Since I last wrote I was hospitalized, lost a friendship, and decided I need to keep moving forward. Stability always feel like an awkward dance, one step foward, two steps back, then back again.
The hospitalization was very brief. A week and they were trying to throw me out before that though I was doing self-destructive crap. They thought I needed long term care. Was supposed to go to a partial program but nothing seemed to happen and I didn’t push the issue because partial is a mess. I tend to get hit on by creepy men in their forties who either are complete sleazebags or become crushed when I say ‘no’.
Things with my friend fell through. He moved to LA, he started hanging out with a new girl and that was that. No dramatics. It’s hard to believe I had feelings for a man who didn’t have the guts to tell me he no longer wished to be friends with me. I played the avoidance game when I was younger, trying not to hurt feelings but as I got older I became the sort to call a man and say, ‘Don’t call me.’ Or say I wasn’t interested if he was the tender sort you find in the psychiatric system in spades. I can be tender but I don’t want to be. I even cried.
I made a realization the other day. I want to live. It seems simple enough for most people but it’s hard to remember that idea when your brain has fucked off to Florida without telling you. That’s not quite right. I’ve been in the psychiatric system for ten years. I’ve lost count of my hospitalizations. I was diagnosed with a serious mental illness. It was like winning an illness lottery and realizing you got one without a cure, without a door to vamoose out of your brain when it gets tough. Yet I don’t feel bitter. I feel grateful that I’ve met so many wonderful people like Laura, Krissi, and Bethany. That I’ve hit rock bottom more times than I care to count and still get up to live to fight another day.
I want to live and even if that realization is progress it also hits me in the gut in a bad way. It’s hard to live the way I have for ten years in the system, four years before that not, and not feel comfortable even as I feel uncomfortable in my own skin.
Not to say I’m cured. There is no cure for what I have. There is only symptom management. There’s making the best of it. There is getting up yet again after another hospitalization and realizing that your desire to live is the strongest it’s been in over ten years and that fuck all those doctors who made your out to be a hopeless case, fuck all the aunts and uncles and cousins who look sideways at you, you’ve made it this far and that’s more than what was expected of you.
I know what it’s like to be in the system and to realize that you want to live. Life with mental illness is hard…it’s a lot harder than people realize. For you to realize it, at an early stage (I know you’ve been in the system for 10 years, but for a lifelong thing, that’s early) especially is just amazing and shows that you are an incredibly strong and brilliant person.
.-= Janet´s last blog ..Something I Said on Tumblr today: =-.
Thank you. <3 It's sort of amazing to me I lived eleven fairly normal years, then fifteen with a mental illness. I've been ill for over half my life and all my adult life. I think my psychiatrist's willingness to try new medications and the move back to therapy that has helped tremendously. I've been drifting for so many years but realizing, 'I want to live', makes me want to do more to take advantage of that feeling, however short lived it may be and how entirely impossible it is without medication.
Thank you so much for your comment.
You have so much drive in you and I admire you for that, Gabrielle. Not everyone has that kind of big heart and strong will to still make the most out of life despite what they’re going through. Yes, you’ve been having that kind of feeling for 10 years now but I admire you for still having that hope and drive in you to go on with your life and live it to the fullest.
Thank you. That strong feeling comes and goes. I need to remain strong for my family, they keep me going.