Sometimes I worry I come off as like. Weirdly competitive or braggy or some shit when I talk abt my hospital experience last year but I promise it absolutely isn't that. I just have to talk about it sometimes or else I know my brain will repress it as that's it's usual go to for difficult memories.
It's insane to me to think that a little over a year ago I was essentially dying in a hospital ward, hopped up on fentanyl, losing a third of my body weight in under two weeks, unable to wash myself, puking up black spots??? Iron levels down to seven, constantly bleeding from the pancreatitis fucking up my hysterectomy incisions.
I try to think back to that time, and I just have snippets, outside of the worst stuff ofc (the pain, begging to be killed, hallucinating from sedatives, going into the surgeries) but like. I remember waking up and seeing my mum asleep in a hospital chair next to me and it made me feel safe. I remember two of my best friends in the world visiting me day after day, taking care of me in shifts so I wouldn't be alone for too long at a time. I remember staring out the same window, day after day, with a view of a brick building right next to it and grey skies behind. I remember fragments of conversations I had with the different patients who came and went. I remember slowly working up the ability to walk ten metres, then twenty, between the wards so I would get some small form of exercise. I remember my mum having to bathe me even though I was twenty-six. I remember the nurses and the doctors, both the good and the bad. I was lucky that the good outnumbered the bad. I was lucky that my mum was there to defend me and get me help. I was lucky to survive.
It's a huge cliche to say this, but a near death experience like that does change you as a person. I managed to quit smoking (fine for others, was bad for me) bc I was on fentanyl through the worst of my withdrawals, and I learned smoking could trigger my pancreatitis again (nothing is worth that pain). I finally faced a lifetime worth of trauma that I'd been running from for years, and I started processing it one bit at a time. I finally broke off ties with people I'd been terrified to stand up to, I put my ethics and my own health first after being the social punching bag for over a decade. I realised I didn't want to pursue my childhood dream of being a corporate artist & and animator and that I'd only ever wanted that because other people paid attention to me because of it. I finally went back to making art just for me. I chose a new career path. I finally learned how to both like and love myself for who I am. This entire thing has been cliche city, but that medical experience has been one of the most life changing experiences in a series of wild anecdotes that makes up my life and as much as I never, ever want to be in that pain again, part of me is glad it happened because it really did pave the way to where I am today. There's not rant a train to this post other than my need to sometimes sit with the memories and acknowledge that this happened. If you read all this, thankyou
really just celebrating and enjoying being fat lately. like the battle w/ internalised, self facing fat phobia is still there but I'm fighting it tooth and nail. And idk, it's just nice ti be fat. I feel so solid. My gut is nice and soft and feels good to rest my hands on or hold when I sleep.
It makes me feel alive. Which I'm sure has a lot to do w/ the fact that, as a chronically ill person who's had some pretty close calls both from physical and mental illness, I know that the times I've been skinniest is the times I've been sickest and closest to death.
So when I'm fat it's like evidence of the exact opposite, it shows how well I'm doing in life and how I'm safe illness wise and I have access to food and shelter and I'm happy enough to want to take care of my body by feeding it. And I know there's people who find my current body beautiful bc I find fat beautiful in others. It's just nice to enjoy being fat
This feels like an insane thing to complain about but like. I'm realising there's people in my study class I need to Have A Talk with bc they will tell me Absolutely Everything about their lives and trauma even though a big post of our study & future careers is not disclosing personal & potentially triggering information. Like, people will add to a class discussion & keep details anon & vague as to not disclose only to immediately turn to me and quietly disclose every detail to me like im the preacher in a confessional booth.
And this isn't to say that I don't want people to confide in me but also like, the people I want to confide in me and tell me their personal stuff are the people in my close friends (both irl and close online friends like I've made through this site) and then my close family. But for better and for worse I seem to have something about me that leads complete strangers to tell me super intimate details of their life and like.
Whilst that's useful for my future career goals as a psychologist, it's super overwhelming when it's happening in classrooms or on public transport (again, v nice to know ppl feel safe w/ me but why do strangers on trains n buses tell me their most harrowing life moments). It just puts me in this really awkward position, time and time again, where I have to find a nice way to be like "Hey can uh. Can you tell me less about your life, please?"
One of the more rough things about studying mental health is sometimes you'll hear a professor explain a certain kind of trauma or illness and you will then go "oh, so that's what that thing I lived through that I never had a name for was." Like, I've Sorrento so much of my life working in my mental health n seeing professionals I thought I knew everything I had going on disorder wise. And then one class will have you walking out once it's done like "oh yeah I. Uh. I really did live euthanasia psychosis for years, huh?"
Which is kind of wild that I took so long to realise that bc like. Yeah, if ur spending everyday terrified ur body is going to turn inside out or that there's a man trapped in mirrors who follows you or that ur brain has tiny people in it with paint scrapers digging away at the insides of ur skull there's a More Than Zero percent chance ur psychotic
Caught up with an old friend and conversation was slightly less energetic than last time we caught up, so now my very rational brain is telling me that seeing me was a boring chore and that I'm terrible company and my old friends will grow tired of seeing me because I'm not fun enough to be around
Something something feeling the overwhelming power that comes from being platonically loved and supported by new friends I never expected this level of love or support from
