A journey of finding peace in hospital.
Alone in my room, I look at my list of things to do each day. I tick off the things I have done, fill in my food diary, and decide study and my training diary can wait until tomorrow when I am not so tired. Curling up in bed, I am lonely, but that's okay. I am in the process of learning to feel safe in my own company; to love myself through all the struggles I have, and to not fight back against the waves of emotion that come and go. Yes I am living in a psychiatric hospital, but that is okay. I am where I need to be to feel safe enough to explore where I am at in life. I have the support and tools available to make the difficult task of completely opening myself up and facing my true self possible. I sit with my loneliness, recognising that what I am doing is hard, and that although the pattern I had gotten into of denying my feelings seemed easier in the short term, over time the denial will lead me away from who I am.
Living with psychosis.
I end up back in the corner again, the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of my head against the wall continuing. I hear them coming back, but there are more of them this time. I watch in petrified horror as I am approached by six nurses, all of whom look like giants from my position on the floor. I am picked up as I thrash about, kicking and biting and screaming. They must have got permission to knock me out. I find myself on the bed and it is in this moment the me that has been floating is reconnected with my body. All I can see is people all around me, all holding me down to the bed. One for each limb, and one for my head, then on the count of three they flip me over, pull my pants part-way down and the sixth nurse injects something into my glute. Quick as a flash, they leave.
A day in life at a private psychiatric hospital.
Here, among people that understand and nurses that see this every day, I don't have to pretend. I don't have to smile and put on a show to keep others happy. I don't have to ever say the words 'I'm fine' to prevent the looks of worry and pity that do nothing to help and everything to make me feel like a horrible human being for not being able to deal with life. I am able to make friends with the people here, laughing as we smoke and try to form circles with the smoke as we breathe out, then minutes later crying in the corner on my own without anyone batting an eyelid. That's normal here. Good even, it shows that somewhere inside me I'm feeling something. My friend sits beside me in silence then when I'm done whispers, 'I wish I could cry again'.