Waking

 I have never been a morning person. I don't like waking up early for no apparent reason: to me, there needs to be at least a somewhat relevant motivation for me to get out of bed before the clock strikes 9 am. For the longest time, I had that motivator in the form of school schedules and uni lectures. But as years have gone by, as I have gotten even sicker and sicker, those reasons quietly exited my life and left me without much of a trace. This, in turn, made it possible for me to stay up ridiculously late and wake up to eat my "breakfast" at 2 pm. That used to be my very normal lifestyle, with a sleeping pattern so horrifying that people around me almost started to worry for me, no matter how much I tried to justify it with "my creative juices flowing the best at the wee hours". To everyone else, it looked like a very unhealthy way of life, while I was none the wiser. And as much as I love working when everyone else is fast asleep, I do have to admit one thing. 

You can't really go on like that forever. At some point, you are forced to return back to the ways that are actually good for you. And, for me, it came in the form of being hospitalized. 

No matter the day of the week, you wake up at 7.30 am. You put on some clothes and go to the dining room to eat breakfast at 7.45 am at the latest. The next meals are lunch at 11 am, midday snack (or midday coffee as we Finns call it) at 2 pm, dinner at 4 pm, and evening snack at 7 pm. You're expected to go to sleep at around 10 pm after taking all of your medication. And the next day is exactly the same. 

breakfast.

The daily schedule brings a sense of security and comfort to me, as if somebody is once again telling me what to do, what places I need to be in at a certain time – a lot like back in school or university. For all my life, I have struggled to prioritize myself and my own well-being, to the extend of not caring about if I get enough sleep or not, and purposefully staying up late completing tasks so that I won't at least feel like a useless piece of shit when I wake up at noon the next day. When you don't have enough self-esteem to care for yourself in any way, the psych ward can help you with establishing some of the most important routines, if nothing else. Because no matter how much you hate waking up at 7.30, at least you won't have to cook for yourself because the breakfast is brought to you directly – along with your morning meds, of course. 

Things take their time at the ward. For me, staying at the hospital has very often been about changing my medication into something more useful. So when I get there and no changes are made to the pills I down my throat at that very instant, I get extremely frustrated, and the BPD anger starts bubbling up. It all feels futile and pointless in that moment, with the question of "why the fuck did I even come here" floating around my knotted and confused brain. I go there thinking I know EXACTLY what I need to feel better, and if I don't get that result, things start escalating even further, no matter whether my own result had been the best or the worst possible course of action for me in reality. 

And that's when waking up at 7.30 am feels torturous again. 

first thought.

"They're not helping me in the way I need to be helped, so might as well go over all the possible ways to commit suicide right after checking out. Here's a list, fill in as needed!"

Laying in a hospital bed at the psych ward, staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the methods you've thought out you could kill yourself with is a special kind of loneliness and pain I don't want anybody else to feel. The isolation of the ward is bad in itself, but seeing yourself spiraling even further when you literally came to this place to get help for yourself is just on another level of misery. And sometimes, you start to resent the doctors and the nurses, even yourself for letting it get to this point. "If nobody is helping me HERE, I won't get help anywhere else either", right?

Sometimes, you have to go through these terrible experiences to get where you need to be. Staying at the ward is painful, humiliating, and lonely, and sometimes you feel like nothing seems to be working and everyone is against you, but that is when you have to remind yourself of this one thing.

Give yourself time. You wouldn't be able to fix your fucked up sleeping schedule in one night either. Why should this be any different than that?

With patience,

ichigonya