***Trigger warning – references to suicidal thoughts and self harm***
26th October will, I think, always be a date that is meaningful for me, as will 13th November.
Between those dates in 2018 I was a voluntary inpatient on the Stanage Ward (an acute psychiatric ward) in Sheffield, following a prolonged period of mental ill-health. If you’ve already read some of my posts, you’ll know that mental ill-health is putting it mildly. I broke down, lost myself, was stalked by a black dog, stared into a seemingly bottomless void. All those things are clichés for a reason, it turns out.
During that period of complete and total mental annihilation (May – October 2018) I battled suicidal thoughts and self harm. I couldn’t sleep or eat properly. I stopped doing everything. I was not myself, I couldn’t even remember who ‘myself’ was. So that was where my hospital admission came in.
I’ve doing a lot of thinking about how to address this time in hospital on my blog, and I’ve decided that the best way to tackle it is to take it in little bits. So I’m going to be posting every day this year between 26th October and 13th November, with each post discussing a different aspect of my time on the ward. Quite a few people have asked me what it was like, so I’m going to try and address some of the questions I’ve had, and also use it as a bit of a chance to work through some of the stuff that happened during that time.
I will not be discussing other patients, except in a general sense; I will be focusing on my own experience while I was in there, the ups and downs, the really crap bits, and how I feel the decision to accept the help and admit myself was the best decision I made for my recovery.
I hope you find it interesting!
Sarah x
BPD and Me 