Eyes open. I see an African American woman, round and kind. "The doctor will be here around 9," she says. Eyes close.

Eyes open. A new woman, this one thin and blonde. "Would you like some breakfast?" Uh... uh-huh? "It's a turkey sandwich," she says. "I'll leave it at the nurses' desk." Eyes close.

Eyes open. A man. "How many did you take?" Five? Four or five? "And what were you trying to accomplish?" I wanted... I wanted... to shut down. Flip the switch on consciousness; cut the lights.

And so went most of the day, beginning at roughly 6:00 AM and ending at exactly 1:30 PM, the time noted on my discharge papers next to the nurse's signature.

My discharge "status." I think what this says is, "Alert + oriented x3 denies symptoms of psychosis, 0sxl [or sx |] homicidal ideation, treatment receptive, +Depression +0 Delusions."

At roughly 6:00 AM, I was delivered to the psychiatric emergency room. An hour and a half earlier, an ambulance had delivered me to the standard emergency room, where I was put on an IV drip and given an EKG. I had taken five, .5 milligram tablets of xanax - not nearly enough to kill myself, but enough to constitute a "suicidal gesture" as one of the counselors called it. I knew as much when I swallowed the pills, but I figured at worst I would fall asleep in my bathtub, where I'd curled myself into a ball, and succeed in scaring the daylights out of Ex, who I'd cursed and threatened over the phone, insisting I would kill myself.

What I hadn't counted on was Ex calling the police. Four officers showed up at my door, accompanied by Ex. They tracked dirt and snow into the apartment; I noticed this immediately and chided myself for cleaning the floors only two days before. One officer - their leader? - spoke sympathetically but firmly. What was the matter here? How many pills had I taken? Had I tried to kill myself? I avoided eye-contact with the officers, looking up just in time to see Ex making his exit, sheltering our dog in his arms. "Your friend's looking after the dog," said the officer, "so don't worry about leaving it behind."

I was mortified. I needed to use the bathroom; the officer asked me to keep the door cracked. I'm naturally pee-shy, so the simple act of pissing in my own bathroom must have taken three to four minutes. From the moment the officers arrived, I thought of how foolish this all must have appeared to them. A jilted, gay man. A half-hearted suicide attempt. Throw the mini-daschund into the mix and the situation couldn't have been gayer, stupider, or sadder.

Like many young writers, at one time I naively mythologized the madhouse. Had it not, after all, been the setting of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Had not some of the best literary minds - Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Marquis de Sade, Antonin Artaud, Virginia Woolf - been destroyed by some form of madness, "starving hysterical naked"? At the college where I teach, LGBT students as young as 18 tell me stories of being placed under suicide watch or housed in mental health facilities. Fourteen years their senior, I've now caught my own glimpse of Bedlam, and predictably there was nothing romantic or even particularly exciting about it. No stoic Indians or Nurse Ratcheds. No Angelina Jolie. I was in my own room. There may have been one or two other patients next door, but I never clearly saw them. Only once was I truly scared. My xanax-induced stupor made it difficult for me to read, but I remember glancing over my intake papers, my eyes catching on words like "commitment," "lawyer," and "patient advocate." My heart pounded: How long will they keep me here? Then I fell asleep.

For the record, I did want to kill myself this morning. At the same time, I had no intention of killing myself. Five pills down, I was depressed, furious, helpless, raging, and begging god for the strength (or the cowardice) to permanently cut out the lights, but I knew s/he wouldn't grant my wish. I've wanted to kill myself several times during my 32 years - in high school, then later in college (before I met Ex), then during my year-long battle with depression before I started taking meds. Sometimes I came closer than others. Twice I toed the very edge of the line that separates thinking from doing, and this morning was one of those times. But as I cuddled into a ball in my bathtub, gripping my bottle of xanax like a blind man's tin cup, I knew I had no intention of crossing the threshold. More than anything, it was this knowledge that fueled my full half-hour of sobs.

Ex picked me up at the hospital. I said he would have to ask his mom for a loan so he could lease his own car. It may have taken me 16 days to get here, but I finally told Ex what my friend Mark had advised me to tell him on Day 24: "I want a clean break. I don't want to see you." He parked in front of my apartment. I got out and walked away.

I scrubbed the officers' footprints off my floor. Then I called a number given to me by a friend. A woman with a smiley voice greeted me on the other end of the line. "Hello, Center for Counseling?"

I introduced myself and said I wanted to see a therapist.