#It’s so sad to see. One day I got home at 18h00 and the next day left early at 07h00 - he was in the same spot all that time

[alexandriac-art]

Ward 2.1

I wrote so much in my journal while I was away in the psych ward. Pages and pages. I smoked a lot of cigarettes, too - something with which I am unaccustomed.

I made friends with a few people and I’m sad to have left them behind.

We fell into a routine:

06h00: checking blood pressure and body temp

07h30: occupational therapy - physical exercise

08h00: breakfast

09h00: meds

I would read and write and smoke and hang around. Take a shower. Maybe try to take a nap. I’d see a psychologist in between. Then it went:

11h00: occupational therapy - social and mental exercise

12h00: lunch

More naps and reading and smoking and writing. And then:

14h30 - 16h00: visiting hours. A good friend and my boyfriend would visit me at these times. Once, my family did. I always appreciated it.

And then:

17h00: dinner time

18h00: checking vitals

19h00 - 20h00: visiting hour. My family would see me then.  Once, my boyfriend did. I always appreciated it.

I took a shower somewhere around this time.

And then:

21h00: meds

A last smoke and a few more chapters.

And then:

22h00: bedtime.

I struggled to fall asleep. But once I did, the sleep was heavy, deep.

I don’t know how to feel now that I’m home. I was in the hospital so long that this feels extraordinarily surreal to me.

One of the girls there was bothering me a lot at first. She thought that she could read my mind, and that I could read hers, and she would say very bizarre, disturbing things to me.

One of the guys had a crush on a pretty girl who stayed with us for a while. I just got off the phone with him, in fact. He wanted to know how everyone was doing. I told him I had left, and so had his crush.

One of the patients had dementia and my parting memory of him is him laying on his side on the ground, carefully picking cigarette butts out of the gutter.

One of the men talked to me about angels for a long, long time. He does woodwork and was taught magick by a witch.

One of the women casually walked in on me in the shower. She yelled at me and I yelled back at her. I apologised the next day and she said she loves me. She yelled a lot. Really, a lot. She carried around a bag with a stolen ping pong ball and dyed her hair with lipstick.

One of the patients in my room paced around all day, obsessively muttering to herself. She would yell sometimes, too. “No! No! Nurse! I can’t take this!” My heart broke for her, every time I saw her. It really did.

One of the men didn’t understand why I had so much empathy for her. Yet he was one of the people who were kindest to me.

I guess I don’t have much else to say about it right now. I suppose I’ll write more about my experience when I am sober and when it has sunk it that I am home, I’m really home. I really have people who care for me. I’m really alive.

I don’t know.

I am rambling.