Mental case
Sunday, January 16, 2011 at 1:47PM 
I’ve been called nuts, emotionally unstable, crazy, not normal, overly dramatic – in one word, mental. I disturb people with my honesty, with my directness, with being public about every single detail of my life, from unbuttoning my shirts to crying on my pillows to loving to hating to contemplating suicide to rolling in absolute happiness. They tell me – they don’t get me. They tell me – I should get my act together and stop being so open about everything. They tell me – it’s not to my benefit, sharing myself like that – it will hurt me in the long run, it will ruin my future, it will portray me as an inadequate and irresponsible adult – I’ve got to stop it. They say. I say. I say – I won’t. I won’t stop because it is the reason I am living. I chose to be open, to be public – to survive.
I chose to live, and the rest didn’t matter anymore. I stood with a knife in the kitchen and realized that there is so much more to life than killing myself off – that if I do it, it will be the ultimate act of abuse – echoing from the past. I thought about other people, about how hard it is to bare one’s soul and connect – in the raw, without pretense – yet how this is the only thing that makes us happy. I decided - it’s worth it. Am I mental for this? Am I mental for trying to take my life after finding out that for 20 years my fucking brain has been protecting me from the horror of incest? From remembering that both my grandfather and my father sexually abused me? Am I mental for feeling so much pain that death seemed like the only way to get out of it? Am I mental for ripping the secret box open and letting the world know what it feels like – without pretense, without sugaring anything up – for real? Am I mental for wanting to heal, to get rid of this pain by throwing it outside, into words, on paper, into the public – by reclaiming my mind, my body, my wants, my life? Perhaps. But then I like to be mental – I am being myself for the first time in my life. I have no fear of judgment, I could care less about what people say behind my back, or in front of my face – it’s ok if they hate me, it’s ok if they love me, it’s ok if they don’t feel anything. I am not going to change for anyone, and I don’t expect anyone to change for me. I want to live life according to how I see it – not according to how others wish it to be. It’s a hard truth, but I fought for it. And now that I have it, I won’t let it go.
Yes, I have my ups and downs. Yes, I am not perfect and I am sometimes too much for people. Yes, I could occasionally use some manners and recognize that not everyone is very curious about my past or my ideas about the future. But I do experience emotions for the first time fully, or, rather, I am allowing myself to experience them. I am not blocking anything, I just let myself feel. I do go into relapse here and there, forgetting that after each moment of pain there is always a moment of happiness. Forgetting that by suppressing pain I am not getting rid of it – but only pushing it back into the future – when I will have to face it anyway. Forgetting that I will only feel the happiness fully if I also allow myself to suffer. It’s either all of it, or nothing. Life is. Am I mental for thinking this way? But then what is the definition of being normal? Who said one person is normal and the other isn’t? Who created the competition to fit onto a particular stereotype, to be like everyone else, to not stick out our heads above the crowd? To look the same, to talk the same, to dream the same? Fear. The most primal feeling we all share – to survive. We’re instinctively look out for danger. Except nobody is hunting us down anymore, and we run now only on thread mills. We took the fear out of the streets and planted it into our brains. We fear something that hasn’t even happened to us, and never will. We don’t fear the real things – like being hit by a truck on some uneventful afternoon. We fear the imaginary – and our imagination can run wild. Then we become mental – all of us. We forget to reach out, to connect – out of fear. Out of fear of looking stupid, of being judged, of ruining our reputation, of angering our social circle, of – insert more here. Am I mental then? I am. Together with rest of us. Or, perhaps what I am trying to do is to be normal. To be real. To simply live as it is. In one word. Live.
Photo by Josh Pesavento.
Reader Comments (2)
I like this post. I really highlights the concerted -- seemingly deliberate -- insanity of the thinking around us. For some 32 years I've lived with the idea of extinguishing myself. It presents itself regularly. Most could not guess this fact -- part of me doing my required role of making everyone comfortable -- and the few that might probably wish they hadn't. Will I do it? Maybe. At least the pain would finally be over and done. And I could stop caring about the fact that hardly anyone really cares one way or the other whether I live or die. What they really care about is how others see *them*. And I could stop doing my exhausting role of a lifetime of keeping it to myself to spare others their potentially uncomfortable feelings.
But what of others? Some acquaintances, a few friends, my manager (who was a friend of sorts) and my employer? Apart from maybe a few moments of "Could we have done anything? Not really...", they'd return to their lives and move on. As they should really. HR would probably worry most about possible legal liability. But the point is -- as you point out in your post -- our narratives are potentially a royal pain in their ass. They'd prefer for it all to go away and not be bothered. And perhaps slap the "mental" label on it as happened with the shooter in Arizona.
These hurting people are crazy therefore, of course, they do crazy things. No longer really human... more like a malfunctioning machine no longer properly doing its job of fitting in. Who cares about a machine? Junk it.
In that sense, they'd prefer for me to go away too. It's tempting really. And that simply reinforces a message I've received since I was seven.
David,
I hear you. I was tempted too. But you know, in the end, who you do it for - who you choose to live for? You. That was the hardest truth I realized. I can be with many people in my life, it could be people from my family, my friends, my co-wrokers, etc. But, there is only one person who really cares and with whom I will spend my entire life - and that is me. And if I don't love myself - nobody will. If I don't forgive myself - nobody will. If I don't comfort myself when I hurt - nobody will. I had to learn to accept myself and be ok with myself - one on one. I have been escaping it like a plague - being on my own. But once I did, it felt true to my existence. I no longer felt scared, or lonely, or forgotten - I felt ok being alone, because I had me. In fact, I am alone right this minute while writing, and I just asked a friend to leave me alone because I wanted to be on my own. Part of the process, I guess - but it works.
I do hurt still, but I also know that if I sit through it, breathe through it - it will pass, and I will have happiness and peace.
Ksenia