Hospitalization: The Ups and Downs

Long time no talk !! Hello dearest readers !!!!!

We’re halfway through the year already!! My goodness !!!!

Time flies when you’re having fun, or having mental crises like myself. :’)

You see I have the Super Mega Bad Depression chasing me around lately and it led to me having a lil menty b during my appointment with my therapist on the 22nd.

She wanted to make sure I was safe so we made a plan during my appointment to get me to the hospital, and I had an hour to prepare after the appointment so I rushed to get my stuff together and my cat all squared away and such and such.

I was in the ER all of Thursday night and into Friday morning, they finally had a bed on the unit around 11 am so that’s when I got there.

Unfortunately my stay started during the holiday weekend so I was in limbo when it came to being seen by a therapist for 4 whole days.

I eventually had a whole breakdown over it on Monday just because I just wanted to work through my issues and was feeling hopeless.

The groups and stuff are helpful and I make it a point to go to every one whenever I’m hospitalized, but they can only apply so much to anyone’s specific situation since they have to be kind of broad, especially since some peoples stays in the hospital is the first time they’re ever receiving the help they need.

But I finally was able to see a therapist on Tuesday! Huzzah! I was so happy.

It was the same therapist I saw in 2022 when I was hospitalized after the passing of my mother and I knew he was a good fit to work through the utter bullshit my brain was coming up with.

It was a weepy session with me explaining my general hopelessness and lack of direction and motivation.

But I think it was good that it was weepy.

My regular therapist came to visit me during my stay that Tuesday as well, which I was very touched by and grateful for.

I explained how I was crying during parts I didn’t even understand what I was crying for and she kind of helped me realize that I believe I spend most of the year in a general state of mild dissociation, and I use work as a coping mechanism to keep my mind off things.

Now work had ended and I had no safety guard up which could be why I suddenly got so depressed and why I felt so weepy during my session.

So it was good that I was finally feeling things and letting them out. And I have been a lil crier since I got out!

Yesterday I had a post hospitalization appointment with my psychiatrist and I was very weepy during it because I wasn’t quite sure what would even make things better, because things went right back to how they were before I was in the hospital.

I was actively dreading this while in the hospital because I was so scared of reverting back to my old behaviors.

I was feeling so down on myself when the Friday night I got out I was tired at 7 pm once I was home and slept from 9 until 12 pm on Saturday.

But a friend reminded me that I’m returning to the same environment so it’s natural to revert a bit.

And there is a silver lining!

Sunday I woke up at 12 pm as well, and Monday at 1 pm, but today I miraculously woke up at 9:30 am!!! Go me !!!!

And these weren’t really my “wake up” times, but my “get up” times.

I would wake up prior to 12 pm, but had 0 motivation to get out of bed. So I would keep waking in and out of sleep until eventually my bladder would be the thing finally getting me out of bed. Then I had no idea what to do once I woke up. Just very hopeless.

So today I’ve been VERY kind to myself.

Yesterday I realized I could make coffee now that I have sugar and creamer and I cried LOL. It’s like just the realization that I could do something nice for myself made me weepy. I was just weepy in general yesterday lol.

So today I finally made myself a giant cup of coffee and turned on Gilmore Girls while it was raining outside while wrapped up in my blanket and it felt like bliss n_n

I didn’t get to finish the coffee because honestly I just made too much and sometimes while eating or drinking I get random waves of anxiety that make it hard to swallow so I have to stop eating or drinking. That happened so I quit drinking it but I was still able to enjoy a lot of it!

I’ve never properly seen Gilmore Girls before! Can you believe it??

I’ve seen it in my youth, but I don’t remember a single thing from it. In fact I incorrectly thought that Lorelai and Rory were sisters instead of mother and daughter lmfao.

But I think Gilmore Girls is going to be my comfort show this summer.

There’s just something about it that is so cozy, and I think I can make it a lil ritual to make a (smaller) cup of coffee and turn on the show for a bit while cuddled up at home.

I’m focused solely on self care right now while I get back on my feet post hospital stay.

All of my chores and obligations will still be there so I can put them aside for a moment while I learn to take care of myself again.

So hence why today has been very laid back and relaxed, I’m just trying to make myself happy.

I talked a lot in the hospital about how on the surface I know I believe I deserve to be happy, but under the surface I am dealing with a lot of limiting beliefs in my subconscious thoughts.

My regular therapist during her visit reassured me that this is natural with trauma and we will continue to tackle it together outside of the hospital. So I didn’t have to feel a pressure to solve it all while I was in there.

I see her for the first time post hospital next week and I’m so ready for it.

But yeah, I’m so ready to finally unblock all those limiting beliefs I have from everything I have learned from other people. I’m ready to control my own narrative.

So I have a LOT of work to do, but I’m happy to start working on it.

My therapist also said she thinks EMDR would be beneficial with me so that’s potentially something we can start soon.

I was a little scared during my psychiatrist appointment yesterday because she asked if I felt I needed a higher level of support such as a residential stay somewhere for a month or two and the idea of being hospitalized my entire summer just sounded like A Lot.

I don’t THINK I need a residential stay, cause I feel like I need to just do the hard work to learn how to get better in my home environment. I feel like prolonging that won’t necessarily help me any more than doing it at home.

So hopefully no residential stays for me.

And she suggested we switch one of my meds and I got a call today that it got approved, so I should be getting Vraylar on Thursday! I’m so hopeful that it will help me!

Anything we can try is something I’m down to do.

And we’ve already tried so many different meds, so I’m grateful there’s still new options for me.

I just really need to get a hold on this depression.

I may be bipolar amongst many other things but my main emotion is definitely depression.

I was speaking about this with my psychiatrist previously, how I felt my baseline is not normal yet, but instead just sad. I don’t know what it’s like to have a neutral baseline. I feel like I’ve felt that way my entire life.

So it’s gonna be pretty life changing for me if we can figure out how to get me to neutral.

Like I don’t care about feeling happy every moment of every day, I just don’t wanna be sad every moment of every day.

I think that’s an achievable goal. And I really do have a great team of people helping me through this hard time so I’m eternally grateful. I don’t know what I would do without them.

I’m also so grateful to everyone in the hospital for helping me get through such a dark period.

I always love forming relationships with the techs and everyone else who works there and feeling a sense of relief after such a hard time.

I even made lil thank you notes for everyone I felt impacted me at the end of my stay, something I did in 2022 as well.

It was so funny, a really funny guy was staying in the ward at the same time as me, and he was like “You know I was hoping to be someone’s favorite patient but here you are passing out notes” and I was like hey you could still be someone’s favorite hehehehe

I accidentally left one note with me though cause I was kinda rushed to leave because I had to catch my ride and I’m DEVASTATED, I need to call the hospital just to relay the message to her that I’m so grateful to her just so she knows lol.

I was able to pass out every other one to the person it was meant for though so I’m very happy 🙂

Oh my gosh I almost forgot to make one for one of the techs and I’m so glad she came and visited the unit and (playfully) chastised me for not making one for her, because I was like noooo ofc I was gonna make one for you !!!!

So I ran to get my colored paper and got to make her one that day. I would’ve been so sad leaving without making her one.

She was really supportive, I was having a really hard day and so she let me go to what is called the comfort room so I could sit in the rocking chair and listen to music. Then she sat on the floor and talked to me for a while. She is the one who gave me the piece of advice to just do once thing each day, and to not be hard on myself for the things I can’t do.

So I’ve kept that in mind since I’ve been out and I’ve made sure to do one thing each day. Whether that is keep myself fed or getting dressed or watching Gilmore Girls. Just one thing each day.

I think it’s a really helpful mindset that is way different from my own perfectionist point of view, so it helps me be a lot kinder to myself.

I struggle a lot with finding middle ground and it’s still something I’m working on and will continue to work on in the future.

So now here’s the fun part, my hospital artwork !!!!!

Here’s just a few random pieces. A watercolor mandala, masking tape painting, doodle coloring, and random watercolor brush strokes.

here’s a piece we did on boundaries, where we were supposed to overlap and blend the colors if we felt like we had work to do with out boundaries and to not mix the colors if we felt like our boundaries were solid. As you can tell, mine are blended. I feel like I have work to do to not be a walking doormat to people quite honestly. And I also struggle on the other end of being too rigid and not letting people in.

This one was a tessellation painting, and I decided to do a general gradient so I didn’t have to panic over what colors to put next to each other and I think it turned out pretty nicely 🙂

hehe this one i did after another activity just for fun. I made the blobs and then was like ” they need faces!!!!” and thus this was born. It makes me smile every time I look at it 🙂

This one I forgot what it was called but it was basically outline artwork where you picked four positive traits about yourself and then kept tracing the outside of the words. I like how this one turned out c:

Sorry about the cat butt in this one, he quickly came to investigate when I brought my artwork out which is why all the rest of the images are me holding the pieces lol. This one was just a lil activity where we had to pick conflicting emotions and depict each one. I chose happiness and depression. I tried to make happiness look really bright like looking through a kaleidoscope, cause happiness feels very rich and vibrant like that. And for depression i did the ocean on the night of a new moon cause depression to me often feels like drowning and not knowing which way is up and how to get out.

This one is another one where we chose positive traits of ourselves, and we took a white oil pastel to do designs and watercolored over it. Thankfully they had papers of positive traits to look at cause it’s kinda hard to think of them about yourself, especially when you’re struggling!! I like the ones I ended up using, especially whimsical hehe.

This one was interesting, we had to pick 6 colors and use a die to roll for what color we were going to color each part of a stained glass type image we chose. I was not really vibing with it while making it cause I kept getting the same color next to each other but in the end I liked it! There’s some kind of metaphor in that lol.

These are just like, doodle lines?? I forget what they were called but I learned to do this during my stay in the hospital in 2022 and fell in love with it. It’s truly a completely soothing brain off activity for me to do whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed.

This is just a doodle I have done ever since high school. It started with me wanting to doodle spirals on the margins of my paper, but quite frankly being shit at making spirals. So then I started making spirals with straight edges, and eventually landed on this design. It’s my favorite to just absentmindedly work on, and it always turns out looking great.

And we did sticker by numbers a few times!!!! These are my favorite ever!!!!!! They are so calming to me, cause all you can focus on in the moment is where the stickers are going and how they’re fitting together, it’s so therapeutic to me, highly recommend. The bunny of course is cause I love bunnies, the snail and mushrooms is cause I love the vintage botanical art style, the sloth because my mom loves sloths so it’s going in her urn area, and the butterfly just cause it was pretty! That will realistically go in my mom’s area too because she also loved butterflies, they’re even on her urn n_n

I even brought two of my own sticker by number pages into the hospital with me, I actually brought the whole book and they let me pick a few to do since we also have them for activities! These ones are specifically from a works of art themed book, I looooved doing these. Frida was ESPECIALLY rewarding cause I felt like I was doing surgery on the tiiiiiiiny pieces of stickers that comprised her face, it turned out so well!

This one a tech colored for me!!!! How nice!!!!!! She was the sweetest person ever. Like couldn’t hurt a fly kind of sweet. I told her I colored that page as well, I made matching pages for me and my friend, so she ended up coloring this one for me all day throughout little moments where she had time! The little note touches my heart. I will treasure this one forever, it’s really a reminder that people everywhere are rooting for you to succeed. I will do my best to keep reaching for the stars for Amanda and for everyone else who believes in me n_n

This was also something gifted to me. We were doing activity when they funny guy I mentioned earlier asked if we could have the pieces of paper that had the positive traits, and then he started folding it. I had no idea what he was doing but told him it reminded me of the lucky stars I make. He finished it and tossed it over to me, jokingly saying “happy birthday” when he gave it to me. He was joking that it was gonna get taken away so I hid it under my paper saying “problem solved hehe” but the tech, actually the one who colored that picture for me, said it wasn’t sharp so as long as I don’t throw it I could keep it. It’s a nice little reminder for me of the various people I meet while inside the ward, and how we’re all struggling with our own things and manage to come together sometimes. It’s nice. 🙂

That marks the end of most of my artwork !!!!! I hope you enjoyed the art gallery hehehe

Back to today, I finally did my monthly tarot reading today, 3 days into the month!

I always choose two inspo cards to keep out on my desk throughout the month, and these two spoke to me the most. Stick to my routines and celebrate my successes. Can do!

I’m so glad to make a blog post again after all this time. For quite a while depression was rocking my shit and I didn’t know what to talk about. Hopefully I can keep up with little updates here n there this summer.

I hope I’m still able to have a good summer despite my initial struggles. It’s a lot but I believe I can make it through, especially with the help of others.

I’m gonna take it one day at a time and just focus on taking care of myself. I hope whoever reading this is doing something similar! I know most people still have work and have things they need to deal with but I hope you’re making at least some time for yourself as well.

OH I can’t believe I almost forgot to show you!

On my very last day in the hospital, during activity time we made slime!!! We colored it with mica powder and added different glitters and it was so fun. It’s kind of funny but it turns totally disgusting while you’re forming it together but then it gets so much better. It’s sooo satisfying now. We all chose different colors and they all turned out so nice. You can’t super tell but one of the glitters I added was iridescent so it shines this pretty green color to compliment the pink and I love it.

She said it was usually an activity they did on the kids unit but decided to try with the adults sometime ago and it went over so well that they do it regularly now. I’m so happy I got to make it before I left 🙂 My sister warned me not to bring it with me when I visit her this weekend or else her kids will want to steal it lmao.

So that’s been life so far. A lot of struggling, but not without hope for change. I really do have hope that things will get better for me and I’ll come out the other end changed and renewed.

It’s going to take time and it’s going to take hard work and tears and I’m okay with that. Whatever gets me better in the end.

And I might not feel too much better by the end of summer, and that’s okay too. This is a process. I’m not going to expect anything drastic to happen, I’m just gonna hope for the best.

I do want a nice, steady foundation to begin the next school year with though, so I’m going to put a lot of work into making sure I utilize my coping skills and hobbies so I know how to cope when work starts back up and things get especially stressful once again.

The reminds me, I have no idea what to do for the rest of the day! It’s dinner time so mac and cheese is in my near future, but beyond that I’m not sure. I might revisit hello kitty island adventure as I played it for the first time in months this morning but got off pretty quickly cause I was still really tired. I had to bring out my light therapy lamp to try and keep myself awake and it actually did work thankfully! No naps for me today 🙂 That is huge progress from the all day of naps I’ve been having.

My progress won’t be linear and I may have another nap filled day soon, but even then I’m going to be kind to myself and proud of myself for trying.

If there’s a lesson for anyone to glean from this it’s that you should take care of yourself, ask for help when you need it, and to be kinder to yourself no matter what.

You are so important and deserve the best treatment and care you can get. If that means you need a little help from your community or professionals, that’s completely okay. Everyone needs help sometimes and it’s not shameful. It takes a surrendering of pride to get help, so it’s actually quite brave. :3

Well I am going to go make dinner now, but I hope everyone reading this has a fantastic Tuesday and beyond. I will talk to you again soon, whether that’s tomorrow or sometimes in the future.

Take care of yourselves, I care about you deeply! Goodbye!