some traditions are meant to be broken.

Every year around the beginning of December, my husband puts Christmas lights up outside. It’s a fun little tradition, and I like coming home at night to see the lights all aglow. Before all that happens, I do my annual Black Friday shopping (yes, I’m one of those people). I guess in order to call something a tradition, it has to happen at least twice. Sort of like all those “first annual” events – they’re not really annual until the second one happens.

This year I accidentally started a new tradition for December: spending time as a patient in the psychiatric ward. Last year, I stayed for three days because I was suicidal and feeling unsafe. This year, I stayed for six days (including Christmas Eve and Christmas) because I was suicidal and had overdosed on benzodiazapenes. It’s no secret that I am mentally disordered, but I don’t think people expect me to be the type who ends up hospitalized. To be honest, I don’t know what that type looks like. I didn’t want people to know while I was in, but now that I’m out, I feel like it needs to be spoken about.

I wasn’t dragged out of my house in a straitjacket or hauled off unconscious via ambulance; I walked under my own power into the emergency room with my psychologist. I remember very, very little of what happened that day, but I think I told the receptionist at the ER that I was there because I “took too many little pills” or something like that. Just like any other ER visit, they triage you and then do what they have to in order to make sure you are medically safe. Then it’s off to the behavioral health unit of the ER, which is basically a collection of four private rooms (not padded cells) that contain a bed and a table. And then… you wait. And wait. And wait and wait and wait. For insurance pre-certifications, for bed availability, for the psychiatrist.

I got up to the psych ward pretty late in the day. Now, let me tell you about this particular psych ward. There aren’t people maniacally running around, or people wandering the halls in straitjackets. There’s nobody rocking back and forth in a catatonic state in the corner. For the most part, if you walked into the ward and looked around, you wouldn’t know that we were in there for mental reasons. Mental illness doesn’t make you stand out from the crowd, and those of who have mental issues don’t usually act “crazy”. Oh, sure, you have the delusional people who spout off about their distorted perception of reality… like the guy who believed that the doctors were refusing to discharge him because they were prejudiced against him, and that every staff member was an embodiment of one of the seven deadly sins. Or the elderly woman who developed a certain.. uh.. affection for one of the younger guy patients. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say he left more traumatized than when he arrived.

There are community phones (no phones in the rooms) and limited visiting times, and any personal possessions coming into the ward have to be checked by the staff and deemed safe. The days are structured by the hour, which was comforting for me because that’s just how I am. There are daily group sessions and individual meetings with various nurses, social workers, and psychiatrists.  The staff work towards discharge from the time you set foot in the unit. Bottom line is safety both in and out of the hospital.

I’ve been home for a week now, and things are… okay. It’s a day by day process of recovery. There will be bad days; there will be not-so-bad days. There will be days that are “normal”; there will be days that I don’t want to get out of bed. There will be days that I am comfortable around other people; there will be days that the thought of being near people makes me want to cry. Maybe, eventually, there might even be good days.

Maybe this will be the year tradition is broken.

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