12/03/2022
Shot on a Diana+ film camera using 120mm film and a lot of sunlight.
When I was discharged from the psychiatric hospital four years ago my therapist told me that I had to take a walk every single day. I wouldn’t have left my bedroom otherwise and he was keenly aware of that. It was in the middle of a particularly cold London winter, and as I tramped along with a family member we passed frozen ponds, icy grass and felt bitter winds that penetrated our skin down to our bones. Slushy snow had us slipping around. I didn’t talk. It was a bleak start to recovery for someone with depressive-schizoaffective disorder. I still hated life; I thought, ‘This is my reality forever.’ It is in those moments that the prospect of wellness seems like a pipe dream, and I didn’t even have the energy to dream it.
10 December 2017
I was in the midst of my seven-week hospitalisation and was allowed home for one day. It was snowing outside and I’m here, with my coffee and my highland cow stuffed toy, extremely unwell, looking at the world outside before returning to the hospital, a life of fifteen minute checks, medications and loneliness.
Cut to three months later. I’ve told the story many times about my fellow patients encouraging me to ‘tell our story’. I decided this was the time to follow through on that promise and on 12th March 2018 ‘The Disinfectant Project’ was born. I was still very unwell, but I was walking around by myself, functioning more, and feeling ready to write for therapeutic purposes.
Today is 12th March 2022. I still feel like I’m teetering around, unpredictable, and every day must be taken one at a time, but life is another world from four years ago. I broke my three-year hospital admissions streak and haven’t been back as an inpatient since those seven weeks four years ago. I return every few weeks on ‘the other side of the wall’ in the Outpatients wing of the hospital and am very conscious of the blessing that is being able to go home afterwards. I sometimes go into the main hospital to pick up medications from the pharmacy there; I pass the rooms I had group therapy in, recognize nurses and people on the main desk and greet the pharmacists I’ve known for a long time. I re-experience memories as I walk through those corridors and I think I always will.
I don’t see that as a bad thing anymore now that I’m writing. This blog has been representative of where I am in life. During that first year of recovery in 2018 I wrote weekly, producing (roughly) 1200-word pieces that detailed my first steps in getting better. This was followed by a series called Then which described life inside the hospital, a topic that amassed a lot of curiosity from readers, for which I was grateful, keen to destigmatise the ‘loony bin’ space in pop culture. I wrote posts about the specifics of experiencing schizoaffective disorder, detailing my psychosis, dissociation, anxiety and depression. When I finally returned to university it slowed down. There was a period in 2019 when I didn’t write at all because my entire brain and being was stretched to a breaking point by finishing my final year. When it was over I wrote a post called, The New 27 Club about what had happened. One of my professors read and emailed me about it and the staff in the Queen Mary admin office, who I knew well, read the part I wrote in tribute to them aloud in a staff meeting. I was very touched by this, and happy to be back on the writing-for-therapy bandwagon.
Claude shot on Diana F+
There have been times of prolificacy and times of quiet over the following years, depending on my health. When I was having two seizures every day for several months in 2020 I wrote nothing, not because I didn’t desire to express myself but because I was in bed for several hours a day and too weak to do much else. When I started to recover and was diagnosed with Complex PTSD I revved back up again. So on and so forth. This blog is an image of my life over the last four years in its ebbs and flows, not constituting a simple journey in an uninterrupted upwards direction after the hospital admission but a constant fluctuation; every downwards turn looks different to the last and every treatment changes per every challenge, until the definition of ‘success’ is an abstract concept. I’ve always said that ‘success’ means being able to get out of bed in the morning, and that is still true, but it’s a little more complicated than that now.
Shot on Diana F+ using multiple exposures
Since my mental illness came upon the scene when I was sixteen I have been striving for the ever-elusive concept of ‘balance’. It dictates a lot of conversations between my psychiatrist and I now as ever. I’m going around and around in my head; I’m told I need to rest, not push myself, yes, gradually try new things if I can, get into life, expand my activities in the everyday, but also not too much, rest more when I’ve done one of these things and not take risks, all in the name of preventing a crash. My number one instruction is to ‘listen to my body’ to avoid said crashing. My mind and my body are symbiotic, when one ‘crashes’ the other goes down with the ship, too. It leaves me in a conundrum of how much is too much. Be cautious, but also bold, but not too bold, and rest, always rest after, well, basically anything.
I am not complaining; I understand this better than anyone. When I jump into things too quickly and at the rate of which ‘I have potential’ everything descends. Sometimes I worry I will never live a normal life. But what is normal? I don’t know the answer to that question. I do know that to get there, I must take it slowly. Recently I have begun working on the website and social media for my church, writing content about church life and activities for the blog, taking photos and turning them into posts, and similar things. It is engaging my brain in the most wonderful way, and I don’t feel pressured, but encouraged. I am very grateful for it. My church family are incredible and understand me. I’ll never take that for granted. It has proven to be an exciting step into work I love doing, for something I love and people I care about.
Shot of a dear friend on the Diana F+
There are many more steps ahead of me and things I want to do. Right now, I am satisfied that my health is improving, my brain is getting stimulated, I’m working on things I value and I’m generally moving forward. I was very depressed from October to January, and it was only in February, with a lot of prayer, the new challenges I am taking on, and the people around me, that I have felt life begin to shift. I am also excited by this movement forward because it is not a static step but encouragement that I can continue to do even more in the future. My new responsibilities are still fresh and there is a lot to get used to, mainly finding the ever-elusive ‘balance’ of working and resting. For the first time there is a glimpse beyond getting out of bed, even when part of that is following my doctors’ instructions to spend more time resting because I am doing more. Using my skills and education for something external is exciting, and I can’t wait to continue into, well, who knows what?
Brandy by Diana F+
I’ve been told by my doctors that there are no guarantees I won’t have seizures again or even have another mental breakdown and end up in hospital. However, while fluctuating symptoms of depression and anxiety are here to stay, I like to think that the crashes are behind me. Even if they’re not, I’m grateful. I got up today, sat down at my computer and wrote this. Later I’m making a worksheet for the kids in church and updating the website. I’m also brainstorming the next piece for the church blog about an upcoming event. I’m exhausted as always from insomnia and all the sedatives I take, but even so, I’m content. I don’t know where Disinfectant is going to go; I would love to turn it into a book, and who knows, maybe this is the year! Regardless, wherever it goes, I will continue to write my feelings, write life, and write thankfulness for all I’ve been given.
Thank you for reading, and as they would say in the Korean dramas I love to watch: you’re all my Ultimate Favourites.
March 2022