A Look Inside a Mentally Ill Mind

One with mental illness will never truly be okay. We must learn to be okay with that.

The thing about mental illness is that no one grasps the enormity of the pain and suffering inside. No one who has not suffered this themselves can understand such pain. It isn't until the sufferer ends their life that people finally realise the unbearable pain they truly felt in life. Until that point, mental illness seems nothing more than an excuse to be lazy, a cry for attention, an inconvenience, a burden.

I am a conservative progressive. No matter what it is, I am unbearably and humbly in between; average. There is nothing I either excel or fail at, because I do not over or underachieve. I give just enough effort to be where I am, not enough to move in either direction, forward or back. Whether it be intelligence, talent, gender, sexuality, or political affiliation, there is no label or side I lean in favor of. I have values, standards, and ethics. I am guilty of judgment, and of always feeling guilty for things I have not done and cannot change. I feel lost and in the way. I am learning, however, that the only thing I can be, the only thing that I am, is me. Win or lose, pass or fail, I am inescapably me. I need to make peace with that fact or I will never have the ability or wisdom to choose a path in this life. I only get one, and it must be unique, tranquil, chaotic, shifting slowly to fit my pace. I have spent my life trying to uncover a buried past so I could mourn, wonder who I would have been had certain events not happened, and to get to where I am now. Acceptance. Yes, I fall off the wagon and feel sorry for myself, but that in itself helps me to discover more of myself. Always expanding; becoming greater yet more humble with every passing day. I must be introspective to learn my place in such a social world, which is a process which often leaves me feeling isolated. I do believe, though, that this process will help me to find more meaningful relationships with a select few. The ones I can truly let see me as I am, no masks and no apologies.

Due to this in-between personality I feel very deeply, and numb at the same time. I feel love just as strongly as I feel fear. The most hellish and terrifying, along with the most blissful and heavenly of emotions. I am allowed to feel everything more strongly than most, or so it seems. Each of my fears lead me to sadness and anxiety; a deep depression that I lose myself to and blame myself for, just as much as I blame the world around me. I can turn right around and find the love shining through the darkness, breaking the crusted shell of molten lava that surrounds my heart and mind, trapping the heat of my heart deep beneath until I burst. The sun and the sky peer at me through a vertical tunnel in the mountain of me, promising the cool embrace of love, to save me from this stifling heat; and, no matter what, even if I explode and destroy the surface of myself in a hateful and destructive outburst, promises to be there when I am lost to the fire once more, and be my breath of fresh air.

I am a meteor, I have a surface and a core. Nothingness surrounds me. Other people, other meteors rush through this space that is as much mine as it is theirs, that we are all trying to find our orbit in, but it seems all I do is crash. Others do the same while some others fall right in line without issue or hesitation. Some glide along, bump, and scrape their way through, and some just fly, never making contact.

I am as big and as small as I am. To the boulder I am a pebble, but to a grain of sand I am a mountain. Never again will I move against myself, like sandpaper folded in half, using its abrasiveness on itself, leaving itself damaged and weaker than before. The damage stands at 50% and I will not damage myself anymore, nor can I heal what is already done. All I can do now is scrape against this life as gently as needed to maintain its natural beauty, my own path leaving traces in the grain. Making it smoother and more beautiful along the way, until I am no longer useful. Behind me will be left the trace of what I was. From the permanent fixtures to the tools used, none are any more or less important in the making of something beautiful. What is left behind would not have been what it is without every tree, saw blade, hardware store that got it to where it is, and one day may be revamped, recycled, or repurposed and made into something new. That is me, that is you, that is our planet. Each of us have a place, and mine is exactly where I am. As I said, I will not move against myself. A move toward one thing is a move against another. So I will allow life to happen to me. I will boost and reverse as needed to keep me in my most comfortable self. Content to drift through the vacuum until I either bump or am bumped into by an outward force. The speed with which I move is the speed with which I am supposed to move because it will either get me nowhere or it will get me to where I'm going. If it gets me nowhere then nowhere is where I am meant to be.

I have no more worth than those sleeping in the streets, doing drugs, working nights, nor is there any less behind my eyes than of those on TV, in the news, or in movies. We each have a self, we each have value. We make up this world and we all belong to it, just as much as it belongs to us. All of us.

My imaginary friends were always who I thought people were. A succession of loving and hurting over and over again, everyone showing their truth eventually. Killing my imagination bit by bit until I learned to expect the pain and disappointment. Yet, it seems my heart has not learned its lesson. I still manage to see good and beauty in the world around me, hiding amongst the ugliness, blending until it seems to no longer exist. I see it all. I see the world as it is and it breaks my heart, but heals it just as quickly. I find comfort in the drip, drip, dripping repetition of the blood I spill when it all becomes too much for my mind to bear.

My guts are twisted and sour as I sit here thinking about my life. The things I have done, the things that have been done to me, and the things I dream of doing. Changes I plan to make, changes I am making and the people those changes affect weigh on me like a rock on a silk scarf, trying in vain to fly free with the wind. Whipping back and forth in a tortured frenzy. Trying to find who I am seems to hurt the people I love, no matter what I choose. Must I always wear a mask to protect the hearts that feel for me? Thus far that question has too often been answered with a resounding "yes". On occasion, the me hiding within peeks his head out, and my loved ones see it as their cue to exit my life and never look back.

What if there is no cure for depression? What if the cure for the pain, suffering, hopeless, hazy, broken, and unfixable sadness is just to end it? What if the disease is simply that we do not belong in this life. It is simply our energy pulling us out of a world we are not built for. The ones that hold on are the fools, the cowards. Staying, living with this pain, simply because they fear death. Death is a cure. Death is the start of something. A decision made in our darkest hour that will free us of the headaches and wrinkles from keeping our eyebrows so tightly drawn, trying our best to concentrate on just being normal. I say and do things that are replayed over and over in my head. I wish I could act human, but I can’t, and I feel sometimes as though I’m not. Humans function with other humans. I do not. Humans communicate, or have a desire to. I do not. The only reason I have human contact at all is that the world expects it. If you are different you are strange; a freak. I would rather bide my time with books than with people. People tend to be repetitive. Books, never, if you know who to read. The one thing I will miss when I go, if missing things is possible, is the written word. The culture and history of this world, the architecture and all forms of art coming together to make this world what it is. Unfortunately all I see at times is a cesspool of ones and zeros. There is no art anymore. Organization has ruined the freedom required for art to thrive. No one cares about beauty anymore. Only a price, a name, a face. The simple beauty of a classic composition now background noise in a crowded elevator or retail store. Nothing matters in a world where only one thing matters. On this planet, it is money; greed. This world is a prison designed to break men like me. The only way to be free is to leave. To die.