Everybody needs attention. Everybody needs to be heard and validated and special. What happened to the good old days when people just lived their lives, took responsibility for their own actions and stopped blaming other people for their own sorry lives? Amiright? Can I get a whut whut??
Whut?
Oh, you know I'm kidding.
When I was a child my dad spent a few years working in the occupational therapy department in a psychiatric hospital. There weren't so many rules about confidentiality as there are now - I heard some stories.
It was around that time that my parents introduced the concept of 'mental health days' to our home. Not because someone was sick, not because there was a blizzard - but maybe because the sun was shining and the breeze was just right and everybody needed a break - they would close their shop/call in to work, pull us from school, and we'd go have a great day together doing something fun and life-affirming like hiking through a meadow or skipping rocks by a stream. I highly recommend this.
I learned very early to respect and care for my own mental health. What is anything you could accomplish or accumulate in your life worth, if you don't have the capacity to enjoy it?
Mental illness has deeply affected my entire life, yet it is a hard thing to talk honestly about. It's so hard to find people to talk TO about it. Sometimes you can really only talk around it, because of respect for the dignity and privacy of the ones you love - because sometimes the mental illness that you're struggling to cope with isn't yours.
I was driving through town with a kindly, elderly gentleman a few years ago, when he casually pointed his finger out the window of the car to a bundled woman walking across a parking lot.
That woman has depression.
I wanted to say to him, My son says f**k a lot.
I didn't expect that he would understand.
You know what's fun? Driving down the highway at 110km/hr when your child suddenly decides to pull the door handle THREE TIMES just to make sure it won't open.
You better believe I have anxiety.
But we've all got something. I've seen the underbellies of enough people to know that none of us are exactly mentally well - at least not all of the time.
What is there but a spectrum's difference between a paper cut and an infected wound that leads to a deadly blood infection?
Mental illness isn't really any different.
If your mind isn't well you might lose your purse, suddenly forget where you were driving, burst into tears over an Old Spice commercial, or forget that there's anyone in the world who loves you. Your brain might simply be overwhelmed, or you might have Alzheimer's. You might need someone to run you a nice long bath, pour you a cup of tea, make you supper - or, you might need all of the above, every day, plus some medication.
If your mind isn't well, you might find it soothing to spend a day or a month or a year lying on your bed in the dark, staring at blackness, listening to Muddy Waters or Cold Play or U2. This is the kind of thing people do after a break-up or a death or during an existential crisis. Emotionally, it is the equivalent of needing to be in traction after falling off the side of a mountain. You know you will heal, but you just need some time and to be left alone not moving.
Sometimes mental illness looks more like temporary insanity - you might lie face down numb on the kitchen floor, or face up on the grass in your backyard, chanting 'God, God, God, God...' You might drive your car around in a blind rage looking for people to run over. You might push furniture in front of your door to keep yourself in. This is the kind of thing you might maybe do if your child has been assaulted or your spouse has betrayed you, and suddenly you just know you could kill somebody. It's the emotional equivalent of having been doused in gasoline and lit on fire. It's the interesting kind of craaaazy that makes for great gossip and invisible scars.
There are just so many ways for mental illness to manifest itself. You might cut yourself, or starve yourself, or write suicide notes. You might mix the Kool-Aid for someone else to drink, or swallow so many pills that your children have to get special permission to come visit you on the quiet ward.
You might drool and lick people's faces and wipe your feces on the walls in truck stop bathrooms.
You might molest children, or murder men and bury their body parts in your planters.
You might wrap your head or your house in aluminium foil.
You might shoot up an elementary school.
You might drown your babies in the bathtub, or contemplate throwing the one that's screaming out the open apartment window into the freezing snow. You might consider throwing yourself in front of a bus, or shoving a random stranger in front of a subway car.
You might lock yourself away and completely ignore someone, like they are dead to you, like they are not even there.
Our minds are all actually incredibly and dangerously susceptible to illness. If thinking about that doesn't make you depressed and anxious, you're probably not mentally ill. That, or you're suffering from a dissociative disorder. Just sayin'.
In more recent years, I've learned some other things about mental illness.
I've learned that it can break you with its relentlessness and cruelty. I've learned that it can make you invisible. I've learned that it can isolate you and leave you empty and dry and desperate for hope and for one true friend. I've learned that all of the help is just based on trial and error.
No one knows but Jesus.
Mental illness is more distancing than lice, than leprosy. When it's in your house, no one draws near just to sit with you. People want to evaluate. They stand opposite you and look deep into your eyes so that they can be sure they are really making themselves understood, and they put their hands on you, and they dispense their wisdom.
I've seen this before.... You should..... I had a friend who.... Have you tried..... You're just not.....
If I had a dollar...
That's the thing about mental illness - you. just. have. no. idea.
My husband left me a beautiful letter on the fridge the other morning, with the words of Exodus 20:21 - The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.
And he challenged us to have hearts like Moses.
So we press in where we may be tempted to stand far off, and we draw near to the thick darkness - because of course God is in it. We can't see His face or His hand or His footstep - but we can hear His voice and He is very, very near.
My body and mind may fail, but God is my strength and my portion forever. Psalm 73:26
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