I am not sure it matters, what level of mental illness we have, how devasting it is or how life encompassing or whether we can function in the 'normal' world or not...the bottom line is we are invisible to most.
Hidden.
Not spoken of.
Put aside from family's normal routines...cast out by ignorance and ignoring.
As I spoke to the Women's Group at The Clubhouse...I recounted how and when I felt deep to my cells, that my family saw me as mental. Not just sorta nuts, but down right, out of my mind.
My mental illness or breakdown has not been treated by my family with loving kindness...but rather they have stayed far far away.
I could be living in a facility that is miles from their home...without visitors. For as much interaction I have gotten. Well, my mother has sent notes...mostly to get over it and rejoin the family. Casting aside my illness as if it wasn't there.
I didn't fully appreciate my isolation and its cause.
It is broader than the sexual abuse and wider than leaving the religion and being shunned...it is the stigma of mental illness.
I have to look up the word stigma.
"a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person."
I am shocked to know this. I couldn't have articulated what I thought stigma was, but I surely didn't know that I was stigma. I was/am the disgrace of my family.
I am a disgrace for having been abused.
For its effects on my life.
I am the disgrace.
If I am getting this right, mental illness is often seen as a disgrace for it marks the family...a smear, a black spot...soiled.
For some odd reason, I was blaming society for the stigma of the mentally challenged and NOT the families. And yet society is MADE UP of Families.
The stigma perhaps starts in each individual family, but those members then make up the community...
It is no wonder, to me at least, that the treatment of us often is a reflection of the family....relegated to privacy, hidden...labeled confidential.
I know that there is a tipping point as to whether something is confidential or shameful.
To me...I feel that we are made to feel shameful or that our illness is something to hide, that our break in our mind is not to be shown about town. It is a disgrace.
What other parts of illnesses are made to feel this way?
How in the hell did mental illness become a disgrace? Even a stigma on society?
And, further more how can we change the treatment into something that it is...a courageous act of admitting that we are not thinking clearly, that we are not one with reality...and the journey to right oneself. It needs to be seen as a heroes journey.
Yet these heroes who are admitting they are wrong about reality are delegated to the sidelines of society; hidden in plain view by our lack of honoring them.
How was I so blind to see as I traveled alone to my events. To not have seen the absence of my family. To stand alone with my Art Therapy Quilts...the journey in fabric...a gauge on my mental well being, that no one of my family was there. None.
How did I miss this?
I didn't know I was stigma.
I am a disgrace to my family. I am the cast out.
What is the saying..."How you treat the weakest amoung us..."
What even makes me angry is that they are blaming me for walking way. Blaming me for having a mental break down, blaming me for losing my mind about the sexual abuse by my father. I am the disgrace....NOT him.
The family rallies to stay together, to pull in tight, leaving the mental disgrace to deal on her own.
There certainly is a stigma about mental illness and that stigma is me.
My Lady and I are trying to shatter the stigma of abuse, to show the courage it takes to break down and start again.
We need to lose the stigma...it isn't a mark of disgrace but a walk of grace.
