I have experienced mental illness on various levels throughout my life. Many manifestations I considered normal life expressions, until I allowed the truth of reality to enter.
I have been witness to the damage that silence and denial have with Mental Illnesses.
And yet, talking about mental illness often is wrought with anxiety.
For me, though not speaking has more anxiety than speaking.
The consequences of mental illness can impact most we have contact with.
It becomes like the third party to many relationships.
For often mental illness can, and will, take over the steering wheel and choice makings of the individual. The reason center; becomes unreasonable.
Or the elephant in the relationship we can't talk frankly about.
Somehow the mental being, part of us, when it goes off line, seems to re-define who we are.
I am depressed, not I have depression.
I am anxious, not I feel anxious.
There seems to be very little space between the illness and the person, that they merge into one.
Perhaps separating the illness from the person would allow more open dialogue.
And, yet I can see where I lived as denial.
I lived as a co-dependent.
There wasn't another person ahead of me - or behind me.
However, more importantly, I was surrounded by folks who also shunned reality and didn't seek the truth. No one challenged me. There didn't appear to be awareness anywhere.
Which created the dysfunction.
Our family was dysfunctional.
There didn't appear to be anyone telling us a different story of who we were.
More, if truth poked its head up, it was quickly doused with rage and indignation,
"How dare you speak that way!" Making it unkind to see or speak of what is. No function was allowed in our dysfunctional way of being.
Religion often walked hand and hand with dysfunction. Blessing away the truths that needed to be addressed and seen.
The landscape of my childhood and into adult hood, was littered with the debris of not dealing with reality, which often I feel leads to exacerbating our mental unease.
My mental state of being, is much more at rest and less anxious when we can have a conversation about life and all its weightiness. Where we can walk with and talk to the elephant in the room.
The greatest divide between my mother and I, was the fact that she would not allow me to discuss frankly, sexual abuse and the way her church used the forgiveness of sins to wipe it away.
It left us with a huge boulder, that hurt little girls, unaddressed and unacknowledged in reality.
Her inability to walk in truth left me motherless.
In order to maintain a relationship with her, I would have had to walk in denial - and that landscape leaves me anxious, fearful, paranoid and a pretender.
That is where my mental illness developed. Living in reality, but not talking about it. Being there, but not seeing out loud.
I have lost family members due to my need to be open and seeing.
Turning a blind eye isn't my strong suit.
There are many mental illnesses that have a root in our childhoods. Where we lived dysfunctionally, but it was never addressed. No one said, our family is blind to abuse. That we pretend we are loving family. No one. Yet, in truth we were. We lived it out each day.
My pretend loving family fell apart each time I forced us to look at what we really had.
Yet, my pretend loving family lives on and they would be incensed to read this.
I didn't want my family to be pretend. I so wanted it to hold up to what I thought it was in my mind.
I didn't want a dad who was a pedophile.
I didn't want a mother who knew and did nothing.
I didn't want it; but reality won only but 100% of the time.
Each time it came for me to be silent or speak my truth, I lost another family member - my pretending they were loving wasn't going to work this time.
My mental well being - which lived for 46 years - in the land of pretend, could no longer not see what it now saw. Once you see, you can't not see.
I was not willing to lose myself again to have a pretend family.
I have been accused of being high and mighty, of being the judge and jury, of being cold and heartless, of abusing the abused.
Where can I stand in this.
I am damned if I am silent, and damned when I speak up.
What I do know, is that my mental well being feels less anxious saying what I see.
How you see me, is perhaps how you see the world - and maybe yourself.
All the words you use starting with YOU really are self judgements.
And, I cringe when I re-read what has been said about me. It shows the depth of pain and suffering inside of them.
I write all of this, to say, speaking of mental illness has its price.
Each of us, and our state of mental well being, is rooted most likely in family.
It began before we even knew who we were. It developed long before we were an individual self.
I have compassion and empathy for all of us who were raised in dysfunctional homes and who now have to wrestle with our minds. Who have to re-learn and become aware of how off the mark we are.
We developed triggers and fear exclusion.
Mostly, I want to engage in open dialogues of mental health, in ways that empower others to live a more peaceful less anxious life in reality.
However, when I moved from my pretend world in my mind. I had lots of relationships to clear up and sort out. It isn't easy, but in my case it has brought me peace of mind.
Again, mental wellness comes with a cost. You will lose all that is not real.
