A Mental Spiral

The stars were not dim, but they seemed so. She stared at them through the window, searching for hope. What must one do to find hope after it vanishes? She didn’t know. She stroked her arm, feeling the ridges there that were sign of the times she had truly given up hope. When all that is left is pain, what is left to look forward to. Everyone told her she was so strong, how they admired her. Yet when she began to fall apart those same people scattered. They admired strength when they didn’t have to see what caused her to become so strong.

Life was a battlefield; it always had been and always would be. People would ask when she would get better, and she smiled but didn’t answer. She wasn’t getting better. This was something that would follow her for her lifetime. Those who hadn’t had to fight their whole lives didn’t understand that. They just assumed it was something that could be cured with the correct application of treatments. She knew better. After years of medications (she’d lost count of how many she’d been put on over the years), different therapies, different counselors, psychiatrist, doctors, specialist, all of it, she knew this was something that would never just go away.

Unlike a cancer it couldn’t be cut out. It couldn’t be killed with radiation. There was no cast or splint like with a broken bone. There was no certain thing to avoid like with an allergy. No lotion to ease the pain, no pills that would stop it, no amount of rest would allow her body to cure itself. No this was something that was a part of her.

It made her different. She could appreciate on the good days how it expanded her view of life and the world. You saw more when you were able to see more. She experienced emotions only poets wrote of. For they, like her, struggled, were different, and felt so much more. She guessed that all great artists, no matter their medium, be it painting, writing, acting, singing, composing, sculpting, sketching, or some other form of creation, all were different, all felt pain that could not be explained.

It was a pain that was not just in the mind or heart. It was physical too. There was the pain in the mind, a physical pain that almost felt like a headache but not quite, there was the emotional strain, the mental pain, and then there was still more. For it was not content to cause difficulty in just these areas, oh no, it caused a purely physical pain elsewhere in the body that could not be explained. For her it was in her abdomen, about where the liver was. She would suddenly be in so much pain she could not function. It could last minutes, hours, or days. She’d even had it last for two weeks straight once. She’d gone to doctors, who had been concerned. They’d run every test they could, but nothing explained it. So, she just had to endure it.

Life was not easy for those who had such pains, but still had to pretend they were normal. They had to hide their various pains in order to survive a world that could not seem to accept them. Oh, it pretended to. It promoted metal health awareness, it talked about ending the stigma, it made legal rights apparent for those who had mental illness. But if you were one of the unlucky ones who actually had it… you were told you would not succeed no matter how hard you tried.

That was one of the many reasons people thought her so strong. She had continued to fight; she had gone back to school multiple times. She had done more than simply well in school. She had continued to pursue her dreams despite the odds against her. She had advocated for others who hadn’t gotten to where she had yet, who were still struggling to get to where they could speak for themselves. Despite it all, the moment her mind turned on her, the moment her emotions went wild, they scattered.

Those who were like her, they stayed, but there wasn’t much they could do. If they helped too much they’d risk triggering themselves and that was the last thing she wanted. No instead she tried to not lean on any one person more than she absolutely had to. Even when she was holding a knife in her hands it was hard to reach out for help. She was getting better at it though. There was one thing those who called her strong hadn’t realized. In calling her strong they had actually made it harder for her to reach out for help. For she had been raised with the belief that if you were strong you were able to do things on your own. You were completely self-reliant.

She had to fight with her mind when she was already struggling with it in order to reach out for help. On a night like tonight she had to convince herself that just because she needed help didn’t mean she was a failure. It was the same thing she told others time and again. It was always easier to say something than to actually do it.

She finally pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts. She needed someone who would likely still be up. If she woke someone up she was going to feel worse. Didn’t matter if they’d told her that they’d rather be woken (again something she often told others herself). She found someone and clicked on them to send them a text. It was painful. It took her at least five minutes to write out a three-word text, but at last she did it.

She stared at her phone. She needed to hit send, but she couldn’t seem to make her fingers move. She started taking deep breaths, trying desperately to regulate herself enough that she’d have the strength to send the little message. Those who called her strong had no idea what a struggle it could be to send a text that wasn’t even really asking for help. She was asking if this friend was awake. It shouldn’t be this difficult, but it was.

Finally, at long last she sent the text. With it’s sending out into the electronic world she burst into tears. The knife clattered to the floor. Her legs gave out and she found herself sitting on the floor. Tears continued to stream down her face as her phone began ringing. With shaking hands, she answered it. Before her friend had a chance to speak, she asked, “Can you keep a secret?”