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.