’twas me back again. Again I found myself in a Mental Health Clinic for the last while. This time the circumstances were remarkably different. This time I arrived a few days in advance and not an ambulance, did the paperwork and didn’t bring enough socks (again).
Why was I there? I was going through a tough time.
It’s difficult to explain “no feeling” – but that’s how I felt. Imagine you found yourself in a place where there are no people, no sounds, no subtle cicadas disguised as tinnitus, no weight of your glasses upon your nose.
Just nothing.
That’s how I was feeling. Nothing. Yet despite feeling nothing at all, I had turned on the pressure cooker. Somehow. It must have been Bipolar Betty that lent me one. Slowly while I felt nothing the cooker was going. Silently simmering the stew that would provide life and sustenance to a family. The food would bring joy to hungry mouths and palpable tension from parents who thought they were eating too much.
But pressure cookers are a hazard and should be banished from the earth – or at least mine should because I was about to blow. Too many balls in the air.
Out of nothingness though I knew something thing was wrong. I could feel it in the traffic, I could feel it in the music, I could feel it in an obnoxious “bing” of a microwave. Doors banging. People shouting. Cars doing car things. HAIR FUCKING DRYERS!
All these, bings, bobs and dings were the mist obscuring the real truth that enveloped me. Still does. I’ve lost so so many people in the last few months. People that loved me unconditionally. People that I was kind to, too. We had no malice, we never had real arguments, we just loved each other. Just because we were family and that was the end of it.
That feeling of “nothing” was borne form a feeling of grave loss and despair. There was nothing I could have done to make tings different. Death is final. And Death is Lonely.
I don’t want to be lonely.
Honest to God and all his doppelgangers I don’t want to be lonely. I will die alone – sure. Until then though I’d rather not be lonely. To be lonely is to be nothing. I decided that in the Clinic this last week or so. Lonely be gone!
I’ll write about the clinic another time (it’s world class, life saving).
But I want to say this about the patients:
On any given day the patients spend at least 8 hours together. Informed, of course by Occupational Therapists and the like, conversations start between us. Bit by bit we learn something new about a person – how they mingle with the muggles, how they struggle in their own way, how they shield themselves from grief, torment, abuse and more.
My tell? Laugher. Too much of it.
We’ll roll our eyes at the bleating biddy who’s repeating herself, or yours truly who has a 5 minute “wait and see if you remember” cycle. We do a lot of eye rolling. But our eyes roll too to see how the people in the quiet spaces are coping.
As group, or perhaps “tribe”- think starts after a time the patients become a pride of lions. There’s always someone sleeping mind you, but the rest of us are attentive. United in a struggle. And none of the struggles are the same. The very fact that we struggle with something different with brings the patients together.
Without patients who can self-identify with struggle then there will little progress made in a mental health facility (IMO).
And guess what? I’ve been saying ‘struggle’ this post, but I thought I’d leave the best to last: it is only when we truly believe and trust the people that surround us that we can become truly vulnerable. Vulnerability is the void that fills feeling noting with feelings of hope, of compassion and of love. The vulnerable person does all that and in so doing finds something themselves worth fighting.
Be vulnerable
And on that note:
And, as it has been before, it is the patients of a Mental Health Facility that save lives. That remind us we are not alone in the world. That we’re different, but fight battles with demons we might not know exist. Vulnerability saves lives.
Open your eyes, open your heart.
Right in front of your eyes could be the next person you hold, cuddle, cry and love to love with. Even if if just for a while. I think it’s worth trying. For now. Think outside your “type”. Don’t “type”.
Do what makes you happy FFS. If you don’t know, then find out. I’ll help, if you ask me to.
[end subtext]
