‘Ordinary People’ & Me
Sincerely, someone who is working on being more open and feeling less shame and guilt about past life experiences.
I don’t like to think about last year much. More often than not, when I think about last year, it’s during moments when I’m feeling my lowest. It’s during the times when I am feeling mentally anguished. It’s when the hope I hold onto feels smaller than a speck of dust. This is when I think about last August.
Last August, I was hospitalized for 7 days. The morning I was hospitalized was rough and hazy. Time somehow seemed to move both rapidly and slowly. I had to be at work in an hour, but I physically couldn’t make myself go. That morning felt different from the others. The other mornings felt strenuous, but this one felt final. I kept thinking to myself, “I can’t handle this. I’m bad at this. I can’t do this.” I kept asking myself, “What am I doing here? Why can’t I handle life the way other people can?". I had an emotional breakdown which led to me admitting myself to a psychiatric hospital.
After I was released from the hospital, I joined a partial hospitalization program. I came out of the hospital feeling hopeful and both realized and ashamed that the people closest to me knew I was struggling more than I led on. Too often, when something bad happens to me, I rationalize what's happening to avoid feeling desolate. I turn my inner pain into a life lesson for myself instead of letting myself feel sad— this isn’t one of those cases. I felt better after leaving the hospital and came home when I was ready to.
The day I came home from the hospital, I rewatched Girls Interrupted, a movie I thought a lot about when I was there. I would wonder if I would relate to it and if I’d see myself in any of the characters. The opposite happened— I enjoyed it less than I did when I watched it years ago. I did not feel understood by it.
I’d been wanting to rewatch Ordinary People and decided to do so one random day in February. When I rewatched it, I felt understood and comforted me in a way I hadn’t expected it to.
There’s a scene where Connor, the main character in the story, meets with a friend who was in a psychiatric hospital with him after he tried to commit suicide. The scene goes:
Conrad: I don't know. I just...I miss it sometimes. The hospital. I really do.
Karen: Things have to change. You know?
Conrad: But that’s where we laughed.
Karen: But that was a hospital. This is the real world.
This scene said everything that I couldn't say to anyone and hadn't tried to except for my therapist. It’s hard to explain how okay I felt in the hospital. It’s not something many will probably understand. It was the first time in a while that I felt I got to fully focus on myself. I connected with people. I got to talk about things I hadn’t talked about with anyone but my therapist. At work and in life, there are always these expectations of how you should be and what type of person you should be. Inside the hospital, there were no expectations except to attend groups, work on getting better, and entertain ourselves without causing trouble. We could cry, laugh, and even argue at times. We didn't have to pretend to be perfectly fine. I didn’t have to pretend to be happy. I got to exist without any expectations weighing heavy on me.
We weren’t allowed cell phones while there, so I did not find out I got accepted into a grad program until after I was released from the hospital. It put things into perspective for me; I wouldn’t have ever found out about this accomplishment if I had been successful that foggy August morning. I left the hospital with hope for the future. I entered a program through the hospital that helped me transition to being back in the real world.
The months after I came home weren't without their difficulties. Some days were rough, and some nights were overwhelmingly bleak and black, with no inch of light shining through. Some days and nights still feel this way. As I lay down ruminating, I watch the hole get smaller until there is no light just unhappiness and shame about the past and the inability to quit focusing on it or anything bright and happy.
Guilt and shame live within me. It thrives. It grows. It sometimes gets smaller, but it never fully leaves. I am ashamed to have gone to the hospital. I am happy I did. I regret it. I don’t regret it at all.
The past couple of weeks have been rough for me. I have been feeling like I am spiraling downhill again. I am fearful that this means something more. I am fearful that the progress I made will become irrelevant and I will end up back in the hospital. I am scared there's something irreversibly wrong with me and this is what my life will be constantly worrying and waiting to snap, to break down, to fully give up and lose that small piece of hope that has kept me going. The piece of hope that kept me going even when I was in the hospital.
No one told me that you don’t magically move on from past traumatic events and these events shape who you are as an adult. No one told me that being an adult meant feeling like I had nothing figured out. Is this how everyone feels? Often, I feel like it’s just me who feels this way. I didn’t feel this way in the hospital.
When I first wrote a review about Ordinary People on Letterboxd after my rewatch, I wrote, “Maybe one day I’ll feel like any other ordinary person. A person who wakes up and gets through the day without this unbearable fear that they’re not living the life they want to and never will.”
But that is not what ordinary people mean. According to Collins dictionary, ordinary people mean “normal and not special or different in any way.”
In my mind, “ordinary people” means "normal and happy.” Ordinary people don’t have problems because they are normal, and normalcy brings about happiness that I will never know. I have convinced myself that I need to be an ordinary person. I want to stop thinking this way.
I don’t want to be like ordinary people. I don’t need to be an ordinary person. I just need to be me. I want to accept who I am and not see myself as this horrible creature who has somehow tricked people into liking her. I don’t want to be like ordinary people. No, I don’t mean this in an "I'm not like other girls way” I mean I don’t want to be someone who shrinks herself and stays small to avoid being seen. I don’t want to keep my mouth shut and flow through life unnoticed. I don’t want to view confidence as something I shouldn’t have because it’s not something I deserve.
I don’t have to be ashamed of being diagnosed with OCD, anxiety, and depression. I can work on getting better. I have been working on getting better. I don’t need to envision this future me who is not suffering from any of this and will be an average normal person. Even as I type this out, I’m thinking to myself, “How unrealistic is it to expect this of anyone?” It’s unfair of me to expect myself to only feel positive emotions and consider myself unlovable for being an imperfect person.
I’ve made a lot of progress in the months since I’ve been in the hospital. I forget that during those bad days that make the world more than intolerable.
I am not an ordinary person and that is no longer my goal.
Ordinary People helped me feel seen and validated about how I felt about my experience at the hospital. It made it easier to move forward and feel less shame about what happened last August. I envision that Connor continues to seek help, work through his trauma, and learns to enjoy life and feel worthy of living. And like Connor, future me will look back at 20-something-year-old me with affection and a sense of unfamiliarity that only getting older and positive change can bring.
thank you so much for your vulnerability, I feel so seen in this post :) one day at a time right?