My experience in psychiatry
What I'm learning on my mental health journey
Last winter was tough on me. I was recovering from a break up and felt like I’d burned what’s left of the bridges I had. Like I had let my last chances pass by me and fucked them up. Romantically, friendship-wise and career-wise. I cocooned myself in my room even more than I had during you-know-what times. I was looking for ways out. Thank god I didn’t succeed. My ex insisted I tell my psychiatrist about my predilections. Thank god she did. Thank god I did.
In the second week of february, I almost missed an appointment with my psychiatrist. I was feeling too shitty to leave the house, so I texted my psychiatrist if we could reschedule. He insisted I come, and I did, and during the meeting, I remembered I’d promised to bring up my suicidality, and mumbled something about not knowing what or who I’m living for anymore. So my psychiatrist picked up the phone, and said, somewhat sardonically, that he had a “young man” with “suicidal ideations”. He drove me to a local clinic, from where I was transferred to the clinic that I would be staying at until now.
I could honestly write a book about my journey through the different stations of the clinic, the friends I made, the values I adopted, how electroconvulsive therapy changed me, how I learnt to sift the wheat from the chaff in terms of faster recognizing the kind of people who are genuine, caring and giving, that I don’t have to perform for anyone, or display my ego outwardly to be accepted, that people come and go and that Iggy Pop is right most of the time. We’re just passengers on the train of life and the track is long and winded.
I came to the clinic a social wreck with a downward trajectory, I blocked everything and I thought I was a hopeless case. My time in the mental ward taught me better. Even though I had psychotic symptoms, I was sane compared to most of the people there. At some point during my time there, something clicked. I realized I didn’t have to flee anything and that I didn’t have to lose anything since I was already at the lowest point in my life. So why not assume everyone is gonna accept me as I am and try to make the best of things?
This realization, coupled with the reset brought on by ECT and some supportive people in the mental ward changed my trajectory upward. I started vibing with people, stopped overthinking and just participated in everything, taking my seat as a passenger every time a seat got available.
My journey took me from the mental ward to a psychosomatic station that seems more like a youth hostel or kurhaus than a psychiatric ward. At this station, I’m feeling arrived and with myself (all the while connected to those around me) for the first time in my life. I built a routine, made friends, and continued working on my projects and am feeling like my life is in an upward trajectory for the first time in a long time.
I thank the psychiatry system and my doctors for recognizing I was not a hopeless case and didn’t belong in a mental ward, and that I’d just made a series of missteps to get where I’d gotten.
Right now, I’m still in clinic, feeling stable, and waiting to be released and once again be allowed to do my mischief out in the real world.
That’s all for now, have a crystal ball showing galaxies far, far away.
