July to October

so this is my first blog post. i want to do these monthly, but since this one has taken a while i want to recount everything that has happened since july, when i first created the site, including personal life and site creation. i was inspired to make this site from my best friend, stinki, it has a really beautiful site that ive used as my own reference, especially in the first draft of this sites creation. i was enthralled by the prospect of creating something from scratch, something with complete openness and creativity, something that involves a greater skillset than something like carrd or strawpage requires. i wanted to expand my skillset and create a site that is entirely my own. so in july, i created the first draft of this site. it was ugly and juvenile (even more juvenile than my site already is), but it was the first step in creating something myself and i learned a lot about creation during that first draft.

then, on august 1, i took a bunch of pills and ended up in the emergency room. i wasnt trying to kill myself, i was just going through a really rough time and wanted to hurt myself and feel sick. but it was treated like a suicide attempt by the hospital, and ive developed a bad habit of saying it was a suicide attempt to others. it was more of an accidental overdose than a suicide attempt. if i was trying to kill myself i probably wouldve gone about it a different way and i wouldnt have asked for help when i was afraid i might die. i didnt take a lethal dose of the medicine, but i was taking antidepressants and i was scared of dying from serotonin syndrome. so i went to the emergency room and got 5150d by the hospital and taken to a psychiatric ward. they had to take me by ambulance and i was passing out during the ride from exhaustion; i was awake all night and i was impossible to sleep in the emergency room. the ward i was taken to was nice i think. i had my own room. the temperature was comfortable despite it being the middle of summer. i met some really nice people there; an old man named manny that related my self harm scars to his suicide attempt scars on his neck, a middle aged man named kevin that always made sure to talk to me and defended everyone he could there, a girl named molly that despite being in her 30s had this childish nature about her that was so relatable to me and made me feel comfortable in this uncomfortable atmosphere. i was able to ask for a very shitty pencil and paper to draw on. i drew my ocs in the same situation i was in lol, in the hospital and alone.

going back home was really difficult. prior to my hospitalization, i never opened up to my family about my self harm or my mental health struggles at all. they knew i struggled i suppose, but they never knew it was to this extent. we still havent had a very thorough talk about it all, i think my hospitalization let them talk it out amongst themselves away from me. which probably isnt a good thing, but i dont like talking to my parents anyway. i still havent fully processed everything that happened then. i hate this different look that people give me now, i hate being treated differently because of what happened. i didnt die, i wish it was easy for everyone to move on and for things to return to normal. i dont wish to be better, and i think everyone expects me to want to be better. but i think thats a step anyway, to acknowledge that i dont want to be better and accepting that that is a feeling i have. so my wish to just push it all away has prevented me from really processing the depth of what happened to me. i dont have any grand feelings from then, i dont have a new burst of life. i feel like im lying when i say i want to be better to others. immediately afterward, i just felt like a ghost. my entire being felt ice-cold like i was wandering in the cold, my face frostbitten and pained.

at the end of august, i joined a group therapy program at the same hospital i went to the emergency room at actually. i was originally seeking individual therapy, but that therapist recommended i joined the group program there. i really didnt want to, the idea of being in a group setting terrified me, but i said okay because idk, she told me to. i dont stand up for myself. the group program wass very structured; for the first 2-3 weeks you attend monday-friday from 9am-3pm, and then another 3-8 weeks are monday friday and another day of your choosing from 10am-2pm. in it, we still receive individual therapy from our group therapist and we see a psychiatrist for medications. and i dont know why, but i ended up feeling very comfortable there. you were never forced to talk in the group settings, so i never talked when i didnt want to. i had great fulfillment from listening to everyone else talk. with my therapist and psychiatrist there, i got to open up for the first time about my psychosis and delusional thinking in both a professional setting but also verbally... i had never talked outloud about what i experience. and it was extremely validating to be affirmed. im on antipsychotics right now, they make me extremely tired but they curb my delusions a ton (not gone, but definitely reduced). i remember my first time stuttering out the word "psychosis", i was so shaken and afraid. until i was eventually comfortable talking about it more in the group setting. i made friends with a guy my age there, we had similar experiences and evidently similar tastes in music and media. as im writing this, i graduated from the program almost a complete week ago. it feels longer than that.

while in the program, i tried filling my time, i tried reenganging with my hobbies. it was extremely difficult to draw again, im still kind of falling back into the groove of things with that. im dedicating more time to site creation. i went to a renaissance fair in september, started visiting a nearby arcade and playing the rhythm games there, dressed up and passed out candy on halloween, went to a ska punk show in october and moshed for the first time. and what will i do now? gonna have to check out the next blog post for that.