Living with Mental Illness – How Being Seen Makes a Difference

It is my intention to try and explain and journalize how these mental illnesses feel on daily basis. I do not want to in anyway make you feel sorry for me. I just want to either share with you so you feel seen or so your family or friends feel seen. There are so many worse things in the world that I could have or that could have happened, I could name a thousand worse than this. However, that is because I get to have some reprieve in between my symptoms. When it is at its darkest and I have never felt reprieve or know that it could possibly exist, I can understand the feeling of hopelessness. There are many times in my ups and downs that when I am down that I feel like if it won’t leave me alone, I just can’t go on. Almost like a physical illness that has you laying with intense cramps on the floor, this is a mental pain equal to that.

I don’t deny that for some the pain is just too unbearable to go on and Kevin has seen me at some of these times. He has honestly felt at times that my mental anguish would be released by death, and he would know that I am finally at peace. He loves me so much that he has said things to me that let me know that he would accept my death being a relief for me.  He was at his wits end trying to understand how I could keep living the way that I was. That day in January before I started TMS he was standing up from his chair at the psychiatrist office saying, “do something now, or she will do something.” I was numb. All of it just makes me feel numb. I promise I really don’t want to go anywhere, but when it strikes so hard, sometimes it feels like there is just no other choice.

Through this process in ways Kevin made me feel seen, seen for what I was going through, seen for the seriousness of it and seen that above all else he doesn’t want to watch me in pain. I feel the same about you and your families, I want you to feel seen or I want you to support someone to feel that deep, deep type of empathy that makes you feel loved beyond compare. Sure, it’s funny that here you are suicidal, and your husband actually tells you better ways to do it but the intent of it was not funny. The intent was pure empathy.

That’s what being seen is. It isn’t feeling sorry for someone. It is just understanding what it must be like for five minutes in their shoes. Like I said I don’t want self-pity as there are thousands of things worse but in those terrible lows, I just want to know that my illness mattered. I know that is hard to do sometimes because you just want people to pick up their socks and get better. What if you looked them straight in the eyes and said those dark days must be so difficult, how can I help and support you. Invisible diseases just look so lame until you can figure out what it must be like to be them.

The generation previous was you just ignore it, you hide it, you move one, the weak will perish, the strong will survive. These types of illnesses don’t pick who is weak or who is strong, they go for the jugular. It is only us thinking of them of weak or strong, the disease does not pick sides. The disease decides when it’s the last day, in my experience I had no other choices at the time. Don’t feel sorry for me but just understand me when I say that it was not a choice by a weak person or a strong person, it was not a choice at all, and for them they stopped the hurting and until you walked in their shoes you had no idea how incredible their pain actually was.

Chat again soon,

Michelle