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October is International Mental Illness Month. I only found out this afternoon, because I felt bad enough to want to end it all. And then I reckoned that it would permanently traumatize the train driver, so I didn’t.
My psyche is a royal mess. Lots of issues have developed over many years, to the extent that it would enable a whole team of clinical psychologists to afford their beach holiday homes. But that’s neither here nor there. What matters is that sometimes someone says something that triggers something really dark inside of me. And getting myself out of that blackness takes an effort that borders on the supernatural.
Today’s trigger was – again – lovingly pulled by my mom. She mentioned how I live under circumstances not fit for humans. It’s true. It’s all I can do to cope. And coffee is a full meal on most days because that’s what I have energy for. And I know she loves me. And I know she wants to help. But I am not ready for her help. I can’t handle the look on her face, the one where I have once again disappointed her. And then her telling me to “try to keep things in order from now on, OK?” Because she thinks I should be like her friends’ daughters. And the comparison cuts like a hot blade through butter.
She wants to come on Friday. And she wants to bring an assistant. And it’s a person in my flat that’s not me. And it’s my stuff. And they are going to judge. I know my mom is. She always judges. And then she criticises. And then I lie bleeding, and she has no idea.
A few years ago, she went even further, deeper, and worse by telling me I don’t deserve nice things because I’m fat and I’m a slob and I can’t keep my place neat enough. Of course she never said the fat, slobby hoarder part out loud. She didn’t have to. I know all that. I see it in the mirror every morning. But she was probably right. No more nice things. Nice things are for neat people. Not me. Not people who are not good enough. Who don’t deserve nice things.
I write, so that the demon comes into the light of the computer screen. If I keep him bottled up, he becomes worse. And if he becomes worse, there’s a good chance that I won’t be able to break free.
Maybe someone reads this who’s not a bot, and maybe that person remembers that he or she is human, too, not only a mental condition despite what society might say. And maybe the key to the light lies within us, if only we look carefully enough.
I matter.
