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.
The wondrous truth of Electroconvulsive Therapy.
Finishing up on the bike I head to my room and shower, again marvelling at how a task that drained so much energy not long ago can so quickly become part of my normal routine again. At 12:30pm I head down the hall to the treatment room, ready to go in. Despite it being my third time now there is still a sense of anxiety about the process, the seeming seriousness of it all. For such an incredible treatment, the fact that they aren't even sure how it works induces both apprehension and wonder in me. I also start to worry about how much my memory will be affected this time, what I will forget next. Already I can't remember the names of anyone new I meet, and I find myself all too often walking into rooms and in the middle of doing things not knowing why. Still, I'll take that over how I used to feel.
A day in the life of benzodiazepine withdrawal.
Lying there as the world spins, I am engulfed by a level of anxiety and fear I haven't experienced in a long time. Not only is my heart racing, breathing shallow, and chest as tight as ever, but I have this overwhelming sense of fear, although I'm not actually sure what of. Mentally, it is like I am in the first scene of a horror movie, unsure of what is about to unfold, on constant guard. Physically, It is like someone has plugged me into the wall socket and is slowly turning up the volts to see how much I can handle. I am at the point where my hair feels like it is being pulled from my skull by an unknown force, and every muscle in my body is twitching to a rhythm no one else can hear.
