mental illness
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I’ve been experiencing an upswing, an increase in hypomanic symptoms. I am not lost in the sauce yet, but I am hearing voices every day if I don’t take a PRN seroquel for it, and my libido is insatiable despite meds commonly known to kill sex drive. In my psychologist appointment with Dr Black this…
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My first few days in the hospital passed in a blur, a fog of medication adjustments, sluggish pacing, and intermittent crying. I felt most suicidal, yet safe. At least that’s what I reported in my daily nursing assessments. It’s a strange juxtaposition of feeling – that given the chance, I would kill myself, yet in…
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I still remember quite clearly my first morning in the hospital. I woke up after restless, fitful sleep, in which I was frequently startled awake by room checks. I just wanted coffee, so I went to the dining room. The kitchen would bring a large carafe of coffee in the mornings and it would be…
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After a couple weeks of seeing Dr Black, I was starting to shut down and sink deeper and deeper into relentless depression and despair. My PHQ and GAD scores couldn’t get any worse. I was calling off work a lot, unable to face anyone or function within the limits of the job description. I made…
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Last fall, almost a year ago exactly, I started hearing voices again. Started to decompensate again. A female voice was telling me to do things, in particular, kill myself. Showed me the 10 dimensions and told me at length about them, where I would go, that only death would free me. I posted previously some…
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“The universe knows. You’re a good person.” No. The universe doesn’t know of our existence. The universe doesn’t care about our existence even if it could know. Justice is not inherent to anything. According to biocentrism, the universe and all within it might not exist at all till it is observed, similar to the results…
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I finished my first week of intensive outpatient, or IOP, through the mental hospital’s outpatient program. Tomorrow I start my second week. I am still processing it and how I feel about it. I am still just not sure. Everyone is very friendly, very supportive. Almost too much. On the first day the therapist running…
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Sleepwalking again. Wandering into other rooms, trying to get out of the heavy, locked double doors to the psych unit. An MHT following me, attempting to talk to me. Not redirectable, I eventually wandered toward and attempted to get through the door to the interior part of the nurse station. Seclusion was right there and…
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I started to write. Frantic, hurried writing, as though my memory had an expiration date and it was fast approaching. As though I were making up for lost time. And in a way, I was. A few days into my detainment, psych ward staff gave me a notebook to use as a journal. I wrote…
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In the summer of 2014, I was 28, nearly 29. I had lost everything – my grad school program and friends therein, my self-respect, my hope for any kind of future. I nearly lost tangible things like my job and apartment as I quit my meds and descended deeper into a manic depression. The social…
Documenting my journey through the mental health system 