I am reading “The Quiet Room” by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett.
What is so interesting is that her parents don’t want to accept her illness, and deny it by looking repeatedly for ‘normal’ behavior and are more concerned about how she ‘got’ this illness, they are fearful they caused it.
Yet the mother had a mother with the same illness and didn’t know it until her daughter displayed the same behavior, then her mother made sense.
She was mentally ill.
I know how odd this is that you can’t recognize sickness, especially if you called it normal all along and it is only after the fact that looking back the red flags are waving wildly all about.
Even Lori herself, believes we all have manic voices in our heads telling us to do things, bad talking esteem wrecking talk…and we do, just not to the degree she did.
The first half of the book is about looking for normal when normal is nowhere to be found, how everyone wants her to not be sick while she is.
How awful to have to live pretending or working hard to pretend, that nothing is wrong, how much kinder a ride to be a mentally ill person as you are mentally ill.
To stand in the truth, no matter what truth you have to stand in is much easier, than trying to be something you can’t be.
Even if her family didn’t accept it, it was there.
She was expected to be the one to be the strongest to lead the way, while being mentally ill.
Like having the blind lead, the deaf listen for us.
I can’t wait to compete the story and see how she was finally able to see that she was sick and then to convince others of this fact.
How much easier to just be yourself in whatever state you find yourself in...
