Getting Arrested Made Me a Better Person

Photo of Reinhardt College via

While watching Diane Sawyer with my parents on January 11, 2011, the mugshot of a maniacal, bald, psychotic-looking guy was plastered across the screen. He looked like a younger, balder Charles Manson—just another dead-eyed, disheveled psychopath. Diane did what she has always been good at—showing concern while managing to seem condescending—as news coverage unfolded. She explained that the maniac in the picture killed six people and wounded 13, including State Representative Gabby Giffords. His name was Jared Lee Loughner and he was one of the dozens of people to go down in grim, mass-shooting media infamy.

The next day, my mom asked me if I was okay. Of course I was. I didn't know anyone that was shot and I had never met Jared Loughner or anyone associated with him. She asked again, and finally I understood her concern. Jared Loughner and I had very similar back stories—the only difference was the fact that I was stopped.

It all started after I graduated from high school with intentions of never returning home. I grew up in Rome, Georgia, which is a quiet, quaint, picturesque town where everyone knows your name, loves football, and Jesus. It is like Mayberry on steroids. That said, it’s also one of the birthplaces of the ethnic cleansing and relocation of the Cherokee, which resulted in the deaths of 4,000—also known as the Trail of Tears.

With a history like that, it should come to no surprise that some people don’t fit in. I was one of them. I despised it there—it was a place I associated with being picked on in high school by a group of fratty, tyrannical jocks for no particular reason. I hated everyone there with a raging passion and I looked forward to getting away from them forever.

In the fall of 2004, I left to start school at the private Christian Reinhardt College, 45 minutes north of Rome in Waleska, Georgia. Before leaving, my parents gave me an entire speech about how I was growing up, how proud they were of me, and that I needed to continue to take my medication to treat my diagnosed Bipolar disorder. And to stay away from alcohol and drugs. Then I started college and the freedom sunk in.

My first week at Reinhardt, I completely stopped taking my medication because I thought I was normal again—I hated how my medication made me feel along the stigma associated with it (which is pretty common among those affected with Bipolar disorder), and my parents weren’t around to make me take it anymore.

I embarked upon a journey to drink as much as I could and track down a good weed dealer. Since Reinhardt is a dry campus, this usually happened in my dorm room with my British foreign exchange student roommate, Becky. We found a guy on the soccer team who sold weed, and we were set.

Becky was a great roommate, but she hated America and only lasted three weeks. She decided it was time for her to move back and be with her boyfriend. I was pretty torn up about her leaving, so I searched around for a new roommate that loved weed and alcohol as much as I did.

My search backfired when the room went to a straight-laced, Christian girl who instantaneously decided that she didn’t like me. She and the rest of my suitemates kicked me out of my own dorm because I partied too much. After I moved, I got a new roommate, named Sharee. She and I became really good friends.

After that first year of college ended, I stayed behind to take summer classes. That summer changed everything. My freshman year was a manic high, but my summer was an all-time, depressive low. Every friend I had made decided to transfer, but my parents wanted to me to go to summer school to make up some classes I had missed. After I moved into an apartment with some people I didn’t know, I started to withdraw more into myself and contemplate suicide.

A week into the first summer session, after researching painless ways to kill myself one night, I decided slicing my wrists with razor blades would be the least painful and most dramatic way to die. So I started the bath water.

While the water was running in the tub, I started wondering what would happen after the life left my body and got excited. Weezer’s “Only in Dreams” was playing on my stereo. It seemed like a fitting song. I grabbed for the razor to begin the process of taking out the blades, but it fell in the tub behind me.

Immediately, thoughts of what my parents would do when they found out I killed myself started flooding my mind. They were enough to stop. I got out of the tub, went to the corner of the bathroom next to my stereo, and cried hard while the three-minute guitar solo played on.

***

Not only was I suicidal, but I started to get very violent. I wanted to not only leave Reinhardt College, but to leave everything. My moods became more turbulent and volatile when I was alone. If I’d go out, I would drink until I blacked out. It became common for me to call my parents and scream at them about how much I wanted to leave, which would end with them telling me to stick it out. It got so frustrating that I started updating my Xanga blog quite frequently with violent, poisonous rants, which my followers who knew me personally thought were jokes.

I wrote about hating Reinhardt College and wanting to plant grenades around the school. One anonymous girl in my Astronomy class, who accused me of cheating turned me in to my professor, became the focus of my hatred. She was right, I did cheat, but since I didn’t know who she was, I started talking on my Xanga page about finding her and killing her. Unfortunately for me, she found my blog and got scared when she read Too bad Patti (one of my only friends at Reinhardt) is going to be here when I blow this place up. The girl turned me in to the campus police, who turned me over to the Cherokee County Police Department.

I found out I was being investigated while I was standing in line at Subway. My pocket vibrated, but I ignored it. It was Sharee, who stayed around for the summer. I really wanted a sandwich, but as soon as the person behind the counter said, “What can I get for you?” my phone buzzed again. This time, I answered.

“Seriously, Sharee,” I hissed. “What do you want?”

“A detective and a cop are at school, asking about you.”

I was so shocked I couldn't move. “Are you kidding me? Is this some kind of a joke?”

“No, they're serious. They tried to look around the apartment to find you.”

“I’m leaving. I’m getting the hell out of here,” I said.

“You seriously need to come back here and talk to these guys. I don’t think leaving would be such a good idea,” gasped Sharee, her tone short and panicky. I knew she had a valid point.

I went numb. I started thinking about driving off a cliff, but didn't know where to find one.

I got back to my apartment, sat down, and waited. After a few minutes, the doorbell rang. I got up to answer the door, because none of my roommates were there. I saw cops, but only noticed their guns and a plump woman with red hair in front of them, looking at me.

“Are you Mary Lynn?”

“Uhh. Yes ma'am. Can I help you?”

“We need you to come down to the station so we can ask you a few questions. You’ll need to follow us in your car but make arrangements to be gone awhile.”

“OK,” I replied, walking back to my room to get my keys. The red-headed woman and cops followed me.

“We have a warrant for your computer. We know you threatened to attack your college and, since Columbine, we take those threats from someone like you very seriously.” She flashed what looked like a legal document.

I watched two policemen take my computer apart and carry it out of my room. The woman waited on me to leave my room and I could feel her watching me as I walked through the apartment and out the front door. I put the key in the door of my apartment, turning the latch to dead bolt it, locking myself out of that freedom.

When my parents found out I was being investigated, they immediately hired a lawyer who specialized in violent crime. Months afterward, all I had to do was go to an arraignment. Since there weren’t many high profile attacks my incident could be compared to, I got off easy.

My lawyer made a deal with the city of Canton and Reinhardt College that I attend therapy and never set foot on that college campus again. I also had to attend psychological treatment. After that, the charges could be dropped completely from my record. It seemed easy enough, but I had to move back home. It hurt my ego so badly that I used Depakote tablets and Mandarin Absolut Vodka to try and take my life again.

I had never told anyone about my battle with suicide until I met my current therapist in 2008. The first time I met my therapist, I was ready to laugh off the entire experience. She was a licensed play therapist who worked at a place that used therapy dogs, which I thought was stupid.

The first time I signed in, one of the dogs followed me around the office. He looked exactly like Lassie. I glared at him, hoping he’d go hide in a corner and leave me alone. When my therapist motioned for me to come in for my first session, the dog followed me into the room and jumped up on the couch next to me as I sat down. I told her that wasn’t necessary. She motioned for the dog to come sit next to her across the room.

“So why are you here?” she asked.

“Because I have to be,” I said. “And I’m not going to tell you anything until you tell me a little something about you.”

She told me that she was in the middle of a lawsuit with one of her former employees she trusted who had stolen money from her. She also told me that if I didn’t like her, I could find a new therapist. She had my respect almost immediately. I kept going back.

A couple of sessions in, she asked me about an incident I had with a student that ultimately motivated my parents to contact her.

“Well it’s obviously because I’m crazy right?” I asked, laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked. “It’s not funny. I can see that you are a very sad person.”

Something as simple as that caused the floodgates to crash open. I was comfortable enough to cry in front of her. I told her about how I tried to kill myself once, and how I considered it before my arrest numerous times.

“Have you had suicidal thoughts within the last 24 hours?” she asked.

“No.”

“I need for you to be serious right now. Have you?”

“No,” I said, through tears. “I haven’t thought about it since before I moved here a couple of months ago.”

“I’m going to call your parents and tell them I need to see you twice a week for a little while. I know your insurance gives you limited sessions, but I’ll charge you the regular copay regardless. That is very serious.”

That breakthrough changed my life overnight, and I actually looked forward to going back.

Throughout that next year, I learned through therapy that I never took accountability or charge of my life because I never admitted the fact that I had Bipolar Disorder, even after I had been properly diagnosed in 1999. Admitting that would’ve been accepting that I wasn’t normal. Also, the bullying I experienced in high school until I graduated triggered a violent psychosis that caused me to lash out.

By the time I finished up my degree at Georgia Southern, I had made long-lasting friends, fell in love with a guy in one of my classes, and was pretty content with my life. Even though my relationship didn’t work out with the guy I fell in love with, my therapist said he was an integral part of my recovery because he was a gateway into caring about myself enough to open up and have healthy relationships.

I had to move back to Rome yet again to get job experience, since I had no connections anywhere else and had degrees in things like creative writing and English. When I moved back, I was initially afraid to socialize, because I didn’t think I’d be there long and I associated it with the bad experiences from my adolescence. After a year back home I got lonely, went out, and ran into a guy who picked on me in high school at the only popular bar in Rome. For some reason, I still had anxiety seeing him.

I tried to avoid him all together by not making eye contact and trying to hide behind my friend as he walked by. Instead of catching the hint, he stopped by my table and demanded a hug, which I obliged, awkwardly. Then he plopped down in the chair next to me and we started talking. He asked me how I was doing, where I have been, and all the small talk that people normally have. But unlike his teenage self, he actually seemed genuine. We talked for a while and it wasn’t terrible.

Although he didn’t mention anything about how horrible he was when we were 18, the conversation meant a lot. He made me realize that people can completely change and that Rome was never my problem. I was. It was always me.

Every time there is a high-profile mass shooting or suicide, I see right through the issue because I was, at one point in my life, in the same boat. I know this is an offensive statement to many who have lost children to suicide or have been victims of something as senseless as mass murder. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported suicide was the tenth leading cause of death nationally, it’s not as newsworthy as homicide. A murderous carnage in the process of committing suicide will certainly make the headlines.

Coming from someone who has been accused of being capable of committing a violent crime, there is no motive behind something as senseless as a mass shooting. It is just an excuse. You will never figure out why they did what they did. I’m not sure they even knew.

I know I had no clue what I was capable of—but now I realize I was a ticking time bomb. It had little to do with my parents, nothing to do with my music choices, and I didn’t even play video games. I also had a lot of friends, but I didn’t want to be honest with them or myself. My downfall had everything to do with my own lack of accountability and the fact that I didn’t want to admit to anyone that I needed help.

When I think about what went right with my life, it all came down to the fact that someone cared enough to turn me in. I can sit back and write this, thankful that none of my suicide attempts worked. I am a completely different person and suicide isn’t on my radar. I am happy, and take full accountability for myself by taking charge of my Bipolar disorder and not letting it completely control my life. But if it wasn’t for the arrest and the hard work I put in through therapy, I’m not sure I’d be alive today.

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States and it is the most preventable. For more information visit this site or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-Talk.

MaryLyne Manson-Gosling is a writer from Georgia and is working on her first book.

@MLR1985