Okay, self, let's get real for a moment here. We don't ever just sit down to talk to one another, do we? And whose fault is that? Well, I suppose that would be the fault of the critics of mental healthcare. I know, it seems like pointing the finger, doesn't it? But hear me out for a moment, because I really don't mind if you completely rip apart my wild theory. It's not even a theory as much as it is one of those random thoughts that I need to talk about to figure out the right or wrong of it.
Here goes.
We, as a society, have something of a saying in regards to talking to ourselves and being simultaneously overheard and questioned on it. We'll be standing there at the weight scale, measuring tea into a bulk tea bag for a customer, and we'll say, "Just a little more..." because we need to put a little more tea into the bag to get it to weigh two ounces.
Of course, just our luck, the customer would overhear just enough of our comment to know we'd been talking. But, no no, not enough to know exactly what we had said.
"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. What was that?" the customer will ask.
"Oh, I was just muttering to myself."
And the customer will respond, "Oh, as long as you don't answer yourself," with a little giggle, because how amusing of the store clerk.
That statement. That statement right there is the one that causes trouble for everyone. But not in a way that I feel like they even notice it. How could they be expected to notice it? They were conditioned to think it was a natural, normal, perfectly acceptable response.
What's wrong with it? You haven't figured it out, have you? But no one has ever asked you to look beyond the initial statement, I suppose. There's always the somewhat silly or snarky responses that we can throw out there.
"I wish someone would respond. At least I'd have someone to talk to when I got bored!"
"I respond frequently, but sadly, they're not always things I want to hear!"
"But who better to converse with than myself?"
Now that I've given myself time to sit and think about it, though, I wonder if by saying, "As long as you don't answer yourself," you're criticizing the reality of mental health? Perhaps I'm not really getting my thoughts out there the way I should. But we do all talk to ourselves, and what is wrong with that? We all have a logical and illogical side to ourselves. When our rational side takes over, we do smart things, and when we let our irrational side take over, things can get pretty crazy.
If we don't let our rational side work things out with our irrational side, though, would we come to the correct moral decision regardless of what we're doing? Regardless of the example of myself measuring tea into a bag, we wage a war mentally all the time.
My therapist told me when I'm feeling down, or confused, or even having random thoughts or anxiety attacks, I should continue to write down how I feel and how I'm thinking. I should continue to use my sketch pad to illustrate how I'm feeling in my drawings and comics. I'm not ashamed to admit I need help anymore.
I was terrified to need help. If I admitted I needed help coping with the spiraling depression and overwhelming anxiety I was dealing with, then something was wrong with me. That's how I felt. I felt like I would be considered broken, damaged goods that were useless and required a trip to the garbage can. I felt like the people in my life would soon replace me with a better, unbroken version.
Because that's what we do. We throw away broken things and buy something new. Why fix something that could still work, when you can simply get a better version for simply a little more? And hell, no one wants to buy already damaged goods for anything. That moment we say, "I need help," is like the moment we begin advertising how broken we are and no one wants you anymore.
And it hurt. Holy, ungodly, burning venom, this disease of the mind was physically painful. I couldn't breathe, but to cry. I couldn't stop the poison from spreading to every nerve in my body. I've dealt with the mental unwellness before. I always thought it was bad to ask for help, so last time I had a break down, I dealt with it all on my own and over time, the ship that carried me sailed into more stable waters. My world calmed, and that poison stopped hurting me.
It stopped hurting me. It didn't go away. These things that burden us, that bleed into our lives both good and bad, they remain there forever. They don't simply go away because we want them to.
But like all things that remain unprocessed and even some that are positively dealt with, that sickness in my mind returned. I was left plummeting down a deep hole of despair and it was all I could do to shove a pillow in my mouth to keep my sobs silent and not wake anyone else. I was curled up into the fetal position, suffocating myself on a pillow because it was a better idea than going to the most supportive person I've ever had in my life and saying, "Something is wrong inside me, and I can't understand it."
That, right there, is what is wrong with mental health. We allowed ourselves to slowly be conditioned to feel like we can't even talk to ourselves about things. So why the heck would we ever consider talking to friends, family, or professionals when a problem arises?
And in some cases, I really am the best person to talk to about things. That's not me being narcissistic, but who could know me better than me? And who could know you better than you? Do we follow the little devil on our shoulder or do we seek the angel's guidance? And at the same time, sometimes our little devil and our little angel need a little help to speak up in our lives, to rationalize or even make us take a chance on something that seems impossible.
So why can't I answer? Why can't you answer? The unspoken message is that there's something wrong with you if you do answer yourself. Sure, we laugh it off as just a joke, but some of us read into things a lot more than others and you don't know which of us can't just let that go.
You also don't know which of us need to know its okay to talk to ourselves, to need help when the going gets rough, to seek out other people's help. Society looks so far down on mental health, acting like it isn't real because it can't always be scientifically examined. Not every person who has a mental health issue is Ed Gein, but being completely healthy in mind doesn't exclude people from doing bad things either.
The first person we go to when determining complicated moral issues is typically ourselves, or the version of ourselves that has been trained to think by family, friends, and society. I would probably call that side of me my rational side. But if I can't talk to myself about something, I'm more likely to simply keep my mouth shut. Why bother anyone else with something I can't bother myself with?
That's how I got into trouble. That's how my anxiety managed to overwork itself into severe overdrive, and how my depression managed to sink me so low I was drowning in the feelings of complete despair. Barely grasping for a thread to pull myself up, I messaged my sister and showed her the final straw that had broken my camel's back.
Whatever she had been doing at the time, she stepped away from it, because I was worthy of her time especially at my lowest point. She called me on the phone and I can't even remember everything I said that day. Usually, as a writer, I can remember those pesky details. I was so wrapped up in my mind, all I remember were her words, and her words mattered so very much.
"It's not a shame to need help. It's not disgraceful to ask for it. Help is there for a good reason."
No comments:
Post a Comment