"They" are "We"

I started writing this a while ago. It was that day that I posted a couple of sentences about wanting to address something important but also wanting to give it the attention it deserved. Well I’ve worked on it a couple of times and never been satisfied.

But it keeps coming back to me because it is all around me.

This morning I realized that I was writing from my head and this is something in my heart. So…even though I’m pretty careful about what I disclose here, this is worth a little bit of soul-baring. If that makes you uncomfortable, I understand. Don’t read it.

I am struggling with mental illness – not my own – but with its existence and its impact on people about whom I care very deeply. I’ve heard it said time and time again that mental illness is a family disease and that is an unqualified TRUTH. Since my closest friends become my family, I feel a sort of referred pain in their suffering.

This is how I know I'm not a complete psychopath.

I was going to give you a lot of statistics and academic quotes about mental illness – and there are a multitude of them out there I could share. But they don’t express how I feel about it. 

I’m also not going to address mental illness as it relates to gun control or research funding or incarceration or health care costs or the stigma surrounding mental illness that doesn’t exist for physical ailments – although all of these things should absolutely be a priority PERIOD. But none of these things are related to how I feel about mental illness.

And that’s what I want to share…how I feel about it…and maybe if it’s how a lot of us feel about it (especially those of us who consider ourselves healthy) maybe then we can all figure out a way to address it with the energy and compassion that it deserves.

Before I tell you though, I want to talk about the "referred pain" that I mentioned earlier. Referred pain is something interesting that happens in the human body when one part is injured or ill, but the resulting pain is felt somewhere else.I don't understand how it happens -- it's probably neurological -- but it's real. Though the people in my life inhabit different physical bodies than I do, I consider us part of a greater body -- a human collective made up of all the people who I love and who have loved me. So when I say I feel "their" pain, it is also my pain -- referred from them because we are connected.

This will be somewhat clumsy. I'll admit feeling extremely limited by the language -- specifically pronouns -- when it comes to this subject. Talking about "their pain" and how I feel about "them" seems so inadequate. I don't want to separate myself from anyone who is battling mental illness because isolation and marginalization compounds all suffering. I'm going to use words like "their" and "them" mostly because I don't want to make anyone else's story about me which is the risk I run when I say "our" or "us."  But know that I do not consider myself separate by any means and please bare with me as I stumble though.

I feel heartbroken and scared and helpless that my loved ones -- that anyone -- must face this disease. These are the things I wish to say to them...

I feel heartbroken because you are and will continue to battle pain. I know with every fiber of my being that mental illness is a disease as much as Leukemia or Parkinson’s. I also know with the same certainty that while battling this illness, your body may remain strong (making your condition invisible to those around you) while your brain and all the chemistry that supports it is deteriorating just like T-cells fail someone with leukemia and neurons fail someone with Parkinson’s.

You are sick and I want you to get better. 

I feel scared because most mental illnesses are chronic. They require daily medication and/or management and it is a life-long commitment on your part and on the part of those in your support system. The rest of your life is a long time to always be wondering what tomorrow will bring. Yes, I know that we never know what tomorrow will bring, but loving someone with a mental illness intensifies my awareness of it. Endless uncertainty scares me. Not knowing when another episode is going to occur…or if it’s going to be one from which we can’t recover…frightens me.

I am scared to think I could lose you to this disease. 

I feel helpless because I am a fixer. There aren’t enough casseroles or offers to babysit or special trips or meaningful conversations that I can give you to make the boo-boo go away. I can’t cure your mental illness and – listen, because it’s important – you can't "fix it" either. There are medications you can take, situations you can learn to manage, therapies you can engage in, and people you can rely on, but we can’t fix it or make it go away. I know that you can’t just “pull yourself together” when chemicals are attacking your brain any more than you could pull yourself together if someone was attacking you with a switchblade. You can’t just will the 2^nd or 3^rd or 4^th medication that your doctor prescribes to be “the one” that will make you all better any more than a cancer patient can will their 2nd round of chemo to succeed where the first one failed. You can’t just shut off the voices in your head that tell you to take another hit or check out or give up completely. However much the rest of us might like to believe that it is possible to just banish your demons that easily, I know that you long for that possibility by a magnitude of 10,000. If you could…I believe that you would?

I feel helpless because even together we can't "fix it", we can only learn to trust and manage each day. 

Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with my heartache and fear and helplessness. I give some of it to prayer. I give some of it to running. I give some of it to less healthy activities too. And still I carry lots of it with me. Because…love.

Love isn’t always beautiful or romantic or cuddly or comforting. Love is sometimes cowering together in a foxhole…or crying together on a couch…or sitting through unrelenting, interminable silence – the kind of together-silence that screams I will not give up on you. Love is doing all of this and more with the clear knowledge that it may not be enough. And love is -- perhaps most of all -- freeing you from any responsibility to mitigate my heartache, fear, or helplessness. 

It's not my job to fix you and it's not your job to fix me -- all we can do is love each other unconditionally -- both of us unyoked by guilt, shame, or expectation -- while we figure out how to live each day together. Even when we are heartbroken, scared, and helpless.

I guess I just want to say to all of my people who battle demons every day that I hurt for you and with you – not in the same way, but in my own way, because I love you and it's the very best I have to give you. I also want to say to anyone who considers themselves mentally healthy but feels heartbroken or scared or helpless in the midst of a loved one's mental illness...maybe embracing these feelings is the pathway to recognizing that we are all beautifully broken, scared, and unfixable.

And maybe this oneness -- where there is no "them" but only "us" -- is what will restore us to health.