The Hope of a Swan’s Feather
by: Emily Pinto
Trigger warning: mentions of suicide
“We are no longer giving you a choice.”
I sank into a cold leather chair in the corner of my guidance counselor’s office; it had just become October weather, barely in time for October 1st.
One of my teachers, Mrs. H, sat beside me. She was one of my greatest support systems; she was one of the reasons why I let myself hold on another day, just until another day had become impossible to hold on to.
I felt shame and helplessness drape over me as I whimpered out a single word.
“Voluntary.”
My eyes welled with salty beads from the bottomless ocean of 5% explored emotions.
People wonder why I would want to do this to myself— what a shame for a beautiful swan; but that night, I wasn’t standing at a crossroad. I tried to make what others would call a mistake, but I would call it finding calm waters: no sharks or stingrays, no tsunamis or storms.
The night it happened, September 28th, I fell limp on my bedroom floor, no feeling in my arms or legs; a rope swung lifeless the way I should have. I admired death, though it hadn’t succeeded—just another failure added to my list. The elements of a storm culminated all at once; a swan, seeing its last day reflect again to taunt the next opportunity to find calm waters.
I broke down during Mrs. H’s class three days later, and I told her everything. She came with me to the guidance office, and she stayed with me with a hand to hold when I needed it, while CRISIS came to evaluate me.
After rotting away in my guidance counselor’s chair during my CRISIS evaluation, I was sent to the ER to wait for placement in an adolescent psychiatric hospital. My dad had a portrait of devastation painted on his face. I lay there, the frigid, bare, blue leather “bed” like ice resting against my pale flesh. I felt my sister play with the bed adjustments; my body molded with the changes. She thought it was funny, but her laughs were wilted.
The doors to my hospital room were made of clear glass. I remember them being heavy and difficult to slide open. I sat, watching my family walk out, and the hospital, filled with such kindred and kind souls. The place kept its purpose: saving the lives of people who wanted to be saved, but I couldn’t help but wonder: Why couldn’t I feel like I was worth saving, too?
Everything had been stripped from the room: cabinets were locked, supplies absent, and bedding removed, leaving me with a small and thin white sheet to sleep with. I slept curled up, being awoken often due to the discomfort of the foam mattress and the noise coming from shift changes. I woke up at about 10 a.m. the next day, but I only knew that because they served breakfast. There were no windows; my light switch controlled the a.m. and p.m., creating my own schedule for the world’s rotation just like I always have.
I was trying to listen to the nonsense romance that kept finding its way into the plot of the crime soap opera on the hospital’s television network, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw the nurse from the station walk up to my door. She had a subtle blush to her cheeks, even with seemingly no makeup on. The teeth in her smile looked like she used to use chemical teeth-whitening products, but recently switched to regular Colgate. Her cheeks puffed out just enough to see the joy spring across her face without it being overly animated. She held out her right hand, palm toward the ceiling, and three Expo markers emerged: red, green, and black.
“You can actually draw on the glass with these, but Expo markers are super hard to find, so I tried to take some for you.”
I looked at her, confused at first, but a warm feeling coated my insides with a split second of symptom relief. I was no good at art, but on an impulse, my fingers curled around them all at once. I looked up slightly to mutter the words “thank you,” but she had already walked back to her rolling chair at the nurse’s station to continue a symphony of clicking on the computer.
I pressed the tip of the marker to the glass and watched the line travel in circles, straying strokes, sharp corners, and curved edges. I drew like I was in a world that I could change, one that I could help. It reminded me of the way Mrs. H did that for my world.
A feather floated to me while making something so dark and cold into a place that was just a little bit brighter and a few degrees warmer, the way Mrs. H did.
When I arrived at the inpatient hospital the day after, a girl approached me. She told me that I didn’t look like I would have enough problems to be there; that I looked like I was good at school, pretty, nice, and wasn’t the type of person to go through something like this. I understood what she was saying, but I haven’t forgotten those words. It made me realize how Mrs. H was one of the people I could talk to about what others didn’t get a glimpse of, and that made me appreciate having someone I could go to when I needed support.
We all see such beautiful swans in a lake, but we assume the parts of them we don’t get a glimpse of.
The other adolescents in the hospital with me weren’t “crazy” or “psycho” like the movies portray. The walls were full of color, and the people there were nice. We would all play card games and watch movies on the TV mounted in a large, clear case on the wall while we ate together. It was like living in a little apartment with a bunch of friends who all became family.
Many people assume that no one understands what they are going through, and that makes it difficult to talk to others about vulnerabilities. I was lucky to be able to find people who saw all of me and not one part of me, and that’s when I understood “You’re not alone.” Mrs. H taught me that it wasn’t just a phrase.
In the hospital, psychiatrists put me on a plethora of medications and changed them every other day, and we had hours of group therapy where we would navigate our stress, intrusive thoughts, and healing. I laced the time with moments of gratitude for the people who saved my life, like Mrs. H.
I was released from inpatient on February 24th, and it was hard to say goodbye to the people there who helped me find myself again, but my retreat would allow someone else to find themselves again too.
I am usually seen as a beautiful Swan, but only I know what that truly means because Swans are not merely calm and beautiful. Swans used to be called “Guard Geese” for a reason and are known to have only a single lover for their span of life. Being a Swan means fighting for the sound of a bird song that never stops at all and fighting for the things that spread the hope of a swan’s feather— this makes the beautiful moments bring hope when the world begins to send tidal waves; what makes the love we find on planet Earth so special; and what makes the will to live more than just a reason to stay alive for one more day.
I hope that I keep learning how to make light for those who only see the dark– like Mrs. H did for me. I hope that one day I will be the one thing that leaves someone else with the hope of a Swan’s feather– just like Mrs. H did. I hope that one day, I won’t have to question if I deserve saving too, because I’ll know I’m not alone– like Mrs. H taught me.
Hope won’t come right away for me, or for you. Hope is something you must find, while a fallen feather is something that finds you. But why is hope within a swan’s feather if you must search for one but wait for the other? Living in the stance of a swan is what brings the finding of hope and the deliverance of the feather together.
This is why I decided to become a middle school English teacher— because a teacher saved my life. Someone had told me about the hope of a swan’s feather, and when I found the same words in an Emily Dickinson poem, I decided to make my concentration in English. I remember the places I have been and how far I have come every day that I work with students, and now I strive to be a teacher who can save a student too; I strive to bring them all the hope of a swan’s feather.