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trans-axolotl2 · 1 year

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2022 reflections

usually always do a thing at the end of the year where i look back at the year and do my wrap up journal entry. thought i'd post it here <3 trigger warning for eating disorder discussion, no mention of weights or numbers or really much specific behaviors.

January 2022: Most of the things I remember from this month is top surgery recovery. The recovery was sort of sensory awful, but it brought So much joy with it and I also felt so joyful that I got to be with my boyfriend and he was there during the recovery process. I remember it being really horribly cold but not awful. Got really into jellyfish randomly and started hyperfixating on them after going to the aquarium. first time i started having the ceiling people hallucination!

February 2022: genuinely can't remember much of february. I think I was getting more and more invested in learning stuff about antipsychiatry. I think this is also when things started getting bad eating disorder wise again and I was also having a bunch of trauma flashbacks. i was really determined not to admit to myself that anything was wrong because i knew that if i started admitting one thing was wrong then everything was just going to fall apart and I didn't want to do that right then.

March 2022: I remember celebrating my birthday with friends and going to Nationals for ballroom dance! both of those things were super fun. Physically was feeling so fucking horrible all the time + was having mobility issues. Pretty sure I had a lot of pretty bad paranoid psychotic episodes during the month? can't quite remember. had like a spiritual experience while reading a book of trans poetry and decided I wanted to journal outside for like a month but then stopped lmao. got a little better mood wise because it started being sunnier out and i was going outside more! pretty sure this was when I joined a new antipsych org.

April 2022: Things were definitely spiraling pretty badly with my eating disorder but at this point I had stopped seeing my dieititan and it was reallly going downhill. Still desperately trying to hang on. I remember sleeping in and skipping a lot of classes and feeling physically horrible all the time. got doxxed by some neo nazis because I was counter-protesting their transphobic protest. I remember having some really good times with my college friends though!

May 2022: Finals season! I remember being so unwell but spending hours every day at the library and writing some really good papers and just being so stressed even though I passed my classes. Changed my hair from purple to green. Moved into a different dorm. Started a new job. Got really manic. Got forearm crutches to help with my mobility challenges! Started to recognize that my eating disorder was actually getting really bad again. The second half of May was kind of nice though.

June 2022: Both my jobs were stressful but not awful. Eating disorder was really, really bad, and I physically felt awful literally every day. It was getting out of control. My treatment team started suggesting residential treatment. I went to a drag show, got manic at pride and got way too drunk at pride while on a call with a treatment center lmfao. Had fun with my friends at pride though :). Probably the worst my eating disorder has ever been and just the whole month I remember feeling tired and hating myself and just so completely miserable in a way I've never felt before.

July 2022: Agreed to start the process of going to residential treatment. Spent the first three weeks just doing intake calls, getting on waiting lists, doing research, everything. Made a beautiful little stuffed animal bear with forearm crutches and decided I wanted to reopen my Etsy but then got institutionalized lmfao. July 22nd 2022, I was admitted to residential treatment for my eating disorder. The first couple weeks just felt like a daze. I loved my original millieu that was there from my week one. Four people discharged the week I was there, but everyone there was so welcoming. I didn't get to go outside for all the weeks I was there in July, and I ordered a lot of stuff on amazon like yarn and a paint by number set. I remember just feeling like none of this was real and was still convinced I would be out of there in four weeks. I still was really incapable of understanding a lot of the ways my eating disorder was a problem. Thinking back on it most of what I remember is slow summer days, playing a lot of Bananagrams with my favorite staff member, and being so overwhelmed and confused. Also remembering the upset about the door curtains. Had a lot of realizations about trauma and control and how my eating disorder worked. I started making everyone origami creations and also started journalling every day becauase I felt so scared about the psych record being the only record that matters.

August 2022: Was overall a really difficult month. Still instituionalized and had to deal with my university trying to kick me out and then making the decision to take the semester off. Started really feeling a lot of the violence of institutionalization. I started really, really becoming close friends with patients and we would spend so much time together cause every day that's all there was to do. August 2nd was the first day I said out loud that I valued recovery. I started having some motivation now and then, and got into a cycle where I could get on the highest level for a couple days and then would dramatically crash and burn. A new patient came who like irrationally annoyed me for a week lmfao because he was really Christian. I ran community meeting for the first time and loved it because I loved complaining. Started getting really close with one patient in particular and we were helping each other at meals and keeping each other accountable. Started struggling with SH in treatment so I got put on protocol. there was a really dramatic incident that happened in treatment because the staff were fucking incompetent and two of my best friends in treatment got kicked out. one of my tumblr mutuals came to the same treatment center and that was really lovely because i was like thank god another trans person to talk to antipsychiatry with and then now they've turned out to be like one of my best friends for life (and im seeing them next week actually!) One of my fav patients who I felt really protective of stepped down and I got to do her warrior leader name ceremony at her sending ceremony and we all cried.

September 2022: Probably one of the most difficult months of my year so far. Growing closer and closer to all my friends in treatment. This was the month I had a feeding tube in for 3 weeks. It was really, really difficult. Sensory wise it felt awful, emotion wise it made me really really depressed, and meant I couldn't go outside. It was just so so difficult. When I got it out I remember how proud and happy everyone was and the support of everyone really kept me going. Was the creation of the Pisces full moon!!! The feeding tube was really the turning point in my eating disorder recovery. It was the moment I realized that it was never going to stop, that these justifications were never going away, that there was never going to be the point where I was happy and that all these intrusive thoughts were really just the surface level manifestations of a way I coped with my trauma. Realized a lot of the ways I coped through avoidance. Realized that day by day that although I didn't choose to have a brain that told me to cope in these ways and suggested restriction a million times a day, I could actually choose to counter them. Was not fucking easy and I could not have gotten through it without everyone.

October 2022: Went to the emergency room and then got well enough I went out on passes! I went to the zoo, to the craft store, to the aquarium, to the mall, to the coffee shop. We had a lot of new admits who would come for one day and then elope. I started actually getting a lot a lot a lot better. Really putting in a lot of work and also really feeling so much energy and able to connect with my friends. Goblin club!!! Did my weight exposure and then stepped down to partial hospitalization on October 18th!!! I was so nervous but so happy to reunite with my friends who were in PHP. Started staying in the supportive living with my treatment bestie and really loved spending evenings with them, having a ravine experience, all of that.

November 2022: Complete emotional roller coaster. PHP was sort of the time to stop avoiding things. Became so close to the PHP patients as well and really did a lot of like, collective processing of instituionalization trauma together. Emotional highs and emotional lows but all together SO transformative. One of my treatment friends wrote us a song that made me cry. i cried so much and just. Felt so completely healed in ways I had never anticipated. Got nose piercings with my patient friends. We got another patient to tattoo us all matching recovery tattoos. We went to build a bear together and got really drunk together. I cried so much at my sending ceremony and we stayed up really late my last night just talking with these people I've grown to love so so much. On November 18th I was discharged from treatment. I felt so completely insane being back in the real world--I didn't know what to do or how to act. Started couch surfing with friends. Spending time in Ohio, and then off to Pittsburgh.

December 2022: Adjusting to being back in the real world. No longer going through each day measuring what would happen compared to the schedule of meals and bathroom breaks and outside breaks and group therapy. Still keeping up with my outpatient treatment. Doing embroidery again!! Spending time with my best friend from high school and watching a lot of reality tv with them. Having a few low mood moments and psychosis, but overall feeling fragile but good. Then going to Philly for Christmas and feeling the best I have in weeks. Spending Christmas with my extie and his family and just. Realizing how much better I'm doing. how much more at peace I am. How I'm motivated and excited and know that I am deserving of so much better. How at the beginning of this year I thought I was horrible and couldn't make friends and leaving this year with so much love and connection in my life. Knowing that I won a research grant and can do even more stuff next year.

Overall this year has been one of the most challenging years of my life in a new way. Not the worst year of my life by far, but one where I had to push myself and I had to do a lot of work. And just. 2022 is a year I'm going to remember forever I think. The people I've met this year--E, E, M, C, A, I, R, J, S. The friends who have been there for years and are still here. The memories of goblin club, outside breaks, PHP adventures, the snaps we'd write each other. Idk. I think that's what defined my 2022. Community. This year more than any other I have felt loved and understand what community looks like when you have to fight for it to exist every day, when you're surrounded by violence and power and coercion every day and you still manage to show each other that much love.

#personal #journal #eating disorder tw #eating disorder recovery #ed tw #residential treatment

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