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 |   A journey of self-improvement - or not. |
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Sup? I'm Char. You may know me from timeless classics such as
and
I blog for things like
[Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Believin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya Buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya They say jump and ya say "how high?" Ya braindead, ya got a fuckin' bullet in ya head |
  "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  Prompt: Share a time when an interaction with a stranger had an affect on you.First of all, #TeamTakeYourMeds, I took my meds like an hour ago. I was feeling guilty for lying about it and then also feeling guilty for getting collective advice and not taking it. I figured taking the meds would be less of a strain than feeling bad. So, thanks for your advice and for giving me a little push.  Now let’s just hope I don’t get sick and then it’ll be a non-issue with Kira. The only thing is that I’m taking it a couple weeks after I was supposed to start, so instead of knowing if it’s working or not in 4 weeks, it’ll take 6 weeks from now. The bottle says they can cause drowsiness and dizziness so I’m kind of hoping they’ll help me sleep. I’ve been sleeping like 2-4 hours every night and it’s really not enough. No big ramble today. I’ll jump into the prompt. The funny thing about strangers is that almost everyone who has affected your life was a stranger at one point. I’ve been profoundly impacted by some practical strangers though and that happened in institutionalized spaces- psych wards, behavioral health hospitals, and rehab centers. You meet people in those places for a very brief period of time, but you’re meeting each other at one of the lowest points in your life probably. It can be an incredibly intimate setting. I won’t romanticize this topic though. Most of the time, these places feel on par with the DMV. They’re clinical and stale. The staff might treat you as though you’re a bit of a pest. They’re just doing their job of making sure you don’t hurt yourself or others, and making sure you take your meds and all that. A lot of the patients you run into are just run of the mill people. Depending on the setting, they might just need to get their meds balanced out and they’re quickly out the door again. Other times they’re normal people who had surgery once and now they have a painkiller addiction that’s spiraled out of control a bit. Outpatient group therapy can be even less notable. I don’t want to use the word “boring” but just very standard, basic issues. “I feel like my husband doesn’t help out enough with the kids and I have all this pressure on me to be the perfect wife and mom all the time.” “I’m completely burned out from work. I don’t like the field I’m in at all and I don’t see the point in continuing to devote my life to working just so I can spin my wheels trying to cover bills.” Um, a lot of interpersonal conflicts with their spouses, families, coworkers. Tons of anxiety and depression issues. They’re mostly welcoming overall, but just... sterile. There will be long periods of general quiet and nothing going on, then there might be a tense moment with an argument, screaming, or fighting. Then it’s followed by another long period of nothing. But throughout the years, I have met people who caught my attention. Sometimes I’ve caught their attention first and we get to know each other during those short time frames. Years later, I’ll be lying in bed trying to sleep and I’ll think, I wonder if Jeremy stayed clean and out of jail? I wonder if Lydia ever started eating? Or just wondering how someone’s doing in general. Like if their issues have gotten better. If they finished school. If their kid is doing okay. As a general rule of thumb, I don’t exchange contact information with people in those kinds of places. Firstly, because I’m pretty private in my real life and I don’t need someone who saw me at a super low point being a part of my real life. But also because knowing them in real life would validate those experiences as real, and that’s not something I’m interested in doing. I also have a weird moral rule for myself where I don’t go out researching people on the internet. I don’t search their name along with their school or other affiliations to try to figure out what’s going on with them. I want to respect their privacy and digging into them makes me feel creepy and invasive. But probably a bigger thing is that I don’t want to run into an obituary or something if things didn’t go well for them. But you can meet some of the sweetest, kindest people in those environments. Not just other patients, but staff too. Not all of the staff treats it like a boring shift where they just want to get back to texting on their phone. Although one thing I’ve heard from staff members many times is, “Well, I’m not the one who put you in here. Don’t cop an attitude with me.” And it's like well, yeah, I didn't say any of this was your fault. I have mental health issues and now I'm here getting my meds all shifted around. People are going to get moody. But I can remember specific staff members, therapists, doctors, nurses and the like who were pulling really hard for me though. One I remember most vividly was many years ago, before I had even started university. I was inpatient and had just been given notice that I was getting out the next morning. I was sitting on the bed in my room there and the guy who ran group sessions came in and he kneeled down in the floor in front of me. He was like, "Listen to me. You're young, you're smart, and your life doesn't have to look like this. Apply the thoughtfulness and sensitivity that you give to others in group to your own self and your own decisions." And I promptly didn't do that. But it meant a lot to me at the time that he had stopped in to say goodbye. More than that though, his words made me feel seen and heard because he had framed my sensitivity as a strength, and I wasn't used to that. So often society has made me feel like my sensitivity is a weakness. So I really appreciate that guy for helping me see something that I thought was negative about myself in a positive light. And I hope he's doing okay. Stoic Thought of the Day: "People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them." -Seneca |
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