After spending countless weeks in various psychiatric hospitals, I've managed to stay out for 6 months. Probably my longest stretch ever. And it makes me highly uncomfortable.
My friends were traveling the world and I was pacing the hallways trying to get out of my own head.
My friends were trying new restaurants to Yelp review later and I was learning the menu schedule. It's cookie Tuesday, everybody!
My friends were getting married and I was making bad relationship choices with the person across the hall.
My friends were graduating from college and I was gathering info on how to fill my days after my stint.
The disparities in our life choices have led me here, sitting on the sidelines of life while everyone figures it out as they go along. I can't even "go along". I'm too far behind to just pick up and start. I'm at the age where I need to have a decent plan. In the words of one of my favorite TV characters, "I don't even have a 'pla'."
I'm in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) now. One of the promises I made before beginning is that I would not consider suicide an option to my problems. I would stay out of the hospital. But if I'm not in the hospital, what life am I really living? I'm on my own without a single idea as to what I should be doing. I'm learning all these skills to handle stress and accept my life as it is, but I don't accept my life as it is. I'm told to just "go out there and try something, anything!", but...how? How do you do something?
This is where I am.
Every plan requires money. All money comes from jobs. Jobs are for competent workers. Am I a competent worker? I don't know. I feel like I am. I can type. I know most basic computer programs and if I don't, I've been known to teach myself. Not to be conceited, but I'm really smart. I have great insight, I'm always on time, I smile a lot and make people laugh despite the angry churning of uncertainty inside. But on paper, I'm just some loser who's only worked two months in her whole life and doesn't meet the minimum typing speed and doesn't have any school history - just a GED - and hasn't held a job in 6 years (never mind I was taking care of my grandfather that whole time).
There's no place for me anywhere.
Except in the hospital. Where I'm told when and where to be, where there are people like me looking for answers or maybe just to stop the screaming for a few days, where it's understood I'm nothing in society but there's a reason why.
Now there's no hospital. There's no refuge from the world. There's only the world in front of me, daring me to jump in so it can swallow me whole and spit out the broken, discouraged remains.
Do I jump?
Or do I stay in bed?
