When I first got discharged from inpatient, freedom was glorious. Sure, it was an adjustment and I missed the people from the hospital, but I liked being able to live my life again. I was functioning well enough that I could do so.
Currently, I am still NOT at an inpatient level of need, but I am at a place where it would be convenient to have someone else manage my symptoms for me. It started on Sunday and I don’t remember what happened on Sunday; I just remember that Monday was Day 2. On Monday I was getting cavities filled at the dentist and every time she walked away, I almost fell asleep in the chair. Even when she was actively drilling I had a little trouble staying awake. But when I was left all alone, I got the annoyingly familiar sensation of being on a moving train. In my life, this tends to be connected to dissociation.
The rest of the week I’ve just been overwhelmingly drowsy all the time. I’ve tried sleeping it off. I’ve tried forcing myself to stay awake. I’ve tried more/less caffeine. No luck. And the hospital feels less like that place with a million rules and an old guy yelling at everybody all the time for no reason, and more like a place where I felt like I was safe and I knew that if I ever got TOO tired and didn’t wake up for a week or so, people would see to it that I stayed fed and hydrated and made it to the bathroom.
In a way, this feels like a rite of passage. “Am I going to choose being safe and taken care of, or being as functional as possible even when it’s hard?” And I know that my happiness depends on choosing the latter. But that means that I have to tease apart what is and isn’t a choice. I can’t choose to make time stop moving so fast. There’s a limit to how much I can force my body to stay awake. So far I feel like I’m doing the best that I can but it’s tough right now not to give in and just allow myself to be incapacitated.
So I’m working on it. I’m trying to push myself the right amount. And if I fail and konk out so hard that I wake up in the local emergency room watching its constant brawl between inebriated gang members and overconfident security staff, I will be annoyed by the setback but I’ll bounce back within a week. I have a busy life to live.