Thank you everyone :) for your support!
1st of feb, we have entered the month of admittance.
It's funny, I was half expecting them to refuse me admittance, for no rational reason other than I've suffered a lot of rejection in my life.
It was a pleasant surprise to get the phone call. They would have taken me earlier but my insurance wasn't quite up to par. I've only had it a little while, specifically to cover this hospital stay.
This is a really big deal, in a sense because I've spent lots of my adult life so terrified of being admitted into a psych hospital. So much so that it was a primary way that my ex could manipulate and control me. That and losing my kids were my two big fears.
Well I had to face the losing my children fear when I, eventually, left their Dad. It was purely survival and the understanding that I had no choise in the matter. It was "stay and surely die or leave and recover and, at least, be on the planet for my children".
He used to say, a lot, "if you leave, you won't get the children because you're crazy."
I believed him.
By the end, though, I was begging him to have me admitted and he wouldn't. I once hitched over to L for the sole goal of getting myself admitted and the psych nurse guy (what a dick) just said "go home and deal with it." Without even asking any questions.
See my ex was clever, no punches, nothing that left bruises. But our lives were hell. Apparent "he was happy". And that's all that mattered. I thought it wasn't abuse because he didn't hit me. The whole time I didn't even realise. I didn't know there was such a thing as gaslighting. I was very bamboozled, addled, chronically exhausted, drugged; he made me eat hash oil and smoke very strong cannabis, another one of his control methods, I was in a lot of physical and emotional pain, the whole time I was with him, but babies and drugging and emotional abuse kept me unable to think very clearly. I was breastfeeding and pregnant for a lot of the relationship. Seven babies take a lot of time and energy.
So this fear is the second big fear that I need to face.
I think it is an inherited fear, coz my Dad once told me his was terrified of being deemed insane and admitted. He's a very dissociative Aspi with, I think, PTSD from emotion neglect during a bout of serious illness as a toddler and having a cold, anal, not-loving mother.
His two wives were both abusive too (my mother was the first, my sister's the second).
My mother was a psych nurse for a while. She hated it.
So I'm facing an intergeneration fear by doing this.
Our local clinic is kinda barbaric. My brother and two sons have been In there. One son in the children's ward, this was after I had left. I was excluded by then.
I've lost a friend who was killed by staff negligence and over-medicating, while in inpatients. Another friend killed herself directly after getting out.
I've had lots of friends who've spent time in there.
I've visited.
My choir goes in there regularly. We run a singalong in the acute ward once every two months.
I'm glad they rejected me now, Belmont is way better.:).
