The web of discrimination – the ache of loneliness – the anger of misunderstanding

Trying to stop the blame and then after all, blaming!

It isn’t, that’s it, It just isn’t.

It is easier, when we all struggle, when we look round the world and peer at our phones to think we make the effort, we too have suffered and feel lonely and aggrieved and frightened and and… all these things and yet we can still offer a smile at the end of the evening even though the day was not what we wanted.

We did not get the cuddles or the laughs or even slight glimpses of gratitude for what we had done that day to make it a good one for those we love, for us, for our community, for our fragile world. We still smiled; it might have been a weary smile but we made the effort because we love despite all that.

And everyone should love and offer thanks, because it is only with love and kindness that the hatred of those that kill and maim other peoples, because of their difference, their different values to ours, that we can make a dent in the anger and the hatred the world constantly groans with.

Groans so much that it’s oceans bubble and its trees creak and fall and its rivers dry up and the air becomes chemical even in the clean high places.

We say we need to strive to offer over and over and when those we love more than anything, are wild with the confusion of their fragile selves and their uncertain mortality, we need to reach out and cuddle and protect and with dark humour give laughter amongst the snotty tears.

And I agree with this. I do. But I don’t because it just isn’t.

For me, I am not sure I offer the dark humour we sometimes desperately need for validation, or the conversation and demeanour that allows people to talk when they have lost their words, but I can offer cuddles and I can, when everyone is exhausted, put on the wash, or do the shop or make the tea or empty the bins or all those things we need to keep life more or less stable when we have forgotten what is stable.

And I can walk by the sea with Dash the dog and take photos of exquisite flowers, or deep green leaves or the sparkle of the sea or the wide expanse of the sky and sometimes when I post such things on places like Facebook and remark on the tiny, tiny, adventures we have as a family, it can lighten someone’s day, give a slight vison of the possibility of peace and security or at least that is what some people tell me.

And all that works ok; when we have the strength and the support to do this, we can glow despite sadness and exhaustion and think one day it will be better, or even if we fear it won’t be we can strive for it to be better.

But sometimes it doesn’t and sometimes I think this is where the stigma of mental illness has its harsh roots. Sometimes the reserves, the ability for the wry smile disappears and we have no smiles and we have no kindness and we cannot struggle to make it all better. Sometimes we do not cope; we slowly cease functioning, rest offers no respite, love is distant, kindness means pretty much nothing at all because we have lost ourselves from ourselves.

And those who love us do not know what to do and even though they wince at our negativity and unreason they reach out to us, only to be rejected by us. They seek to include us and we do not participate. They want to visit and though we may want to see them, we will not see them.

They give us time off work to recoup and refresh and we do not flourish, instead we fall that bit further apart. They come by to take our children out and give us a break and we silently thank them, to retreat to bed and stare into space only to remain just as tired when they come back, having gone to all that effort.

And we are wild with the shame of our sadness and tiredness and inability to connect with those we love and far from thanking those who seek to help, we blame and get angry and either try to convince ourselves that is other people we once held dear who have harmed us or that we are so awful that we understand why we no longer get invited to see those we love and care for with the same enthusiasm we once knew.

And that is what stigma is sometimes. With Mental Illness there can be times when we cannot love freely and easily, cannot be kind as we want to be and cannot accept love and cannot accept kindness because we despise ourselves and at the limits of our sadness can grow to believe the only good ethical thing we can do for our families and the other people we love, is to remove our existence and our burden from their presence. To us that feels like our gift to those closest to us and to them like their darkest nightmare.

And that is unbearable for everyone. When we struggle to live and do it prettily and vulnerably, it can make us feel good to be helped and make people feel good to help us but for many of us there is no prettiness, only a form of horror we struggle to convey; a horror where we dread the beginning of the day and dread the night when we are alone with our thoughts. We dread the look on the faces of those we love whose hearts fall each time they see our expression or hear us speak because it really is impossible for some people to continue to love us confidently when we have become blind to the power of love. And when we see our children and know we cannot entertain them anymore or give them the security and joy they are accustomed to, we wither that bit more and lash our selves with a bitter shame.

Whatever we call it, there are times when we become unacceptable to ourselves and that communal glow and effort to keep going when war tears into our towns or villages, that desire to find a way through when famine takes over the land, or to make ends meet when the jobs no longer exist. It is threatened to its very core when we just stop and cannot. When we cannot. No longer.

And though I have rarely encountered war and rarely worried about having enough to eat, I do know what it is like to stop too and enter a world where it is beyond my ability to look after myself and beyond my ability to have hope and way, way, beyond the ability of those I love to keep me safe.

At such times; cries for the need for resilience and hope and responsibility that are increasingly the mantra of those in power who have maybe never known what it is like to stop, to cease to have the ability to Be in any meaningful sense. Their words are just another layer of evidence of how awful we are and how we do not deserve and how we muddy the lives of those who once remembered laughing with us and talking with us and it is no wonder we feel that way.

I can’t do all I would like either, with my friends when they fall apart; when, whatever I do, I have no effect on someone I love; eventually it is easier to give up, just as in war and famine it is easier eventually to leave those who Cannot anymore, to the fate they do not deserve when we no longer know what to do to stop it happening.

For most of us life is not so extreme but I sometimes glimpse frustration in those I care about and in those I know when I or someone else, just slowly stops and drifts away, losing their ability to love themselves or to love those around them in the way they want to; losing the ability to do the daily tasks that keep us all connected.

That is when love and kindness become critical; those pale times when we are falling away from our ability to respond to the kindness of those who have always supported us and no longer know quite what to do when they see our presence in the world is becoming increasingly half hearted.

To me this is the tragedy of suffering and of illness. We praise those who fight and don’t give up; who carry on to the bitter end. We understand when we see the awful causes of some peoples suffering and make allowances but we have limits and maybe we need limits, though I wish we didn’t.

That yearning for existence and joy and hope; to be valued and treasured; it is bewildering when it falls away. Sometimes I understand why marriages and partnerships so often fall apart. It is so utterly painful to be around a distress and a reality we cannot understand and cannot, as far as we can see, help with and it is terrible to witness what people like me to do to ourselves and still remain kind and calm.

I know sometimes, when I have seen people bleeding or crying with the need for obliteration, I can struggle to be strong enough to be with them and so I understand when partners who have bound themselves to people like me with trust in their hearts; when month by month, we slash at ourselves and seek the relief of not being, when that carries on and seems to have no end; then I can see the pain they feel and understand why for some of them, however much they care for us, may need to absent themselves for their own protection.

We say this is discrimination and prejudice. Maybe sometimes it is but more often than not it is just tragedy; a tragedy with no heroes and villains and no one to be blamed and no lesson for how to do it better, no; it just isn’t the place for blame.

It just isn’t but when people who like sound bites and likes and votes say we are weak and spineless and need to show spirit and get into work and stop relying on the state; now that is a place where I will lay blame.

When those who claim to know why young people suffer or for that matter anyone with a mental illness suffers and acts the way they do and when they offer the bland offer of increasing our suffering four fold by taking away our support and our money because they do not know our world.

To me it feels like they have thrown away their humanity for pounds and power and hatred then; then I do get angry. When those in power see us as scum and treat us as scum and lack the basic understanding of the terrible world we are already in, then my wish to keep kindness in my heart begins to crumble and I wish on them an illness like this that is so bad they would kill themselves to escape it and maybe then they would realise what they do to us with their glib words and pet theories about how those of us who experience the worst of distress can shine in a new shiny light of productivity and resilience and grit..

No it isn’t that is not how you do it.

Thank you for reading this, I learn more about my life, mental illness and family do dip into my memoirs START and Blackbird Singing – you can get them by messaging me or else wander off to me and Geilston Press on Amazon