When I was 17 for the first time, and then after that maybe about 6months to a year or once every two years since. As I get older though, the length of my stays and how often I end up there has been thankfully going down. I've been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The hospital kind of reminds me of kindergarten or like a day care. Lot's of supervisors. There's a craft table. There's always someone crying and there's always that one person who's shit themselves. Things are not as structured as people expect, I don't think. And you're not completely confined to your room most of the time like a lot of people think. You can have a little bit of alone time. It's actually very very boring once you've been there for a while. If you're good, sometimes they'll even let you go into the main part of the hospital by yourself to get a sandwich or some coffee or something. The worst part about it is the other people you're there with. I'm sure you can imagine that there's a lot of drama when you put a bunch of unstable people together in the same place. And sometimes it can get frustrating because... well.. you're just there and so people develop tempers and there's always someone who wants to be more mad than someone else... it can be a real shit show.

Day to day life is basically the same as everyone else I would imagine, just different. If I have a good day, then I have a good day, and if I have a bad day I just try to not let it spiral into more bad days. That's really all you can do. I work part time, I still live at home, but I'm pretty independent. My biggest "challenge" is just staying on top of it. Taking my meds. Going to my appointments. Going to group. Going to work. Keeping busy. It's surprisingly easy to just slip into not doing that stuff, and that's what lands you back in the hospital. Other than that, I'm usually just like everyone else, maybe a bit weird but there's nothing I can do about that, haha.