The flashbacks...

[Magenta]

I tried to fall asleep and for one surreal moment, I could feel myself back in my hospital room during my second psych wars stay. I opened my eyes again and suddenly the memories came back. Over and over, one event. I don't mean for this to be triggering but I can't unsee it. I can barely stop shaking.

I'm sitting on the floor of my room, between the shelves and my bed. I'm shaking and almost rocking back and forth. I just finished screaming. I'm making these half-screams. I'm sobbing so hard. All I can do is scratch my arm over and over. I'm scratching the scar where I had previously made a huge cut. Then I start scratching my lower arm. I can hear someone coming into my room. It's Pavel, the youth worker. He's maybe twenty five. He has this young face that looks like he's just walked in on something he never would have expected or hadn't experienced before. I look at my arm and it's covered in blood, running down the skin or smeared from my nails. I can't unsee his face. I feel so guilty- I think I scared him. He was really nice to me. I remember half-whispering, half-sobbing to get a nurse. The nurse came in and just smiled at me and asked me why I hurt myself. I didn't answer, just kept sobbing and half-screaming that I was sorry. I thought I would be in trouble but the nurse just helped me up so he could get me cleaned up.

I self-harmed quite a bit in the hospital. I never got in trouble, just always had youth workers and nurses offer to talk me through it. No amount of talking could fix the pain I was in.

This is all I can see. The scar is itching. I hate the nights where this is all I can think of. I hate it.

I'm scared the nightmares will return.

[anonymous53]

:hugs: it'll be okay. It'll be okay Jo. Maybe stay up late so you're so exhausted you won't be thinking?

[Magenta]

I avoided the nightmares last night (sort of; I had nightmares again but not about the hospital) but maybe not tonight. I found my journals from both hospitals and my poetry notebook. I remember showing the poems to one of my nurses. She asked me to write something happy and nice for her. I barely could. I remember thinking how even if she wanted to help, she didn't understand. Not really.

Why can't the memories go away? Suddenly I'm overwhelmed. On one hand, I want to be back there. It's safe there. On another hand, I want to run. Run out of my house and down the street, maybe sleep in the park where there's no chance my teddy bears will smell like the hospital sheets or my pillow will feel flat like the one on my bed there.

[Fiction]

For a while after I was in hospital all my memories replayed over and over again in my head, there wasn't one day where I didn't think about it and everytime I was alone or had a moment to think I thought about it. It replayed in m head over and over again and I hated it. It still happens sometimes but it's gradually happening less and less. I guess you just need to keep going, because eventually it'll become more and more of a distant memory, and it'll replay less and less. :hug:

[Magenta]

Thanks, Kathy. You're right. I guess I just needed to hear it from someone else. I can't help but feel guilty about scaring that youth worker like that. I was so numb that I must have looked like I had died there with my eyes open.

[Fiction]

I feel guilt for a lot of the things I did as well. Like running out of hospital, the guilt I felt then was horrible, like I was wasting the polices time when they where called to come and get me. The thing is at the end of the day it's there job to do that. It's what they're paid to do and what they've chosen to do. We reacted how we felt right at the time, whether that was right or wrong in the long run may be a different matter, but we did what we though was right at the time just like anyone else would. We shouldn't feel guilty for that.

:hug: