anniversary
one year ago today, i was admitted to hospital for self-injury. it was the first time i had ever been hospitalized and it was itself an overwhelming experience. i therefore found myself having to confront a serious self injury AND being admitted to a psychiatric facility simultaneously.
i remember knowing that my injuries were not significant; i didn’t need stitches. i did, however, know that i needed HELP. i knew that because i was unable to work…calling in sick day after day so that i could stare at the walls and engage in self injurious behavior. i remember feeling so hopeless and sad and wretched and nothing made any sense to me. my therapy was going nowhere and i had been trying med after med and nothing was working.
i had gone numb to everything.
i finally called my pdoc to tell him how much i was struggling, he advised me to go to hospital and he was going to get me into the best facility he could.
the next day, all i had to do was to get myself there.
that was a very difficult journey and i almost turned back. somehow i made it, though, and got myself admitted.
being admitted to hospital is a very exhausting process, and it took me better than three hours to go through it. by the time i made it to the borderline ward, it was time for bed. i barely had time to meet my roommate before lights out.
i was in the in-patient program for two weeks and the out-patient program for another two-weeks.
looking back on the experience, i have to wonder how i feel about it. a part of me is still worried about the stigma of having been hospitalized. but the greater part of me feels like i got a great deal of benefit from it.
while i wasn’t “cured,” from the experience; i did *finally* confront some major issues that had been exacerbating my already exhausted nerves. by confronting those issues in such a raw way, it cleared the path for me to make some radical changes.
i know that i still have a great deal of work to do, and i won’t lie and say that i haven’t had some serious set backs, but i can say that i have made some progress from where i was a year ago.
so i won’t be cracking out the bubbly (not on *these* meds) and throwing a big party, i can say that this is a happy-ish anniversary.
