy. I was losing weight. They threatened to send me to an inpatient eating disorder facility. I was put on bathroom restrictions and ordered to count out loud to staff while I was using the toilet.
My panic attacks came back, but worse. I would scream because my brain told me I couldn’t breathe. At first, the staff gave me cold washcloths. Then they grew frustrated. They stopped coming when they heard my screams.
The doctors didn’t know how to help. My therapist stopped meeting with me. I didn’t know how to help myself. Scars now covered my whole hands. I couldn’t stand without the world spinning around me. My body began growing fine hairs to keep me warm.
Then one day my team met with me. I had to go to an eating disorder center after this, they said. I told them that the one eating disorder center I had been to made my eating worse. It made me more suicidal. They told me that it was my eating disorder talking. I said I could do better if they gave me a chance. They said no.
They had given up. As soon as I began to struggle, they gave up.
I had given up a long time ago. I flipped my desk, hid behind my bed. Staff came. They grabbed me by my arms and dragged me down the hall kicking. Locked me in a small room to the back of the unit.
I was in disbelief. Locking me by myself, especially while I was emotionally dysregulated, was the most dangerous thing they could do.
It was my only seclusion. I banged on the door. Cried and begged them to let me out. They didn’t. I promised to go straight to bed, just please don’t leave me by myself. They watched from the Plexiglas in the door. I broke my skin with my nails. Wrote on the white walls of the room with my own blood.
They sighed. I took off my shirt and tied it around my neck so tightly that I passed out. They unlocked the door. My vitals were checked and they had me clean the walls. I went to bed.
In the morning, I stopped eating. I had done things I had never dreamed of doing. The floodgates opened. I was crazy, and F________'s had given up. Everything was the same. The tunnel in my brain narrowed. I had to get out. Even an eating disorder hospital would be better. I had to get out.
Days passed. I became dizzy and cold. I was riding the euphoria of starvation. My vital signs were taken, first lying, then sitting, then standing. They were called orthostatics.
A week went by. Finally, my psychiatrist came to talk to me. “Your ambulance is here,” she said. I asked if kids like me ever came back to F________'s after. “Not usually,” she said.
I rode in the ambulance once more, talked to the EMTs as they showed me pictures of their dogs on their phones. As they carried my stretcher into B______________’s ER, one of them looked at me and said “You’re so light! You weigh nothing!” I just smiled.
After a couple of hours, I got a bed on the medical unit called 7 ____. I met a security guard, who nicknamed me MG and taught me how to play Uno in stacks. As he left his shift, he took my hand in his and squeezed it. “Eat for me, MG,” he said.
The first day I did not. At lunchtime, I was tubed for the very first time. The nurses were gentle. I held my mother’s hand.
Then the next day, I ate lunch for the security guard. I was tubed breakfast and dinner. I wish that I could’ve said it was okay. That all the nurses were kind. Most were. I asked them if I could leave my room on a wheelchair ride. They said maybe if I ate more.
I was trying. My life became an endless cycle of eating or tubing. I memorized the TV programs. I used a dish to pee because I wasn’t allowed in the bathroom two hours after eating. Security guards watched me shower. My vital signs were taken every two hours.
Two weeks passed before I tried to run. I could barely walk, but adrenaline pushed me down three flights of stairs before I was caught by security. Two were stationed permanently inside my room.
The next day, I pulled out my tube. The nurses put it back in. My nose bled. I pulled it out again, and the clear plastic shone pink. They put it back it. They told me they would call security. I pulled it out again.