Psychiactric Hospital series: Part 1- The first days: Restarting the Race

Leaving the hospital is like being pushed off the dock on the start line of a rowing race. You use short, fast strokes to come to your balance and come to race speed, and only then do you slow down and lengthen your strokes for the duration of the race. Before the race starts, you know you have the skills and abilities to compete you have done the same things a thousand times in practice. Yet the nerves and pressure of the actual race change your initial response till you find the inner place of knowing your abilities and trusting that you can handle it. The first day and week out of the psychiatric hospital are the start of the race. Pushing open the door out of the hospital is adrenaline inducing, similar to the start of the race.  With that comes returns of the pressures of the race of the outside world-of life. The first afternoon when you get out, there is both this excitement of being out of the hospital and having your own space and being able to sleep in a completely dark room (#roomates, a story for another time, maybe.) Of course, you also get to choose what you want to eat for meals, which is a double-edged sword. While sometimes or even a lot of times the hospital food wasn't overly impressive, you were served three meals a day, without you having to do any thinking, shopping, and cooking. While I sometimes find cooking relaxing, the recreation of all the hospital structure immediately feels overwhelming, that hopefully turns into a small burn and then completely off, but being in a global pandemic doesn't help the process. One thing that came up right was having to organize my medications and set up timers to take my meds on time. In the hospital, we are given our medications at specific times without you having to do any thinking or preparation. You almost don't notice it anymore as you get used to the schedule of the hospital, but especially with the addition of an evening medication for me created an extra thing to remember that I struggled with for the first few days. Another internal struggle that arose in the first days out was the internal pull to two sides.  One to go back to the bubble of coloring and audiobooks in the hospital and the other side wanted to organize and get back to doing all the things I was doing beforehand. The balancing act is to keep rowing and change my behaviors as needed, as dictated by the race and my internal abilities. The art is understanding what my mental capabilities are each day if it's a day for a sprint or trying to keep rowing the race no matter how slow your strokes become. The first days pass in a blur like the start of the race sometimes, with the focus completely on finding the internal and external balance to rowing the race of life.

Cerebral Palsy and I- My longest relationship

 Cerebral Palsy and I go way back since I was two years old and diagnosed. The diagnosis story is one for another time.  It has been a rocky road, and while we are on better terms twenty-three years in, we still have plenty of tiffs. Preschool was a shining light in my childhood as I went to a school for children with disabilities that was in the same space as my physical and occupational therapy. We sometimes did occupational and physical therapy together, and we all had private sessions as well.  We didn't feel different as even though we had different severities of Cerebral Palsy,  we all got each other on a deep level. I spent the rest of my childhood pretty angry and felt emotionally isolated.  I switched schools for kindergarten to a class with no other disabled children, so having CP and wanting to fit in was made pretty much impossible. I was the only one with a physical disability and, my differences came up in a few ways wearing leg braces, doing constant physical and occupational therapy.  The biggest difference showed up during, my surgery which required me to relearn how to walk and miss plenty of class, and even when I came back it was in an even weirder wheelchair and needing plenty of adaptations. These needs take a lot of time and cut into building social relationships, so CP and I were on our own. Leg braces were a major part of my childhood, sometimes they made me feel like a robot/alien from another planet, while every once in a while, wearing them made me feel strong and powerful. I never really accepted Cerebral Palsy as my life long partner for a long time, much more of the time I spent annoyed and upset CP took up time in my life and the chronic pain and spasticity it brought along with it. I'm not exactly sure at what exact moment I started reevaluating my relationship with CP. But, I realized at some point that hating my body and disability full time was taking up a lot of mental energy and making my life with CP worse than it needed to be. It is a process, and it is slow going for me. I evaluated what Cerebral Palsy had given me, both good and bad, and also just worked on acceptance. I think that acceptance is an idea that living with a disability makes harder, as in a way, because of my disability,  I spend or at least used to spend a lot of time, fighting what society accepted as what I should be able to do. Between if it was a doctor who told my parents when I was two, that I'd never walk or talk or just society's assumption of what disabled people can achieve. I never wanted to give in and wanted to fight everyone on what I was able to achieve.  I believe that also led me to fight my cerebral palsy and many times, I  didn't listen to the internal messages it would tell me regarding pain, including other bodily messages. Cerebral Palsy and I together actually achieved many things that I would never have dreamed up as a kid.  Even though I get super annoying hand spasms while writing notes or while rowing and chronic pain can sometimes leave me in bed all day, I have come to love what CP has taught me and continues to teach me. This by no means I don't have plenty of internal struggles with Cerebral Palsy. I still struggle with issues about body- acceptance that arise with different topics that come up in life some expected some not. With all that being said, I have come to a point in my life that usually rather than getting or staying upset,  I can sit with my CP and figure out the crux of the issue so together we can grow and build the world I want around me. Cerebral Palsy and I are forever going to be together, and hopefully, I can use what our relationship brings me to help others and bring change to the world.