Going Back

 It was only until my last day in the hospital that I learned that my mood disorder is Major Depressive Disorder, severe, with Psychotic Features. I don’t know why they didn’t tell me before. It makes a lot of sense, the severe depression made the psychosis possible.

Immediately after being discharged I had an argument with mom, she drove me home in silence and dropped me off at the entrance without exchanging words. I looked in my things for my key and went in. I lay on the couch for a few hours, trying to rest and process all that I missed. My mom got mad at me because I had promised to shower and organize my stuff from the hospital, and I could not do it that day. I decided that going to the October 7th memorial would be too much for me, I felt unclean and didn’t have the energy to go to a social event that big, so I slept for the rest of the day.

The next day I went to school, it was a Tuesday, Digital Sketching; it’s the class with the most overdue assignments. But it was exciting to go to school, feeling less paranoid than before, I still felt paranoid but not as much. My mood decreased from what it was in the hospital.

On Wednesday I had my first IOP meeting; it’s very similar to the groups we had in the psych unit, but you’re not hospitalized. I have been doing the IOP since and it will continue for a few more weeks.

My motivation has been very low, comparable to how it was before going to the hospital; same with my mood. The only positive changes I perceive are the voices, they stopped, and the paranoia has decreased significantly with the Risperidone. I’m also taking Escitalopram for depression but so far it has not helped.

I keep spending hours trying to do my assignments but I don’t feel motivated, I don’t have the creativity, and I get overwhelmed with the amount of things I have to do. But I do have moments when I feel a push to do things, completing what I have proposed for the day or completing something that should have taken me days in hours.

People at the IOP recommend I go off from school to recover, but that is not really possible because my major is shutting down, and classes are going to be offered for the last time, so I won’t be able to retake them later.

That’s been it for now, I’ve been wanting to write this post since I was discharged but I just couldn’t do it.

[Update 11/8]

I wanted to take some time to write an update since this post was kinda short. So, I'm being discharged from the IOP next week. It's been weird, I have gone through waves of lack of motivation, to good productivity, and now sorta mid. I can tell I'm getting better though, slowly completing assignments. 

Two weeks ago I did my nails—I hadn't done them in months—and my eyebrows, I shaved, it felt great!

Socially, I helped build a Sukkah at school with Hillel, which was very cool, I was helping with understanding the instructions, and providing some tricks; I made quite the fame of being good at building stuff. Our Sukkah was featured by the Hillel International Instagram account! And today, I went to my second Shabbat dinner. This time I didn't leave early due to overwhelm, I stuck around and was quite social, it felt good.

I've been able to completely catch up with one of my classes, Design Sustainability; I'm going to be redesigning a lint roller to make it more sustainable. For Digital Sketching though, it has taken me a little more time, just yesterday I finished five drone designs which were our second assignment—I'm missing another six probably.

I've been looking through the post I wrote during my breakdown; I'm so glad to have written down my experience. It's a little traumatic, I just hope never to be in that situation again.