I have a confession to make

A month ago I was in the hospital.  I can't tell you how many times I've tried to write this and the words just haven't come, because it's honestly terrifying.  A month ago, I was in the Behavioral Health unit of a hospital near my town and I'd been there six days, I was feeling okay enough to start getting ready to leave but was terrified because the unit was a safe little bubble that existed almost outside the rest of the world. I left the unit two days later.

In one of my previous journal entries I talked about mental health issues, I said they needed to be destigmatized, so that way people could feel comfortable getting the help they needed. In that entry, I talked about the fact that I was cutting and that I kept an unopened bottle of pills on my desk because of the escape that it had represented. I haven't cut myself in over a month and the bottle of pills is now gone. Because on May 7th at 12:20 in the afternoon I took them all. Sixteen hours later I was admitted to the emergency room with crushing chest pain and at roughly 7:30 in the morning on May 8th I was admitted to the Behavioral Health unit and diagnosed with major depression and social anxiety. I met some of the most incredible people I'd ever met in my life, cried more in a week than I had in months, and walked out feeling honestly okay for the first time in years. This journal is the first time that I'm admitting to all of this to someone that isn't a therapist or someone otherwise directly involved. My parents have told some people, but I haven't told anyone the depth of what's happened. I still haven't to be honest, I just don't have the words. 

Maybe one day I will, just like maybe one day I'll not only be able to imagine having a future, I'll also be able to picture what it looks like. But for now, baby steps. For now I'm going to work on believing people when they say everything is going to be okay, learning to stop pretending to be fine when I'm not, and recognizing when I need help and asking for it. For now I need to take care of myself before dealing with the rest of the world, honestly it can wait; after all, sometimes I matter too, right?