I'm just going to say it: I am not good at regular blogging. Even at my new online home, it's been a full year since I posted. Maybe I'll write something there in honor of it being a full year since I cared about anything other than my job or going to school or my dog. (He's perfect.) Anyway. I'm not really sure why I'm here except that writing usually helps me process. It's safe to say I've had a lot to process in the last year, and I just haven't done that at all. So here goes.
Depression has been in the news again lately. (Actually, I should note that it has been a full 3 weeks since I started writing this post - because I'm bad at blogging and because how in the world do I say all of this - and just as quickly, depression seems to have quickly moved away from being a topic of general discussion.) It always takes a tragedy or a celebrity death to shed light on the very real mental health issues that so many people face every single day. The ones that are the most common somehow seem like the ones that most people are afraid to talk about. Even though I grew up in Georgia, I am from the Midwest with a pretty typical Midwestern family, and there, you just don't say what's wrong with you unless it's something that can be fixed by a "real" doctor. And even then, I'm sure there's a category of illnesses (like women-problems, things that have to do with private parts, and probably some gross gastro-intestinal stuff) that you really don't think people ought to know about you. But certainly, you never ever talk about mental illness. You should just get over whatever is making you sad, or stop being afraid, or just carry on with your life and be a good person.
I haven't personally suffered from depression or anxiety... I usually tend to
internalize any negativity in my life so that I become
physically ill, but even that will go away if I just stay positive and
take care of myself. I am fortunate not to have gone through the
debilitating, incredibly stigmatized situation of just being uncontrollably, dementor-level sad and dark all the
time. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a house where my mom talked to me about stuff, but I don't really remember talking about mental illness in a way that normalized it until I went to graduate school. In my counseling program, we studied all forms of mental illness along with "regular" issues like career guidance. We learned to talk about depression and anxiety as things that regular people face. We learned to talk about personality disorders and psychotic disorders as things that may not be as common, but there are still real people attached to them. And they need love and support probably much more than the rest of us. If you've been mistreated by someone with a mental health disorder, it can be hard not to dwell on what they did to you. It can be hard to live with them or around them. It's especially hard to spend your time wondering if they're okay and hoping that someone is taking care of them when you don't feel like you can do it anymore. But no matter how hard it is on you, just think about how hard it is on them. We learned to talk about those things and to try to help people find peace.
But if I'm being honest, and that's sort of the point, the mental illness side of counseling was just too messy for me. And in real life, I still have a hard time really processing negativity. Even when it is someone else's situation, I hold onto it too much and become consumed by it so that I can't focus on anything else. My own "self-care" is really to place my energies on the things I can control... maybe I attended too many 12-step meetings as a student observer, but man, that part makes a lot of sense to me. I can focus on myself and my work and doing my best in grad school and being a good puppy-mom. I can focus on Notre Dame football, even though I can't control it, though don't I wish I could. What I have a really hard time with is getting involved in a world where people are spiraling downward. I'm not good at it. I would much rather tell a joke or make you feel better with some cookies or a bottle of wine. I can hug you and let you cry and tell you that it's in God's hands, but I honestly don't know that I can ever really help. I am a fixer, and the problem with mental illness is that a person isn't necessarily broken. They just need help. And they need really good professional help. Medication alone isn't enough. Therapy may not be enough. Prayer isn't always enough. (Lest I sound sacrilegious, my point is that God gives us resources here to help, so we need to seek those out in addition to praying.) Perhaps most people are like me - caring and well-meaning, but not necessarily talented at dealing with the hard stuff - and that's why it remains so pervasive in our society with very few real answers.
My grandfather committed suicide this summer. Only a handful of people know this. I didn't even tell the beautiful people with whom I spent my summer - people who I know would have hugged me and cared for me and done everything in their power to be supportive while I was struggling with my own grief. But saying it out loud made it so real that I couldn't think of anything but how awful he must have felt in order to take his own life. And that just fucking broke my heart. My grandfather was the most "Midwestern" person I've ever known. He almost never got angry. I don't remember ever hearing him raise his voice unless he was trying to talk over the roar of grandchildren at Christmas. And I certainly don't remember ever hearing him talk about (ugh) his feelings. Through surgeries, broken bones, and even cancer, I never remember hearing him actually say that he was worried or afraid or sad or hurting. When my grandmother died last year, he was clearly physically worn down from the strain of losing her. But he never said it. At least not to me. So I was simultaneously shocked and probably also not-so-surprised when he took his own life this summer. As I now know, she was his whole world. And here's the thing: he did it in a way that made so much sense... practical even. He left his business affairs in order at home. He did it away from his home so he would be found by someone other than my family. He did it in an empty but public place on a Sunday - where no one would be immediately troubled by it and no one he knew would be burdened with any kind of clean-up. He even did it in such a way that he would (at the risk of saying too much here) look perfectly normal after the funeral home preparation. Now, I can't say that this was all on purpose, but I just have to assume it was. This is not a man who was crazy or mentally broken. This is a man who was simply miserable, and he never said it out loud. He just took care of it, because that's the kind of person he was.
I know I probably sound flip about this. Maybe even too sterile. But my goodness, it's a hard thing to understand and rationalize and truly feel. It's a really, really hard thing to grieve. You know your grandparents are going to die when they get older. I was fortunate enough to have all of my grandparents (8 of them in fact, because of divorces and re-marriages) around for most of my life. You expect death from old age or illnesses, maybe sudden-but-not-totally-out-of-the-blue. You anticipate getting a phone call and understanding that this is part of life's processes. It doesn't make it easy, but it feels mostly natural. You understand mourning while still celebrating a life that was long and well-lived. It is really hard to make sense of an 87-year-old man taking his own life, especially when he still had a family that loved and cared for him immensely (but maybe isn't good at saying it, because, well, we just don't do a whole lot of that).
I have to wonder if society was different, if our family dynamic was different, even if just a few circumstances were different, whether or not the outcome might have been different. And I just wonder how many other people are wondering the same thing. I know I am surely not alone - not alone in the concern for other people who battle mental conditions and not alone in the uncertainty of how to deal with all of it. I hope we can all see opportunities to help others, and I hope beyond hope that we can figure out a way to actually make a difference for people in those situations. Whether through changing our language, changing our behavior, or simply being tuned into worlds outside of our own little bubbles, maybe we can lessen the stigma of seeking help and make our common existence a bit safer for everyone.
