Truly, it is awful that the best news I have had in decades in regards to my mental illness is that all of my feelings of being useless, experiencing horrid and abnormal levels of depression, and my haunting fear that everyone is either plotting to destroy me or leave me are normal in the abnormal world I inhabit. I am only a freak among nearly everyone but somewhere there is a place where I am just like everyone.
Of course, that is not true. The mentally ill are scattered amongst the populations. There exists no utopia where we all live together in harmony. No, we are to live with those who can never understand us and why? Why when all of the data is there, the scholarly journals, the research, the years of case studies are all there. Some would call this PROOF. The proof that mental illness is, um, you know, AN ILLNESS. Just like the common cold, cancer, shingles, or Alzheimer's my chronic depression, my borderline personality disorder means I am sick. So, why am I treated like I am fine? Do you know when the mentally ill are taken seriously? Do you? You do because all of you have said these words either to yourself or out loud, "if only I knew maybe I could have done something to help". Do you remember saying those word? Remember where you were? When you found out you had lost someone close, and to what? Suicide, a drug overdose, or maybe liver failure? Suicide being the number one killer of the mentally ill by far and drug overdose and alcohol induced liver failure trailing behind but always there, ever present. You see the junkie or the drunk and you think to yourself, "there is a fool who lacks self control, why doesn't he put down the bottle and get his shit together?". Behind that bottle is illness. Now, I am sick of people calling alcoholism a disease because it is not. Addiction is a symptom. Behind addition is an illness but addiction itself is not an illness. No one has an in born predisposition to brandy or barbituits, Chardonnay or coccaine, Hennessy or heroine. It is the darkness of depression, the evil attack of anxiety, the chasing fear of paranoia mixed with the discovery that some of us stumble upon that enough booze can shut down our depression, or that the simple prick of a needle eases all the anxiousness witch usually freezes us. So the story goes and unless you can afford a drug or alcohol addiction those two remedies are out of the question.
So, what is left? The pharmaceutical industry with their promises of rainbows and moonbeams? While there are some useful drugs out there, they usually are not cures and in my experience are bandaids at best. I only take them because they are inexpensive and it shows those around me that, at least, I am trying something. Doesn't that sound odd, "it shows those around me that, at least, I am trying something". For they, and most, assume that a trip to the psychiatrist and a script for some pills will end any suffering. Maybe it does. Maybe some people are just that curable. Or maybe some people confuse sadness with depression. Maybe some people confuse the psychological effects of traumatic events with mental illness. Maybe people do not understand that people who suffer from something like depression don't need a reason to be depressed or that people who suffer anxiety don't need a reason to be anxious. We feel what you feel when a loved one passes for no reason, everyday and we feel the crowded airport, "I can't miss my flight" pounding in the chest just because today is another day and you say, "you'll be fine everyone has a bad day".
"Everyone is a little crazy". Maybe? I don't know. I can not disprove that but I do know that everyone is not a little mentally ill. A little crazy is not consistent with the pain the suffering the constant gut punch of being sick. A cold ain't cancer. A paper cut is not like a severed limb. Spinal trauma is not a bump on your head. Why is my borderline personality disorder a bad day to you when it's an awful life to me? When it is not a life, it doesn't feel like living by any definition. It is constant, relentless fear and pain. It does not stop. There is no cure. So, you are left with a couple of choices: deal with it or give up.
The first struggle is trying to make sense of it. You learn, very early, that you are not like the people who surround you but you have to blend in. You must learn to pretend, to act, to lie, to deceive in order to survive. Hide those tears or you won't go far. Let go of mommies skirt or the other kids are going to kick your ass. Find the feeling of safety somewhere. For me, it was a secret world. From the moment I left the car and headed, alone or with my brother, to school I became a different boy in a different world. I had rules and I developed tricks to create the illusion of safety. If I could avoid stepping on cracks in the sidewalk I would be okay. If I could count to ten three times before I reached the flag pole I would be okay. A red car might grant me temporary invincibility or tails up penny could make me ivisable (I know heads up is supposed to be good luck but my rule book was not consistent with this universe). As a boy, I had to concentrate, work hard, before and after school to convince myself that I was not me. I had to be Silver Surfer gliding through the galaxy, untouchable and invoulnerable. Or, I would fake a stomach ache. Stay home from school, safe on my island couch, the master of my universe of tiny toys and television. Those things I could control and the things that could not hurt me. Every year I missed more school days than most kids and as I got older and my partents had their own problems missing school became easier. No one really noticed, and school was easy enough so my grades didn't suffer. They didn't really want to fail an A student because he missed too many days. They never did. I never failed a class.. One class, I remember, I attended only three times. Five grade points were deducted from my final grade and I received a 92 which is a high B+. My senior year I had to meet with the principal. Due to the amounts of days missed, unexcused absences, I was not supposed to graduate. They were not going too give me my diploma. This is what I don't understand about my illness. Everyday, and with no cause, I am anxious, sad, hurt, fragile but then, sometimes, and almost always when I need it like a super power, reality is pushed aside and that fictional figure I have created for survival takes over and I shine. With the confidence of James Bond, I explain, simply and concisely that the rules others have to follow just are not the rule I follow. I explained, with the evidence of my grades, standardized test scores, and behavior reports how irresponsible it would be of the school district to hold me back, to deny me what I earned due to the their trivial attendance policy. I remember also stressing that the not only did my lack of attendance do no damage, it actually saved them money, freed up much needed desk space, and allowed teachers to concentrate on those students who needed extra attention.
I graduated on time.
I walked across that stage with fists clenched white, a stomach about to explode, and tears of fear--utter confusion--and the weight of sadness like a million oceans crushing me. And as I sat down in my cap and gown, I knew that this was the end. I knew that what I had thought of, for so long as an unsurvivable as hell, was nothing compared to the world which stretched itself out in front of me. No longer would I have my mother to come home to. That one person who no matter what was a constant. The simple, always and forever, never again.
I was crushed but by the time I was eighteen I was a physically dependent alchoholic with three years of hiding this fact under my belt. So, I would be fine. Fuck psychologists. Fuck psychiatrist. Fuck suggestions. Fuck being a big baby. I had my solution to my stunning sadness and my emotional immaturity, my crippling anxiety, and the creeping fear that everyone was either going to destroy me or leave me. I had my first and most destructive addiction down at eighteen. I had what would shadow the next seventeen years of my life in a fog of muted feelings, a trail of poor desicions, a reputation for the unpredictable, and what would earn me the title of "that drunk", "asshole", "not him" and other disparaging remarks.
Everything was done.
intoxicated until I decided to stop at 35.
Others did but I did not forget what I was before the booze. With them, I was optimistic that this one simple kill shot would end my mile long streak of mistakes. Destroy the drunk and with it his problems, but the drinking was not the problem. It was a symptom. I drank to mute my illness. Now my illesss was all there was, unmuted, and untarnished by its twenty two years spent shackled and gaged. With the booze gone where would I find an excuse for my fear, my look of lethargy, my seeming slack, the boy in man's skin? How would I explain me?
So, it was back to the doctors and the pills. Being at the bottom of the socio economic barrel you get the doctors who are either new to the game or poor at it. Sure, somewhere in the world there is that one great doctor who does the hard unrewarding work because, Damit, that is why he got into pyschology/psychiatry in the first place, to help people who really need help. Take your PG feel good movie of the week, brought to you by hallmark, and place it where dreams and sunshine never touch. I don't know about you, but I don't like hacks messing with my brain. People are picky about mechanics but when I mention that I don't like shit psychologists I am some sort of snob. I've seen enough of them to know, after one session, that they are not going to do any good. I am too much of a patient for any of them to take on. I know that. I have been told that more than once. I take my pills though. It's a kin to placing a torn piece of toilet paper on a chainsaw wound but I do it.
I also have my bag of tricks. Those actions I have learned over the years that I use to trick my brain. Some of them are simple, some extremely drastic and require anything from sleep deprivation and starvation to repeating phrases like "today is a day and tomorrow will be the same" under my breath from the moment I wake to the moment I lay my head to sleep.
No matter what, though, I have come to the conclusion that over the last, I'll say 20 although its not quite there, years of my life the way people view mental illness has not really changed. It is still widely understood as a recognized illness. A "real thing". At the same time, though, it is swept under the rug. If you are mentally ill no one really gives a damn. They have a "well, you are not that bad, I mean, you're not 'crazy'", attitude. Until you blow your fucking head off, end up a drunk or a junkie, or homeless.
If you are homeless, it's because of the booze and not the mental illness. It's your fault. If you choose to end your life, though, well every one is your best friend but you'll have missed the benefits of having so many loving friends by just a hair. Or, you'll continue to suffer alone or amongst friends. Maybe you'll get lucky and you'll find someone who will listen. I don't think that is the case for most.
I look at my life, the people who surround me, and they are all intelligent, educated people. Still though, even after knowing our family history, knowing what they have gone through, and they still don't exactally have a reality based view of mental illness then who the fuck does?
Of course I am not saying that my family has not been there for me but what I am writing about here is not about devotion to loved ones so don't get a sour grin when you read this, Family Members.
People have to understand that it has to go beyond the blind love of family. Mental illness has to be treated as illness. That means evaluating addiction as a symptom of mental illness and treating addicts as a society would treat its ill. Not with some 5 day detox then you are out on your ass bullshit. You have to treat the sick until the illness is either gone or in remission. An addict needs no less than 90 days.
I know this. I was in a hospital for five days for my alcoholism. A symptom of my mental illness that destroyed 3/4 of my life. FIVE DAYS. After that, it was all, "hey buddy now that you are all better you best be looking for a job. Times a wasting!" Now, we say that people who suffer alcoholism are sick, right? Then tell me another person who after 19 years of being ill, spends five days in a hospital and is then told to BOOM get back to normal life? You can't because there is not another situation where that would be acceptable. Not one. I am only using myself as an expample because its easier. I am not trying to gain sympathy. I am stating facts about how mental illness is viewed in our society. I know that the people in my life are caring people but there is such a stigma attached to it, or maybe it is not a stigma? Maybe mental illness has become so common place that it is not taken seriously? Maybe someone who has been prescribed a Zoloft once or twice thinks that they know what it is like to be me? I don't know what it is. All I know is that it's a problem for a whole bunch of people and it did not start on April 2, 1979.
I have written this over and over. The same shit basically. Why? I am frustrated. I am disappointed. I am astonished by the lack of support. I am sick of this being something I am supposed to be ashamed of. I am sick of being told to be quiet. If I had any other type of illness would I be told to keep it a secret, to watch what I say, to be careful, because people judge? "Because people judge", is exactly why I will keep writing this. There is a chance that no one gives a damn, but I know that my life would be drastically different if I knew, when I was 18, what I know now.
I am poor. I am actually a fucking idiot because all I do is think of ways that I can help other. Meanwhile, I can't even take care of myself. Which makes me question my motives. Is this a distraction? Are my feelings of caring real?
I am a 37-year-old man who has only known himself for two years. So, who knows what I am, who I am. I don't.
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