A Frame of Reference

I've had a better day today.

I got up early, got out of the house early and spoke to people, mostly about stuff they wanted to talk about.

Yesterday I spent most of the evening at my amazing best mates house. She fed me, didn't expect conversation, and we played around with polymer clay for hours. By the time I got home I was exhausted, but it had been a good day.

A good day. What do I mean by a good day? Almost certainly not what you think I mean.

At the moment, right in the middle of a deeply depressive episode I feel like I am lost in a world of my own. Underwater, but able to breathe, its chilly, but not cold. I'm distant because I'm underwater. I can't feel anything, just like you feel the pressure of water on you when you are in a swimming pool, but you don't really feel anything else. And I feel like this all the time. I can communicate with you in the language that we all understand, but I can't make you understand my experience. I cannot explain to you what my world is like, because unless you have gone through the same thing there is no basis for comparison.

(My apologies now, as I will regularly quote science fiction, cult movies and TV throughout this blog. It is a place I escape to, which I find comforting.)

To quote Mr Spock in the Voyage Home when asked by Dr McCoy what death is like 'It would be impossible to discuss the subject without a common frame-of-reference.' Mental illness is a place you need to visit before you can understand what it is like. 

I am overwhelmed by feelings of sadness, but I am not sad. I am driven by self hatred, but I don't dislike myself. I am tormented by anxiety, but I want to go out and see people. I desperately want to be happy, but I know that will never happen for me. I live in a place where I feel nothing most of the time, but I have the capacity to experience joy unbound at the colour of a sunset.

Going outside and meeting people is exhausting. Not because I have to make the effort to get up, dressed and go out, but because I have to present this happy, coping, ok, normal face to the world. I have to perform for everyone else. There are very few people who have truly seen me when I have been in the deepest places of my pain. I hide it because I am ashamed. Because I am ugly in my desperation to find something, anything to hang on to, so that I can stay alive, just one more day, because despite how often i have felt like killing myself, I really do not want to die. I don't want the world to see that, because I don't want pity. I don't want people avoiding me because it makes them sad, uncomfortable, angry. 

So I staple my 'OK face' on and I greet the world. I perform the normality dance and everyone is happy. Except me. I am knackered. Its bloody hard work hiding how sick I really am. Its not even something I do consciously. Its something I've done my whole life, because to tell someone what is really going on in your life, well then they just judge you, dismiss you as a liar, an attention seeker, a problem, a criminal, a waste of space, lazy, stupid, pointless. 

I recently went to a friend's party. I wasn't in the mood, but I'd said I would go. I pasted on my smiling face and walked around pretending to be OK, while wanting to tell people to fuck off for suggesting the most idiotic and pointless 'cures' or 'self help DVD's', or 'have a drink, you'll feel better'. Then one of my friends who is wonderful, but this night was a bit drunk, announces 'I'm so glad you are happy again, you look so lovely when you are happy!' And bang, just like that, I had nothing left to say, nothing left to do but go home and feel utterly shit about myself. 

Why? Because I wanted to enjoy myself, but I was too tired. I didn't want to be there, but I had promised to go. I wanted to really relax and chill, but everyone has an opinion on my mental health and how I can cure it. Big news there, ITS NOT CURABLE! I'm never going to get better. the best I can hope for is lots of long term coping mechanisms, pacing myself, and getting stable. But getting better? Nope, never going to happen. My wonky brain is not going to suddenly reorder itself and repair the actual structural damage my childhood did to it. The disorganised brain chemistry s not gong to miraculously correct itself and start working right. It simply doesn't work like that.

Now sympathy is OK. Understanding is a little more problematic, because unless you have really been there, you cannot possibly understand. 

No, sorry, feeling a bit sad cos you didn't get the house/job/car/dress you wanted is not a basis for comparison. Having your good mood dampened a bit by next door's dog shitting on your front lawn does not equate to massive, irrational mood swings and anxiety attacks slapping you upside your head when you least expect it.

Being a bit distracted because you had an argument with your boy/girl friend is not the same as getting no sleep because your head has been racing around all night going over every single conversation you have had since you were six and then telling you that it all proves how stupid and irrelevant you really are.

And, honestly, I know you mean well, but self help books/mindfulness DVD's/exercise videos/special diets/just choosing to be happy instead type advice isn't helpful. In fact its incredibly insulting and upsetting. You wouldn't suggest to a diabetic that their foot will grow back of they just watch this DVD. Or that mindfulness will cure someones blindness. These suggestions are not about easing my pain, or helping find ways to support me in my journey to better health. They are about making you feel better by feeling like you are doing something. 

Honestly, I don't need you to do anything. Just be my friend without making any judgements about my health or making any suggestions for cures. Be supportive, be sympathetic, be sensitive. But really, don't try to understand, because you just have no basis for comparison.