Respite care success
I’m writing this from a respite care house :) Respite care is a very odd experience. I’m in a normal house on a normal street with a “normal family”. I’ve just had the most surreal evening meal with this family… They blessed the food (mild trigger, but nothing too bad), ate, talked and joked. There were no undercurrents, no tension, no unspoken hostility… It was very, very odd. I haven’t experienced that in my adult life ever. I’ve never witnessed a family who loved and joked without malice. I still don’t know what to make of it all.
My room is simple and comforting. I’m the only “client” here, and they have a capacity of three clients at any one time. There are no locks on any of the internal doors – including the bathroom, which is a little triggering, but it still feels safe! I’ve felt welcomed into the home without reservation. They don’t care about my diagnosis or what has led me here. There is just warm comforting acceptance. They’re not the Crisis Team trying to therapise me, they’re just a normal family who accept strangers into their house with basic guidelines in place.
There was a visitor for dinner who has mental health issues and is going through the DBT program, she convinced me that the program, as delivered here, wouldn’t suit me. It was interesting to talk to her though. It sounds like her world fell apart and she is now struggling on an invalids benefit. I can see how that could so easily have been me. But instead my current level of dissociation keeps me on a different level of functioning.
So I am safe! I’m writing this from my iPhone as my computer access is non-existent (as is access to a spell checker *sigh*). I’m trying not to worry about the silly things, like my crops in FarmVille and Farm Town dying while I’m here. But the little things will get to me every now and again. I’ve been told that I can stay as long as I need to get myself back to ground; as I’m somewhere out Pluto way at the moment, that could take awhile.
On a random note… Our door has a painting of Tigger on it, which pleases Aimee immensely :)
