WARNING: This story (including this chapter) is about a suicide attempt and a visit to a hospital.  Although it is fan fiction, it is also loosely based on my experiences growing up as a suicidal and mentally ill.  I'm doing well now, so don't worry about me.  But if you have issues related to suicide, self-harm, or the mental health system, you might want to consider whether you are OK to read it.

This story is inspired by my suicidal past and subsequent hospitalizations and is retold through the perspective of the Batman villainess Poison Ivy.  I noticed how all the criminals end up in Arkham Asylum in almost every version of the series, but its portrayal of mental illness and the mental health system is incredibly inaccurate.  So I decided to write a story about a well-known comic book character who goes through a much more realistic journey through the system and recovery.  I have changed some things to make it more coherent and representative of a comic book alternate universe.  But there are actually a lot of details that were not changed.  For example, I did have to wear a revealing hospital gown and ugly socks that were soaked in urine because someone decided to pee on the floor.  I did get asked a lot of questions and did become numb to explaining my story despite the fact that it was very traumatic.

However, there are some things that are different.  The main difference is that Poison Ivy was very rebellious and sarcastic.  I was sort of like that at first, but I wasn't quite as aggressive and rude.  The other major difference is that I was sent to the hospital four times as an adolescent while this version of the story takes people when Poison Ivy was a young adult.

There is a lot of profanity in this and the coming chapters due to realism.  I was never really that vulgar, but I feel that people in the real world do say bad words, and it should add to the accuracy.

I hope you like it, and I am interested in critiques!


Chapter 1:

Love is Its Own Kind of Poison - Chapter 1Chapter One
Fuck You, Paul Blart
"So why did you try to kill yourself?" asked the brunette woman with the medical tag around her neck, tapping her cheap pen on a clipboard.  The room was small and dimly lit with fluorescent lights with white walls that gave me an eerie sense of lifelessness and extremely detached impersonality.  It also smelled like old urine, and the door wasn't closed.  So much for "confidentiality."
I crossed my arms.  "I told you and everyone else already.  I don't know.  I just did."  I didn't even care anymore.  It had come to the point where I lost count how many times I had tried.  There seemed be an unlimited supply of mental health professionals and social workers bothering me all day and all night.  It was hard to sleep in the bed with its thin white sheets and rock hard mattress, but I still just wanted to be alone or at least just not bored.
"Oh come on, Pamela.  This isn't your first tim

Chapter 2
Love is Its Own Kind of Poison - Chapter 2Chapter Two
How But Not Why
It was 3 AM.  I hadn't slept for three days.  I wanted to wanted to rest my eyes, but my body wouldn't allow me to rest.  So I worked for days on end, barely eating.  Most people would say that I was alone, but I wasn't.  I was with Nightshade, Belladonna, Oleander, Sumac. . . . I had a name for all my plants because I always considered them my most precious friends.  I used to work at a pharmaceutical company, trying to make cures for the sick and the disabled.  However, once I had gotten enough funding and resources, the only thing I could ever do with plants was make poisons.  I tried to do better.  I planted herbs and exotic flowers, but they would all either die before blooming or turn into something that could kill a full-grown elephant.  Eventually, they took away my funding and my job.  The companies that were willing to hire me were usually interested only in pesticides and gen

Chapter 3
Love is Its Own Kind of Poison - Chapter 3Chapter Three
Natural
 
            I couldn’t sleep that night.  I would like to say it was out of protest or because I smelled like piss and death or that the bed felt as hard as a tombstone.  But that wasn’t the case.  Some fucking albino idiot was screaming and yelling.  He was really goddamn creepy.  His skin was pale, and his red eyes glistened with a strange combination of lifelessness and manic euphoria.  He had really weird reactions to all the staff there, including the security guards.  Drew the social worker (or whatever shit title she had) spent a long time interviewing him.  I remembered how dumb she was.
            “What is your name?” she asked, tapping her pen on the clipboard like always.
            “What is your name?