Dear world,

Why is mental health so stigmatised? Why are we not talking about it more publicly?

Why is it that we have always struggled in silence and secret? What is it with this world that we just cannot crack? Are we destined to be shunned and abused, misunderstood and left out, blamed and scapegoated, lost and found, made assumptions of and not believed, named and then abandoned?

Why do we hide the central aspects of what make our lives our lives and who we are?

What about the things that affect who we are, which we cannot control and never asked for?

What about the memories we don’t want, the experiences we feel torn apart by, the friends we lose?

The broken promises we make ourselves and others, the tears, the fights, the challenges most of all challenges that plague our existence, along with limitations.

I am wondering why we dont talk about mental health as much as we need to.

These people exist these people are real, I am these people.

We are still scared sick,

scared -> sick

I wish to forge a way out of this loneliness and experience the sea beyond.

I believe that me and others like me deserve the light of day, or the freedm to truly live in our nights because we are incapable of engaging with the world in its normal hours or have to undergo great personal and physiological stress to engage with, or take pharmaceuticals in order to participate. We self medicate in a million and one ways, we have our own routines and systems to come with PTSD and quirks of our neurology. We know our way around our compulsions better than anyone, and when we say we cannot in fact get through the thing we are referring to, we mean it. This is your strong friend speaking up and saying, it is all getting a bit much to deal with, us saying this last bit of stress has become the one that might crack the resolve, part the veil, elevate symptoms, throw us over the edge, please, believe them.

And I wish we had real things on hand other than numbers we can reach out to in crisis.

We want to be able to tell our friends and post on our timelines.

Saying hey, we’re thinking this, does this check out or can you reflect something back to me that might help me assimilate this experience in the context of the whole, or remind me of something important about myself or my journey.

Hey, I am having a down day/time and I really can’t bring myself to answer your messages and I feel really bad about the whole thing but the prospect of talking to you about it is making it much worse and the actual time I’ve spent talking to you or generally anyone has been unpleasant and I really don’t feel myself or okay right now so kindly just nothing…it trails off at the end there because while I could start with the beginning you see I get stuck at the end. So I just say nothing.

Your ‘strong’ friend is silent because there is no easy way as of such, in this world, in most contexts, to transmit thoughts, feelings, experiences or needs outside of the norm. This world that we have constructed for ourselves (has been constructed through us? been constructed for us?) discourages that, it suppresses, takes advantage of, uses against us and punishes our divergence.

People look down on hardship and misery, look away from things that make them feel uncomfortable, and create comfortable delusions rapidly in order to preserve their quality of life at any given moment. We are all deeply, deeply talented at self denial. Basically, there is a wall up to present the best self and it feels like fewer and fewer places in which you can present your real self.

If we spoke up, would you listen?

When we say strong about ourselves we mean weathering the storm day in and day out, season to season, moment to moment, on the very edge of the wire.

That we will this vast community’s presence to advocate for and change and think up clever ways like memberships and events where members of the community can share, collaborate, become empowered, and truly connect in a way that is beyond the mental illness trope in society, where we are at once so diametrically different to everything around us and also pressured to act a certain way about it, sugarcoat and overstress and perform ways around it, and keep it at arm’s length, and definitely have consequences if we slip up.

We are just who we are, and we experience what we experience. There are many things that we cannot control or wish were not that way, there are very real challenges and issues in society that changing could really help. We deserve community, friendship, support, recognition, and opportunities to live a fulfilling life.

I think we are tuning in the UN decalaration about human rights. Our human rights are being abused and shattered every day in a society where we are penalised for the disabilities, pressured to do or die, left alone to starve if we do not and a whole lot of other nasty things that every person who has struggles with mental illness will have at some point experienced in their lives. These are very close and intimate things, and very sparse woods out there, for shelter, nourishment or belonging. We most disporportionately struggle with homelessness, poverty, and displacement.

Homelessness, poverty and discplacement can create us or trigger us, express us from within someone’s genotype like waking a sleeping giant. We are the friends and colleagues that walk away or end friendships, act impulsively, and disappear.

We go quiet, zone out, check out and leave, because we just know how it is. We have been here before, time and time again.

There is nowhere that we feel like we belong, until we find those places or people or they find us.

Systems can help us but they have to be built in an extremely personalised and understanding way, preferably by other wise and caring individuals that have experienced this themselves.

To read the full version of this piece and more from my private blog on this subject and my personal journey please click my patreon membership link and choose the blog tier.

You may also choose to opt in for my private group where we can connect and cultivate an inner circle. From a person that struggles silently with mental illness, I ask for better from the world, for myself and for others.

In the ultimate pursuit of building a new world we can stand to be in,

Yasmeen

find me here

https://www.facebook.com/yasmeen.dahdah/

support me here

https://www.depop.com/yazodah/

join me here

https://www.patreon.com/yasmeensnaturalorder/membership

#checkonyourstrongfriends #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthstigma #mentalillness #community #innercircle #Unmasking #thestruggleisreal #livingwithmentalillness #DepressionIsNotAJoke