Brief(ish) foreword:

My girlfriend (18) and I (20) met in college and have been dating for about 5 months now. We get along great and have been nearly inseparable for almost the entire duration of our relationship. We moved extremely fast, and have had long talks about the possibility of marriage, but we have concluded that we are neither financially ready, nor mature enough to handle getting married this young. There have been very few real strains on our relationship thus far, except one: her parents. Her parents are a very pious, mormon family (as was my GF, but has since left strayed from the church over the past year or so). Her parents do not like that she is dating a non-mormon, but they seem to accept that I'm an okay guy, but would absolutely cringe at the prospect of us getting married.

About three months ago, my GF decided to tell her parents she was no longer attending church. They responded by completely disowning her. They took her car, health insurance, stopped paying for her tuition, and said she was no longer welcome in their house. We were both okay with this at first, we both have jobs so we got by. I gave her rides to work, she had an apartment paid for on scholoarship and since the semester is over, she is no longer in school. The health insurance is actually a very big deal, however. She has had a multitude of extremely serious medical issues over the past several years, including a very bad gastrointestinal disorder that has remained undiagnosed to this day. They blame her for breaking up their family and she felt horrible about it, even though I assured her it was not her fault. After several weeks of fighting, she eventually gave in and started going to church again (I'm absolutely fine with this, if she truly wanted to rejoin the church I would stand behind her 100%, but she has made it very clear she wants nothing to do with the mormon church in any way). It was mostly so she could have a place to live once her apartment lease expired for the summer, and that she wouldn't have to pay $3000 for a potentially life-saving colonoscopy for her undiagnosed disorder. Several times over the past 3 months, she would get fed up with her parents constantly harping on her for not living 100% by mormon standards and kick her out. This cycle keeps repeating itself.

Fast forward to yesterday:

After a particularly bad fight with her parents, extremely distraught, my GF stormed out and ingested a ton of perscription pain pills (The pain pills she was perscribed were not serious opiates or anything, they were practically perscription aspirin). She called me a bunch of times but I didn't pick up because I was at work. After work, I see that I have three new voicemails, each one of her audibly crying on the phone and saying she was sorry and that she hopes I am not mad and that she loves me. I'm very freaked out at this point and frantically call/text her with no response. She texts back some time later saying "I will call soon". At about 3:30 this morning she finally called from the psych ward of a hospital an hour and a half away and explained the fight and that her parents had her admitted. I don't think she was trying to kill herself, but she is very inexperienced with drugs and I think she was simply trying to calm herself down and didn't know what would happen. I'm assuming she passed out or something and her parents found her, but I honestly have no clue how this situation came to a head. I have not been able to speak with her since this morning and have no idea what to do or think at this point. The hospital she is at has very specific visitation times and I am planning on going first thing tomorrow to check on her.

I feel absolutely awful and feel like I caused this situation. More often than not, the fights with her parents are about the fact that she is dating me and her dad refuses to speak with me in person. My GF has also begged me not to confront her parents because "it would only make things worse". If I'd known something like this would've happened, I'd have given her parents a piece of my mind sooner.

TL;DR: GF's mormon parents hate me and caused my GF to swallow a shitload of pills, admitted her to a psych ward and it's probably my fault. I feel like shit.

I've been deaf since birth and there are lot of "sound words" that I read a lot but don't really know what they mean, and dictionary definitions often just refer to other sound words. It's never mattered to me before, but now I'm trying to write a novel with one hearing narrator and every time I use a sound word I'm not sure I'm using it right. I posted awhile ago to /r/writing about "scream", "shout" and "yell" but I've generated a list of questions so I thought I should take it to a larger audience.

• People crying in sadness vs crying out in anger, I know there's some gray area in between where they can be used interchangeably, it's hard to get
• "shriek" and "ream" are both words that seem to imply emotion more than any specific sound. Is that right?
• Can any sound be described as "piercing" if it's loud and annoying? Like thunder for example.
• apparently people use "ejaculates" as a dialogue tag?!?! It seems to mean "to say suddenly or without warning" (or does it just mean "interrupt"?), but the more normal use of "ejaculates" doesn't imply that at all. I don't know if this is a deaf thing or maybe I'm just dense. Does sound have something to do with this?
• What does "jive" mean? Does "he speaks jive" and "he speaks AAVE" and "he speaks Ebonics" all refer to the same thing? I was raised by black parents but I can't understand any dialogue written in black dialect. I know not all black people talk like that but is there a way to mark that in a novel? Do you know of a webpage that would tell me how to translate dialogue into dialect like that?
• Are "stammer" and "stutter" synonymous?
• What about "chat"? Dictionary says "to speak informally" but I feel like it implies something I'm not getting. Is it speaking fast? Can you use "chat" as a dialogue tag? (like "What are you doing tonight?' he chatted"), I don't think I've seen it but the dictionary makes it sound like you can.
• "mumbling" sometimes implies apathy but other times hostility. Is that right? That's weird because it connotes opposites. What does it sound like? Is it synonymous with whispering?
• I know cats "meow", dogs "bark" and cows "moo" but what does these words mean when used in other contexts? Sometimes other animals are described with the same sounds, like I think foxes bark which makes sense because they're like dogs but I think I've heard dolphins described as barking too. That's weird. Does a dolphin and a dog really make the same sound?
• "howl" is just for animals except "howling in pain" right? Is a dog's howl just a long bark or does it sound different? Do different dogs sound different? What if they're the same size and breed? "Chirp" and "squawk" were originally animal noises but are now used in other contexts right? I don't know what they mean really. Birds and mice do them both interchangeably, that's as specific as I know. And I think bats chirp but never squawk? Is there a chart somewhere showing which animals make which sounds? Like, can a weasel growl? What about bears? Bears look like the kind of animal that should "growl" but I feel like I've never seen that written and Google doesn't show a lot of usage.
• Do all doors creak? Can all doors be slammed? Windows? Does "slam" always imply loudness? Do you always slam doors when you're mad? Do deaf people slam doors when they're mad? (I don't think so, but if it's just a function of being mad I might do it and not notice because I'm mad). People say "he slammed that beer" to mean chugged, that's silent right? Or does it mean "gurgle" in that sense?
• "Gurgle" is another hard one. And "gargle", that means something different right?
• "Ring", like "ringtone" is hard to get. What else "rings"? Cell phones sound different from landlines, right? People sometimes describe them as "chirping"?
• Dictionary says "click" is "A short, sharp sound as of a switch being operated or of two hard objects coming quickly into contact." but I feel like I've seen it in other uses, it's hard to remember exactly what I'm thinking of. But could I use it to describe cymbals, pennies or pencils hitting each other?
• If a voice is described as "tender", what does that mean?
• "moan" can be painful or sexy right? Anything else? Is it possible to moan joyously or humorously?
• "cooing" What is that? Is there a difference between a woman "moaning sexy" and "cooing sexy"?
• Apparently it's possible to "whisper" loudly and "shout" softly? WTF!?

Thanks for answering any questions you can!

Edit: Thanks, people are answering too quick for me to really read them all, I'm trying to answer questions though. I'll look over answers more thoroughly as I'm trying to write my book, I'll look at your responses to make sure I'm using my words right. So I may respond to you weeks or months from now.