January 4, 2021: What I Remember and What Followed

Before that night

I was at a very low point during my sophomore year. I remember being bullied throughout high school, having few friends, and living with a difficult home life. What happened on January 4 did not begin a history of fear for me. It happened within one. To explain my own actions that night, including the times I pushed and struck my father, I need to explain how I had already been trying to protect myself.

When I was younger, I generally endured my parents’ physical treatment without knowing how to stop it. Around the end of eighth grade and the transition into ninth grade, approximately 2019, I began trying more actively to protect my body. Those school year and age references are approximate. One warning sign was seeing my father start to remove his belt. I would run upstairs to my bedroom and put on as many layers as I could find: shorts, sweatpants, jeans, sweatshirts, and other clothing.

Sometimes I pushed hardcover schoolbooks inside the front and back of my pants. I was trying to put something between the belt and my skin. I remember my father coming upstairs slowly enough that I had time to do this. I felt that he knew what I was doing, although I cannot know what he was thinking. The time before he reached my room was time I used to prepare for being hurt.

He would bang on my bedroom door and tell me to open it. I was frightened enough that I usually did. I remember being pushed onto the floor or the bed, having the books forcibly removed, and being made to take off the extra clothing. Then came repeated belt strikes while I cried and screamed. Both of my parents participated in versions of these incidents. I did not witness my younger sisters being treated in the same way.

There were also occasions when I picked up a belt myself and held it while a parent stood in the doorway holding another belt. For me, that was a bluff. I hoped that looking as though I could defend myself would make them stop. I did not strike them with the belt. Sometimes they backed away. More often, I remember being overpowered, having the belt taken from me, being ordered to drop it, or still being struck.

I sometimes pushed my parents away during earlier incidents. It would therefore be inaccurate to say I had never made physical contact with them before January 4. The distinction I remember is that January 4 was the first time I struck back in a way that visibly hurt my father. I do not want to leave my own actions out of this account or remove the circumstances in which they happened.

Read about my earlier attempts to protect myself ↗

Read my account of my relationship with my mother ↗

Four friends and a game

At the beginning of sophomore year, in fall 2020, I had become close with three friends. We played video games together online on PlayStation 4. After school and after finishing my schoolwork, I could spend hours playing with them. Those hours were an escape. Being able to talk, laugh, and do something with friends was one of the times I felt most comfortable at home.

January 4 was a few days after New Year’s. The four of us were playing Rocket League in a two against two game and talking through our headsets. I remember it being my first time playing the game. I found it difficult, and one of my friends was much better than I was. We were joking, laughing, and reacting to what was happening on screen.

I was too loud for a little after 11 p.m. I sometimes shouted a reaction while laughing. My father initially yelled at me to be quieter. Between the headphones and my concentration on the game, I had not been paying attention to how loud I was. After his warning, I tried to lower my voice. Then something else happened in the game, and I reacted loudly again without thinking.

I can acknowledge that I was making noise late at night without understanding what happened next as an acceptable response to it. I was a teenager playing a game. That noise is part of the sequence I remember, and so is my attempt to be quieter after the warning.

What I remember in the bedroom

I remember my father returning upstairs with a power drill and beginning to drill into my PS4 while yelling. I was terrified. The console mattered to me partly because it connected me to those three friends and to a part of my life that felt like a refuge. I tried to push him away from it. He was much larger than I was, and when the first push did not stop him, I pushed harder.

My recollection is that I weighed approximately 125 pounds at the time. I estimate that my father weighed more than 250 pounds and was considerably taller than me. Those are remembered estimates, not measurements I can establish here. I remember him slapping and pushing me. I climbed onto my bed because I was frightened and wanted to be above him rather than below him.

While I was on the bed, I remember him pushing me into the wall and continuing to strike me. He then forced me onto my back at the foot of the bed. My head hung over the end, and the back of my neck was against the wooden bed frame.

I remember his hands around my throat. I was wearing a chain necklace, and I remember him also tightening or pulling that chain against my neck. I tried to push him off, but I could not breathe properly. In that position, I believed I was about to die. I was afraid that my father might kill me. That is the fear I remember feeling, not a claim that I can establish his intent or a medical conclusion about what was happening to my body.

He leaned toward me while yelling, and I remember spit reaching my face. I struck his nose with my forehead as hard as I could. I was trying to get free. He moved away from the bed and stood in the middle of the room holding his nose. I was crying and trying to catch my breath.

I stood up on the bed again. He approached, grabbed my clothing, and threw me off the bed onto the floor. I remember the impact as so forceful that it felt as though the house shook. That is how it felt to me, not a measurement of what happened to the building.

I got up quickly as he approached again. I was crying and breathing heavily, struggling after being choked, struck, and thrown. My headset and microphone were on the floor. I understood that my three friends, who were still on the call, could hear the screaming and the sounds coming through the microphone. I cannot speak for exactly what each of them heard or understood.

Read the wider account of my relationship with my father ↗

The floor, the restraint, and the police

After I had been thrown from the bed and stood up, I swung a fist toward my father’s upper chest or head. His height, his size, and the position of his arms made reaching his face difficult. The punch connected to some extent, but I do not remember it significantly moving him or stopping him. I do not know what he was thinking. I wondered whether being struck back shocked or enraged him, but I cannot know that. What I remember is that the violence continued.

I remember him grabbing my clothing or upper body, slamming me onto the floor, getting on top of me, and continuing to strike me. At one point I was on my back with my arms trapped by his legs. I struck him with my forehead again, this time around his jaw. That was a second head strike, separate from the one to his nose while I was at the foot of the bed.

My panic kept escalating. I was crying, screaming, and breathing rapidly, but I could not seem to catch my breath. I remember losing sensation first in my toes and fingers, then farther up my legs and through my body. My hands cramped and stiffened or drew into positions I could not control. It became difficult to speak. I could make little sound beyond gasping and rapid breathing. These are the symptoms I remember, without a medical explanation for their cause.

There was a restraint I have called a full Nelson. I cannot resolve the exact wrestling terminology, but I can describe what I remember. I was on or near my knees, with my arms and upper body trapped. His arms were around my shoulders and under or around my armpits, and his hands were positioned behind my head. I remember him facing or leaning over me and forcing my head and upper body downward. The way my arms were held prevented me from pushing away or effectively defending myself. I kept trying to escape and felt completely powerless.

I remember his weight pressing onto me and the top of my head or my forehead being forced repeatedly into the wooden bedroom floor. I struggled to move, speak, and breathe normally. I was frightened that I would lose consciousness or die. I cannot establish a medical measure of that danger. I can describe how trapped and afraid I felt while it was happening.

I do not remember exactly when my mother reached the room or the hallway. I remember hearing her scream and cry for my father to stop. He continued, and she called the police. I remember the police station being only a few minutes away and officers arriving quickly. Her attempt to stop him is part of this account, even alongside the other harm I describe in my relationship with her.

When officers entered the room, I remember my father still restraining me with my face or head toward the floor. The head impacts had stopped by then, but I was still being held down. My father told the officers that I had become violent, attacked him, and needed to be restrained because I was out of control. I felt that his explanation made me the aggressor in their eyes, while I was still on the floor struggling with what had just happened.

He eventually got off me as additional officers arrived. My recollection of the other people arriving is less certain. I think my maternal aunt and uncle may also have come to the house. I remember or believe that my aunt took my two younger sisters away around 11:30 p.m. to midnight. I am not certain about that timing or every person who was there. As far as I know, my sisters did not see the events inside the bedroom, although they could hear screaming and loud impacts.

After the restraint ended, I remember lying curled on the floor, unable to move normally, panicking and hyperventilating. My estimate is that the severe episode and emergency response extended roughly forty five to ninety minutes, but I cannot give an exact duration. That estimate is not a precisely timed period of continuous restraint.

I remember bruises and pain on my arms, elbows, legs, body, forehead, and head. I remember marks on my neck that I associated with his hands and my necklace. I had never felt so injured and painful throughout my body before. I felt close to passing out. Those are my remembered observations and sensations. I am not adding a scan result, a fracture, or an injury measurement that I do not have.

Read about my mother’s intervention that night ↗

Leaving the house and being examined

Police and ambulance personnel took me from the house to a hospital against my wishes. I remember being examined after I was able to breathe more normally and calm down. I cannot give a complete account of every step between the emergency assessment and psychiatric admission. I do not have an exact admission time or a transfer route to provide.

The psychiatric facility I remember was Saint Clare’s Behavioral Health in New Jersey. I am not identifying a particular campus or unit without records. My experience is my own, and I do not speak for other patients or suggest that this website is affiliated with the hospital.

On arrival, I remember feeling dehydrated and close to collapsing. During a blood draw, I remember four unsuccessful attempts to access a vein. My veins were usually prominent, which made those attempts confusing and especially painful to me. I do not know the clinical reason for the difficulty, and I cannot turn my remembered feeling of dehydration into a measured medical finding.

I remember staff examining my body, noting injuries, asking questions, and asking me to explain what had happened. I told them the sequence as I remembered it. My statement that staff noted injuries is a recollection of the encounter.

At that age, I did not yet understand what I had experienced at home as abuse. I did not fully recognize it that way until I was eighteen. I had thought that this treatment might be normal, while also being confused that it did not appear to happen to my sisters. The words I use for it now are not necessarily the words I knew to use then.

My understanding was that the account coming from my parents, police, and emergency responders described me as the violent person. It included, as I understood it, a claim that I had attacked my mother. I deny attacking her that night. I felt that my explanation was not believed. I cannot say that every individual involved independently reached the same conclusion or knew the same details.

My First Admission to Saint Clare’s Behavioral Health

According to my recollection, child protection services had not previously been involved in my life and did not become involved during this first admission. I was not aware of an investigation into possible physical abuse at that point. I cannot know every action someone may have taken behind the scenes, but the involvement I later experienced had not yet begun.

The next morning, Tuesday, I remember being told that I could go home on Thursday if I began taking the proposed medication. I refused. I kept saying that the problem was what was happening with my parents and at home, not something wrong with me. When I remember saying there was nothing wrong with me, I am describing what I said and believed then. I am not offering an independent medical assessment of myself at that age.

I was also begging not to be sent back to my parents. Those two things happened together: I did not want to take the medication, and I did not feel safe going home. I was not refusing medication because I wanted to get home faster. I was trying to explain why returning home frightened me.

I was not discharged that Thursday. I remember remaining for approximately fourteen days. At the time, I understood the extension to be connected to my refusal to take medication. I also believed that the hospital could not keep me beyond two weeks. I understood at the time that I could not be kept longer, although I have not verified the legal reason the stay ended when it did. I am not saying that fourteen days is a universal legal limit.

Throughout that stay, I continued refusing medication and repeatedly asked not to return to my parents. At the same time, being away from home allowed me to feel physically safer. I could eat more comfortably, socialize, and feel more able to be myself. Those experiences mattered to me, even though I did not want to be in a psychiatric hospital.

The hospital also exposed me to conversations and experiences involving suicide, self harm, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and psychiatric distress that I had not previously understood. I remember being frightened by what I encountered and feeling that it changed my mental wellbeing for the worse. The relief of being physically away from home and the distress of being in that environment were both real parts of my experience. I cannot honestly make the stay sound entirely safe or entirely unsafe.

When I was told I had to leave, I cried and begged to stay longer. I was nevertheless discharged to my parents. I do not know all the considerations behind that decision. What I remember is asking not to go home and then having to return.

The brief return home and a second admission

When I entered the house and saw my father, I immediately panicked. He had not yet said or done anything to me on that occasion. Seeing him was enough. I ran upstairs into my bedroom, closed and locked the door, and moved furniture and my bed in front of it.

I put on my skateboard helmet and protective pads. I added layers of clothes and put books inside my clothing, drawing on the ways I had tried to protect myself before. I huddled on the floor in a corner, crying and panicking. I was afraid of being physically hurt again. The helmet, pads, clothes, books, and barricade were attempts to protect my body.

My parents yelled and banged on the door. They called the police and reported that I might kill myself. I was not trying or intending to do that. I had only recently encountered the concept of suicide during the preceding hospitalization. I understood myself to be trying to prevent another attack, not to be trying to end my life.

I remember moving the furniture and opening the door only once police were outside my room. I allowed them in. I do not remember every detail that followed, but I remember being returned to the same psychiatric hospital within approximately two hours of having been discharged. That timing is an estimate. The return home was brief enough that it scarcely felt like a separation between the stays, but these were two distinct admissions.

By then, I had missed approximately two weeks of school and had not been in ordinary contact with my friends. The last thing those three friends had heard during our game on January 4 was the shouting, screaming, and sounds coming through my headset. I do not know what they may have told anyone afterward, and I am not supplying statements on their behalf.

Child protection services became involved only after this second admission, according to my recollection. I remember remaining in the hospital for another approximately two weeks, continuing to refuse medication, and asking not to be sent home. Together, the two stays made approximately four weeks, interrupted by that brief return to the house. The first admission alone was not a four week stay.

Return to the child protection chapter in the main story ↗

When child protection became involved

During the second stay, I understood that my parents were being investigated. I remember being told, or coming to understand, that investigators were speaking with family members. My understanding was that this included my parents, my siblings, and relatives in town, and that the home was visited. I did not personally observe all of those conversations or visits. Some of what I believe happened comes from what I was told, and some is my assumption about the process.

I use the words child protection services here because I still need to confirm the exact agency name and actions from records. I have used different acronyms when telling my story, but I am not describing separate investigations by two different agencies. The involvement I remember belongs to the period beginning with the second admission.

Our house looked clean and attractive. It had four levels, a large backyard, and family photographs throughout. To me, the appearance of that home concealed what I experienced inside it. I believe my parents denied the treatment I described and presented the family as normal. That is my understanding and interpretation, not a claim that I have seen an investigative report explaining what they said or why a decision was made.

I felt that nobody was standing up for me and that people did not understand what had happened privately. That describes how alone I felt. It does not mean I can establish that no supportive person, witness, or relevant record existed. I did not have a complete view of everything taking place while I was in the hospital.

My grandparents’ apartment and the return home

After the second stay of approximately two weeks, I was sent to my grandparents’ apartment in the same town, not far from my parents. I remember living there for about a week before returning to my parents’ home around February 4, 2021. Child protection workers continued visiting me and my grandparents. My understanding was that they also continued visiting my parents and other family members.

I returned to my parents’ home around February 4, 2021, approximately a week after being discharged to my grandparents. Eventually, I understood that the case had closed without the outcome or protection I had hoped for. I cannot establish the formal finding or the language used to close it. I am not describing that outcome as an official exoneration, a substantiated finding, or a finding that no abuse occurred.

Neither parent physically hurt me again after that intervention, according to my recollection. I believe their awareness of the investigation and the possibility of further scrutiny was part of the reason. That explanation is my interpretation. I cannot establish their motives. I remember verbal, emotional, and psychological mistreatment continuing after the physical treatment stopped.

The order matters to me: January 4, then a first hospital admission of approximately two weeks, then discharge home, then panic and a return to the hospital within approximately two hours. A second admission of approximately two weeks followed. Child protection became involved during that second phase. Afterward came about a week with my grandparents and then a return to my parents’ home around February 4, 2021. These were different stages, even though living through them felt like one long period of losing control over where I could be.

Read about the later experiences I describe with my mother ↗

Read about the silence and aftermath in my relationship with my father ↗

The hospitalizations and labels that followed

Over the following years, I remember approximately eight psychiatric hospitalizations against my wishes, with stays generally lasting approximately two to six weeks. I have sometimes described that history in ways that could be read as eight different hospitals. I have not established that they were eight distinct facilities. The number I can give here is my recollection of approximately eight hospitalizations, pending a fuller review of the records.

I remember being prescribed or tried on more than thirty medications over roughly four years. That is my recollection, not a verified pharmacy count. I still need to reconcile the number and sequence. I do not want the lack of an exact list to become a reason to invent drug names or doses.

I remember my parents describing me as bipolar or manic when police were called. I felt that my own explanations were discounted. I believe some of those reports were false and were used to remove me from the home. That is my account of what was being said and how I experienced it. It is not an independent finding that every admission lacked clinical grounds.

I place the formal bipolar diagnosis roughly two to three years before 2026, although I need to confirm the date. I am referring to the bipolar diagnosis I remember receiving, not identifying a particular subtype. My last hospitalization began in or around June 2024. I remember it lasting about a month, and elsewhere I have described it as approximately five weeks. I do not have exact admission and discharge dates to resolve that difference.

The years after January 4 were not only a sequence of hospital stays. They were also years of trying to explain myself and feeling that a label could speak louder than I could. My account of later police calls, building my business, and the bank encounter appears in the page about my mother. Those experiences belong to the longer aftermath, but I do not want to invent a precise chronology where I have not yet confirmed one.

Read about building my business and the later police calls ↗

Read about the encounter outside the bank ↗

Medication, a recent reassessment, and how I feel now

After the 2024 hospitalization, I took two psychiatric medications for approximately two years. I experienced the doses as very strong. I felt emotionally dulled, detached, and like a zombie. Over time, that feeling became normal to me. I internalized the belief that I had to take the medication because I was bipolar, and that failing to take it would make me a bad person. That was a belief I carried about myself, not a judgment about other people who take psychiatric medication.

During one of my hospital experiences, I remember a serious reaction after taking a medication. My throat felt as though it was swelling or closing, I lost consciousness, and staff intervened. I am not certain whether my life was in danger. I cannot identify the cause or call it a confirmed allergy or anaphylaxis. I am not assigning it to Saint Clare’s, January 2021, or any particular medication because I have not established those details.

During 2026, a clinician in Chicago supervised a gradual reduction of my medication over approximately six months, with changes roughly every two weeks. I remember each reduction making me feel clearer, more emotionally present, more alive, and more like myself. These were changes I describe as clinician supervised. I am recounting my experience, not telling anyone else to stop, reduce, or replace their own treatment.

A team of 5 clinicians across 2 practices worked with me over 6 months and told me, 1 day before I published this website, that the bipolar diagnosis was not correct and identified PTSD and ADHD instead. That is what I was told and diagnosed with, not a conclusion independently verified by this website.

It would be too broad for me to say that I never had any mental illness. The change I am describing is that the team of clinicians told me the bipolar diagnosis was not correct and identified PTSD and ADHD instead. Hearing that changed how I understood a label I had lived with and felt had been used against me. The emotional significance of that conversation does not make this website an independent medical assessment.

At the time of writing, I am off the psychiatric medications described in this account and use supplements. I feel healthier, happier, clearer, and calmer in stressful situations. That is my personal report of how I feel now. I am not claiming that supplements treat PTSD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, or any other condition, and I am not recommending a product or a replacement for medical care.

Why I am telling this story now

The recent reassessment is one of the reasons I feel ready to publish my story. I have been working toward telling it throughout 2026. That does not mean the website has been publicly online for that entire time. It means I have been trying to find a way to put my experiences into words, revisit the label I lived with, and feel that my life belongs to me.

What I want to leave a reader with is not only what happened in that bedroom or in the years afterward. After leaving, I began to feel love for myself and for my life in a way I had not been able to before. Chicago, Samara, my friends, the family I found, my business, my apartment, my activities, and my hobbies became parts of a life I wanted to be present for.

The main story follows that movement from New Jersey to Chicago and from fear toward a life that feels like my own. These detailed pages explain the experiences behind it. They are not a request for anyone to contact or harass the people I describe. I am telling my story because I want to own it, and because the life I built after leaving is part of the truth I want to tell. I found my way home.

Return to the family I found in the main story ↗

Read about the life I am building now ↗