Date Published: April, 12th, 2021
Publisher: Hurn Publications
Four psychiatric wards
Three rehabs
Two jail cells
And a suicide attempt…
Hannah was told she would not make it to 25 with the way she was living. She had struggled with mental illness her entire life, but at 22 her demons came to a head at the grips of severe substance abuse, life-changing trauma, and two major deaths in her life.
Hannah’s struggles land her places no one ever hopes to grace; jail and psych wards lead her to the brink of death. Running out of options she’s left with two choices: live or die. This heart-wrenching memoir combines recovery with bittersweet romance told in a raw presentation that immerses the reader into the author’s dark state-of-mind in every page.
Tiger Stripes is going to add a valuable voice to the conversation about women’s mental health issues.
Excerpt:
October 7, 2019
“HENRY! HENRY! HENNN-RYYYY!!!!”
I am screaming at the top of my lungs and can feel my
throat tearing, becoming raw. I don’t know how many times I have said his name
now, but it is all I know how to do because nothing is making any sense.
I am in a locked room and flashes of images are going
through my head, but there is only one thing, one thought that I can focus on,
that is pounding through my brain throughout this confusion and that is pouring
out of my lungs to the point that my chest feels like it is going to rip.
“HENRY!” I choke on his name and a sob.
He cannot hear me, and he is not coming. He doesn’t
know where I am and I don’t know where I am, but I know I am not supposed to be
here—and I have to get out.
I beat at the metal door that barricades me from
something unknown and choke on words that begin with H.
“HENRY!” “
“HELP!”
“HENRY!”
“HELP!”
I repeat these words for what feels like a lifetime,
until I forget how to speak and my begging turns to carnal screaming—shrieking.
No one comes. No one answers. I wait for footsteps, for
the sound of the door unlocking, but all I can hear is the sound of my frantic
breaths and the echoes of a lamentation that is anything but human.
I look down at my body. My feet are bare against the
concrete floor; I cannot feel them. The jean shorts I am wearing show off my
slender, scratched legs and remind me that I am small and feeble at this
moment, but in an act of desperation, I put all of my faith in the power of
momentum and I run. I fucking run as fast as I can from the three paces it
takes to get from the wall to the ominous looming, locked door and attack it
with my entire being, letting out my most vicious battle cry as I fumble
towards it.
The door wins.
I try again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
I am degraded to a crumbling, bruised ball of flesh.
I can barely speak, my throat reduced to sandpaper.
Everything hurts and I can taste the bitterness of
blood in my mouth. The floor is like ice against my bare legs. Through the
tears in my eyes I see the moon shining through a window at the top of the
room. It is full and brilliant and illuminates the white of the brick walls
that surround me. I realize that there is writing on them. People have been
here before me. People will be here after me. Why am I here though? I should
not be.
I should be home, where I belong. In bed, with him. Safe. I feel
anything but that word in this moment, as terror sweeps through every single
one of my nerves.
I whisper in one last futile attempt:
“Henry?”
But there is silence. Horrible, deafening, fatal
silence.
And it seems to last forever, until I hear it, or
think I do. A click, the door unlocking, and the small room is suddenly filled
with light. Fluorescence suffocates me.
When I dare to open my eyes, they do not find Henry.
Instead I find a police officer looking back at me. He wears broad, black
framed glasses that are too big for his face and he looks eerily familiar. A
sudden memory of lying in a hospital bed comes to me but does not fully
resonate. His face is forlorn and almost disappointed, as if he expected more
out of me.
“I thought you were going to hurt yourself,” he tells
me. “Promise you’ll stay calm and you can come out for a bit. We’ve got to get
you fingerprinted.”
It’s then that I have the shattering realization that
I am drunk and in a holding cell at a police station. The reason why escapes me
though, as I try to grab onto flashes of sober memories but drown in my current
state-of-mind.
I try to breathe with intent as I remember every
single arrest-cliché in the book, and I cling to the fact that I am going to
get my phone call. They will probably let me go—they have to. If anything, they
will make me stay the night at the most.
I remember the silent promise I had once made
myself—that the moment I got a DUI that I would put down the bottle for good.
Jail was the worst it could get. It had been my crowning achievement at my last
three rehabs that I had never graced the inside of a jail cell and I never
planned to.
“Continue down the path you have been,” one of the
staff members at my second treatment center had told me after sharing her own
story about prison, “and jail is a guarantee.”
And here I am. Her words have come to pass, as
promised.
I then remember what else she told me as we talked over
a pack of Marlboro Reds on a warm Orange County night.
“Finish the 90 days,” she had said, “Or you will not
make it and there will come a day where you will no longer be able to cry out
‘I’m a good person!’. You will lie. You will steal. You will become someone and
something else. You will hurt everyone you love. You will lose everything, and
just when you think you have lost it all, you will lose something else.”
About The Author
Hannah was born in Orange County, CA but has lived in the Los Angeles area for several years. She now lives in West L.A. with her boyfriend. When she is not writing she can be found reading, running, cooking, or finding the best vegan eats in L.A.!
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