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This story contains discussions of suicide and self-harm. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis or suicidal thoughts, reach out to the national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988.
First, they take my suitcase away from me. This is so they can search my clothes for drugs and weapons. Who are “they”? They are hospital staff, a specific check-in team that I never see again during my time here. They are warm, but not too warm, hardened from years of dealing with bullshit from patients who check in against their will, who are angry to be here, and who take their anger out on the first line of duty. However, they quickly accommodate their approach to you based on how you approach them. If you are difficult and have an attitude, like the young redhead checking in next to me, they will be short and direct. If you, like me, have chosen to be here, are relieved, even happy to be here, they will speak to you in soft voices, ask you if you’re comfortable, and offer you snacks. I only accept a paper cup of water.
I sit in a room by myself for five minutes. The room has beige walls, gray carpet, and a wood-carved sign hanging on the wall that reads “Hope.” A friendly nurse in her mid-fifties comes to get me and brings me into an exam room. She asks me many questions.
“Why are you here?”
“Intense suicidal ideation, self-harm, disordered eating.”
I try not to cry, saying it out loud for the first time in such a matter-of-fact way.
“What medications are you allergic to?”
“Sulfa.”
The nurse then assesses me for suicide risk.
“Have you thought about taking your life in the past 48 hours?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have the means to carry out this plan?”
“Yes.”
“Do you experience feelings of worthlessness?”
“Yes.”
“On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the greatest, how great is your desire to die?”
“Eleven?”
Apparently, my risk is high.
I have entered the hospital on the recommendation of my therapist. She felt we had come to an “impasse” (her words), where she was at a loss for what to do with me (my words). I arranged ahead of time to stay in the women-only house because I absolutely refuse to be around men.
“I don’t even want to look at them,” I told my therapist, our faces side by side in the Zoom split screen I had come to know so well over the past year.
“You should know that your medical team there is going to be largely men,” she said. “A male psychologist, a male psychiatrist, and one female social worker.”
“I don’t like that.”
“They are professionals. I would like you to give them a chance.”
“I can do that. I don’t like it. But I can do it.”
“I’ve communicated to them that you are distrustful of men and that it’s important for the female social worker to regularly check in with you.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. Fucking men.”
“Fucking men,” she repeated back to me.
Good Mourning (2021) by Anna Marie Tendler.
A psychiatrist enters the room. He is wearing a collared, button-down shirt that is a little too wrinkled, and khaki pants that have remnants of a coffee stain above the right knee. The psychiatrist asks a series of questions designed to illuminate possible psychosis or bipolar disorder.
“Do you hear voices speaking to you?”
“I do not.”
“Do you ever have prolonged periods of elation?”
“No, but that sounds nice.”
“Do you have long depressive periods?”
“Yes, but not in the way I think you mean.”
I thought that response was at least a little funny, but he jots down a note, straight-faced. Within 10 minutes, I’m being asked to recount past physical and sexual abuse. I feel these should be Day 3 questions. However, it is often easier to tell these things to strangers, so I do. I tell him about more than one sexual encounter with older men when I was underage, but they were consensual. No matter how weird I feel about them now, they were, at the time, consensual.
“You seem to be making a point to tell me they were consensual,” the psychiatrist says.
I shrug.
Everything I explain to him feels vague, like it could be something, but it could also be nothing. Is any of it abuse? Is it kids simply exploring sexual boundaries they don’t understand? Is it adult men simply exploring sexual boundaries they are conditioned to disregard? I feel stupid recounting these experiences in all their un-concreteness. I do not know what they mean. Maybe they don’t mean anything.
The doctor makes me follow his finger with my eyes, not my head, to make sure I don’t have a brain tumor. I do not. As he is about to leave the room, he pauses and turns around.
“Have you ever written a suicide note?”
“No. I mean, yes. I’m not sure. I think so?”
“When you wrote it, was your intent to harm yourself after?”
“It was.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Not in the suicidal sense.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“I wanted to die, but I cut myself instead, and that cutting wasn’t meant to kill me.”
“What was it meant to do?”
“Relieve my pain.”
“Did it work?”
“Temporarily, yes, it did. But now I’m here. So I guess…no?”
He finally laughs.
Then he is gone.
La Neige (2021) by Anna Marie Tendler.
While I wait for the nurse to return, I think about that note—its absurdity, its self-involvement. It was largely about how no one around me seemed to be paying attention to my mental and physical decline. There was one particularly mortifying part about wearing a very sexy dress to a party and receiving no compliments about how hot I looked. The note was filled with venom and rage. I was so blinded by anger, I was ready to end it all over something as trivial as a leopard-print Norma Kamali dress. Underneath the vanity was a deep depression, a seemingly bottomless chasm of worthlessness and anxiety. I was a woman losing her grip on a life I was holding so tightly to. Consumed by embarrassment at the note’s contents, I ripped it into tiny pieces the following day and scattered it into various garbage cans inside my New York City apartment.
It has been about 90 minutes since I arrived. A new strange face pops his head in the room and says they are almost finished searching my bag and I shouldn’t have to wait too much longer. I’m wishing I had accepted the snacks offered earlier. I’m hoping he will ask me again if I want snacks. God, all I want are snacks. He starts to close the door and I find my voice, but only insofar as to croak out one word:
“Snacks?” Jesus Christ.
At least I had the wherewithal to phrase it as a question.
“At the end of the hall. Help yourself.” He smiles and leaves.
At the end of the hall there is a small table set up with chips, cookies, hot water, and a coffeemaker. I pocket three packets of Swiss Miss Milk Chocolate with Marshmallow hot cocoa mix. Treats for later, I think to myself, smiling at my keen ability to plan ahead. I also take a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. My absolute favorite junk food. I have not eaten much in the past seven months, but in truth, I do not like not eating. I feel like shit all the time—tired, weak, nauseous from my stomach trying to eat itself. I know it’s doing nothing to help my mental health, but I find comfort in how bad not eating has made me look. For most of my life, my outward presentation has not matched my inward reality, but with my body gaunt, and my face droopy and puffy at the same time, I’m forcing the outside world to confront a more honest—and probably scary—version of my mental state. Now, today, I no longer have to convince anyone how bad I feel. I might as well eat the Doritos. Still, enjoying a flavor-bursting tortilla chip at my hospital intake feels somehow disrespectful to the gravity of the occasion. I decide I’m too tired to have a morality negotiation with my inner monologue. I open the bag and pop a chip into my mouth.
Anna Marie Tendler.
I return to the exam room, as does the nurse. She measures my height and weight. Her face shows no sign of reaction as she writes these numbers down. There are no mirrors in this room, but I know what I look like—emaciated arms, a massive thigh gap when I stand with my legs together, ribs and hips protruding, breasts nearly dissolved into my bony chest. The nurse takes my blood pressure, which is eternally low, and I hear, as I always do at doctor’s appointments, “Wow, you’re going to live forever!”
“Unfortunately, that’s what they tell me,” I say.
“Do you have a hope or a goal in mind for your stay here?” she asks me.
“My wish for myself is that one day I’ll reach a place where I can face hardship without trying to destroy myself.”
The nurse looks me in the eye, gives me a small but warm smile, and nods.
Lead image: The Last Waltz (2021) by Anna Marie Tendler.
This article appears in the August 2024 issue of ELLE.
Copyright © 2024 by Anna Marie Tendler. From the forthcoming book MEN HAVE CALLED HER CRAZY: A Memoir by Anna Marie Tendler to be published by Simon & Schuster, LLC. Printed by permission.
Anna Marie Tendler is a multidisciplinary artist whose mediums include photography, textiles, drawing, interior design, and writing. She holds an M.A. in fashion and textile history from NYU’s Costume Studies program. Her master’s thesis, titled The Lip Filler Phenomenon: Modern Medicine, Kylie Jenner, and Postfeminist Female Sexuality, charts the contemporary history of dermal lip filler, as well as the correlation between plastic surgery and sociocultural politics of female aesthetics. Much like her academic research, Anna’s artistic work explores the many facets and complexities of the female identity.