Partial Hospitalization
If you follow me on Instagram you're probably aware I entered a partial hospitalization program sometime in January. If you don't, now you do. If you've followed this blog long enough you know I was fully hospitalized twice most, recent being 2016, after which I was told I should enter this program, I refused.
Suicidal ideation had increased quite a bit leading up to January and so I reluctantly decided I'd give the program a try as a last ditch effort to try to prevent what I felt was the inevitable. Last year at the beginning of the year I set some goals and failed them all. I recently turned 31, and honestly anytime I think about my age I sink.
My weight is up, way up, in back into the mid 400s, yes it's that bad. And I've just been floating by. In 2016 I started following a woman, she mostly posted about her family but she was trying to lose weight initially. I enjoyed seeing updates about her kids who were in their late teens, nearing graduation. Last year over the span of two posts things hit me like a brick, one post was a typical post about her son, she was very proud of him, star athlete, prepping for college the whole world ahead of him, the next was a cryptic emotional post that was immediately alarming. I soon found out her son had committed suicide. I was shocked.
I didn't know them personally but it felt personal, I could really feel her pain, she truly was and still is devestated, while her husband and daughter have picked up the pieces and have forced themselves to move forward, she is stuck in a sunken place. It's truly given me perspective of what this could do to those left behind.
That being said, I always ask myself why am I still around when I see things like this. How is it people with all these things to live for have checked out and I, with nothing, haven't? Where is the sense in that?
One suicide that has stuck with me more than any was the one commited by soap star Kristoff St John's son. I never followed him before the news, but what the family said after stuck with me, that it seemed like everything had gotten better, he had been going to therapy, they never seen this coming. It registered to me immediately how the battle might not be something that can be won, and that the illness may just be stronger than you.
You can seem better to others and you can have improved but once you reach a certain view it changes how you look at the future. What is happiness, what is all this madness, why do I even want to be part of all this? Etc. I mention this because Kristoff St John just recently committed suicide himself. Four years after his son Julian. I joined the partial program in hopes to change my outlook on things, but the past week in particular has been rough.
My time in partial will be up soon and then what? I'm 31. 31! Partial has been good for putting this gs together, getting insight where I otherwise don't. But I still go home and it's a coin toss if I revert right back to where I was. On the good days I feel great, like maybe I can handle all this.
