Summer Krafft Archives | The ManifestStation

There Are Ghosts Here

January 9, 2017

By Summer Krafft

This is what being his daughter has always looked like: trying to keep a panic attack silent in a room that does not lock.

There are ghosts here.

Outside the door is a hallway. At the end of the hallway are two doors and a staircase. Down the staircase, there is The Man –The Man who has always seemed more wolf than man. And I am back here, in response to his call. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “It’s bad,” he said. “You need to come immediately,” he said. “It’s not the kind of thing you tell your daughter over the phone.” So I boarded the plane across the country. When we got to the house, I inhaled a sharp breath before walking through the front door, the one I had walked through so often as a child.

I hadn’t seen him since he’d had the strokes. Memory began to make its way back in and I needed to keep as much space between his hands and my body as possible. When I got there, I noticed the way his left leg dragged when he walked. I noticed how often he lost his words -The Man who made a career on language, suddenly wordless. I noticed the storm clouds forming in his eyes. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Mental Health

Small Deaths and Small Magic

March 28, 2016

Trigger warning: This essay discusses suicidal ideation.

By Summer Krafft

He stood there, the oddness of a boy turned statue, at the end of the hallway. The light filtering through the window outlined his silhouette as he stared through the glass. It was the only window in the place.

Sometimes I say I don’t remember getting there, but it’s not true. What is true is that sometimes I cannot bear to tell it. The doctors said what they could to make it plain: suicidal ideations. They wanted it to seem as if I could explain my being there in two words, as if it were simple.

I think a better way of saying it is that I dreamt of making a blood masterpiece with the sharp kiss of knives against my snow skin. Which is another way of saying I already knew how to dry-swallow a handful of little chemical marbles. Which is another way of saying I was not afraid of drowning; it seemed just like the returning to a before-birth, to a time of not being.

I guess that’s how I got there, to Heritage Oaks Adolescent Psychiatric Facility. The place with the stark white walls and impossibly long hallway lined with doorways –no actual doors– two patients inside each of them, a large window overlooking a dumpster at the end. The place that smelled of Lysol, Jello, unwashed teens, and dried blood. The place where there was always someone crying or screaming or begging to go home, echoing like childhood lost. A place where I ended and began.

My memory of this place is anchored in the people: Maddy, who was fifteen and hospitalized there for her fourth suicide attempt. Elaine, the biggest and meanest twelve-year-old I’ve ever seen who just kept singing ‘This is the Song that Never Ends.” Xenia, who was both the prettiest and the saddest of all of us, who would sneak into the room of the boy who liked to punch holes in the walls. Stacey, my roommate, who stared at me while I tried to sleep and did not speak and had the habit of ripping off her bra and flinging it across the room when she got upset. Jason, who was there because his mother thought he was going to kill his sister. When I asked him if she was right, he gritted his teeth, jaw flexing like a small murder, averted his eyes, and shook his head no. I couldn’t tell if he was about to cry. I didn’t have the energy to be scared of him. I was there for my own momentum hurling me towards death. I was there because no one who loved me could trust me to be alone with my own hands. Continue Reading…