My friend is going to see this and either laugh or shake her damn head.

I sent this gif a lot my first week back to the real world. I was floating down streets due to my new Lexapro superpower. Nothing could keep me down! I was hot! I had purpose in the world! I felt existence in its rawest form. Never had I paid attention to myself, and this new feeling probably made me look a LOT like the GIF of Ms. White up there.

No one really seems to talk about the transition that happens after leaving a facility. The facility feels like a hole where time doesn’t exist, then it seems to speed it up the moment you step out. I thrust myself into that weekend: drinking and keeping myself busy with fun activities. I was saying hello to people while thinking thoughts like, “I wish I could keep wearing scrubs and no makeup,” or, “I might freak out and it could go one of two ways but we’re just gonna roll with it and see.”

I was so adjusted to waking up, being handed my pills, then sitting and chatting about feelings all day. The stimulation of regular life was exhilarating and overwhelming.

Drinking was a struggle. It took me about 3x as long to drink a drink, though this was compared to my alcoholic tendencies from before. I had a very obvious reaction cycle and a painfully delayed response time to anything that caused emotion like “humor” and “happiness” and whatever.

I went back to work immediately. I found myself foggy in the mornings and catching up during the afternoon, something that still hasn’t seemed to work itself out just yet.

Only the higher-ups in the office and my best friend were aware of my stay at the Pavilion. Everyone else got a much calmer and weirdly serene version of who I was before. Lots of efforts were made to seem normal after my “family emergency.”

I often grappled with trying to seem “normal” and emphasizing the seriousness of my mental health state and progression. Healing and working through a diagnosed mental health condition would involve completing redefining behaviors and recognizing toxic patterns and people. Picking up jogging was my first big decision about a week into work and it was frustratingly difficult to start.

I didn’t want sympathy and condolences, so I kept the whole situation to myself. I betrayed my own work on making mental health less of a stigma, but only because I couldn’t handle abstract ideas like “time” and “emotions” correctly. Everything felt like a lot, and I missed the sensitively quiet escape of the Pavilion.

My behaviors changed with each passing week, moving from naive Snow White to a more jaded, teenage version of her who spoke too dryly for her environment (read the room Jess!). I no longer cared about the emotions around me in the same way, and I began to feel as though I lost the one trait about me that I held onto so dearly: I was an empath who didn’t feel the emotions around me anymore. And this was terrifying.