From Isolation to Growth – Reclaiming Life After Mental Struggles

I sometimes feel sorry for the numbness I have to the terrible things in my book, in my writing, and of course in my thoughts.  Not for myself do I feel sorry but for you the reader who hasn’t known what it was like to live like this.  I feel bad for you that I can just say it all so casually like it’s a recipe for a potluck salad.  I think it is hard for any of us to imagine what it would be like if we weren’t ourselves, with our brains, with our experiences. 

In an interview yesterday I was asked how lonely I must have felt keeping a secret of all my intrusive dark thoughts all of these years.  This is something I try to never even think about.  When it does cross my mind because I have been asked a question about what it has been like, my logical brain can’t seem to handle the answer.  It’s almost as if I lived a lot of my life on a stranded island, the only person on the island was me.  On the island I saw horrific things, I tried to forget. I only had myself to rely on and I had to toughen up to survive.  I became numb to the coyotes howling at night, the snakes slithering into my shelter, the bats shrieking from above.  I had no one to tell how scared I was and so every scary day was just measured on how many scary things happened that day.  It was a good day, I only nearly shit my pants from being scared, two times, some days maybe it was 7 times, some days maybe none.  Those were days of great relief.  Since no one was on the island with me it didn’t matter which days were good or which were bad as the only thing I had to talk to would have been the Wilson volleyball that washed ashore and became like my best friend.  Looking back on that frightened girl on the island is absolutely paralyzing, there is not enough compassion within myself to try to make that up to her. 

So many people say that coming forward with my secrets and doing all of this writing must be so healing for me.  I honestly feel kind of a bit like a liar when I say yes.  I don’t know that I can heal her. I think she lost so much vulnerability with others, she lost authenticity by constantly hiding her secrets, and she lost the ability to let others care for her in what she was truly going through at that time.  Can all the praise in the world take back the trauma that you had being alone on that island? Will it ever fill your cup enough to heal you?  Does giving back and trying to make others who are mentally ill have a better life, cross out the score, take away the sadness or the numbness?

The thing I have to remember now is I am off the island.  I have made it.  I have been rescued. There is no payment from the shipwreck that will change my suffering on the island.  There is no amount of praise now that will change the time either.  If you spend time dwelling on the time you missed, you only miss more time that you could have had. I have to leave her there on the island, no matter how hurt she is, nothing will change her hurt.  Now though she has the opportunity to heal moving forward, the numbness of the experience will never go away, nor should I want it to. 

Don’t miss the good stuff by continuing to look at the past bad stuff.  I wanted some payback for the time I lost but there is no amount equal to what I lost.  What I can do for that girl now though is I can change, I can grow, I can learn, I can help others.  As a random bible verse, I found said “If you cannot have what you hoped for, do not sit down in despair and allow the energies of your life to run to waste; but arise and gird yourself to help others to achieve.”

Dwelling on the past just allows the energy of life and the future to go to waste.  We can only look forward and see how we can do better every day, that is the payback, that is the new cup we get to fill.  It’s time to cheers with our new cups to our futures.  There is that question of what was the best day of your life?  I have had plenty of amazing days, but I have this feeling that some of the best are yet to come.

Chat soon,

Michelle