That specific trauma is still there

Around this time (middle of the night), fifteen years ago, I started a game changing series of events by getting my mom to bring me to the hospital, from which I was admitted (voluntarily) to an adolescent psychiatric unit.  Once I was actually there, I didn’t want to be there anymore, but a lot of things were changing, and I ended up having to stay for 19 days.  I left with a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescriptions for Depakote (mood stabilizer), Risperdol (antipsychotic), and Wellbutrin (antidepressant).  The medications changed a lot over the years…  I’m happy to report I’ve been med-free for about 9 years at this point.

Last year, I wrote about how I came to finally acquire my medical records from my hospital stay, and how I started to process things differently with the help of my therapist:
Continuing to work through a specific trauma

This year, I finally brought this massive document in to therapy with me, despite the fact that I was pretty unsure, er maybe more like totally ambivalent, about what I wanted to get out of talking about it (yet again) exactly.

My therapist started reading through the pages out loud, and simultaneously made comments and processed it in her own way.  At first this felt tedious (the thing is 210 pages long!)  But I also felt intrigued.  It was much more helpful for her to tell me about the content than for me to try to go through it myself (which I hadn’t done since first receiving it, last year).  I also started to feel yucky and shut-downy.  I finally verbalized, “Let’s take a break.”  I was worried this therapy session was really going to have a negative lasting impact on me, but, in fact, I felt fine afterward.  Maybe I’m more resilient these days than I think.

I used to always think that if I do this one thing, or if I find out these missing pieces, or if I reflect back in a different way, the pain of that experience will be lifted.  If I just keep grinding into it and picking away at it, I’ll one day be free.  Now I know that this can’t really happen.  And I can accept that it was a shitty thing that probably didn’t actually need to happen.  It was traumatic.  It was so long ago.  I can look at it with a completely different perspective by now, but not because of anything I did – that perspective shift happened naturally, over time and with personal growth.

There is so much I could write about.  But I actually really only want to write about one thing right now, as it relates to my hospital experience:  while I was there, I wore this one particular hoodie constantly.  And once I was released, I never wore it again.  But there seems to be no way I can get rid of it.  I brought the hoodie in to therapy, along with the document, and told her all about it.  When the document felt too overwhelming to keep delving into, I told her she should just hold onto it and go through it on her own time.  She asked if she could hold on to the hoodie too.  I said, “yeah sure.”

My hoodie sported this sports logo.

The reason I loved the hoodie so much was because the LA Rams were not a team.  (I just looked it up, and they were a team from 1946-1994).  I worked at a thrift store and picked up this gem at some point.  I liked the incongruousness of it.  I do not like football.