Mind, have mercy.

Lessons from Life

Friday, May 24, 4:35 p.m.

Calibri (Body), 11 point, single spaced. It irritates me a little, taps into the well of frustration in my chest that is ready rise up at the most trivial of provocations. I do not need the usual format. I will be ok without it this time. Yes, I can do this.

It is ridiculous to be bothered by formatting, but here I am, barely tolerating the default set-up. I feel much calmer with music.

Music is my anti-depressant and anxiolytic. I manage myself well enough, especially now, that I do not need medication. There are people that do, and that is ok.

My sister, Mae, and I struggle with similar things. She does take medication and generally views my adamance not to as irresponsible. Once, she told me she is comfortable talking to me about how she feels during her low periods, since I have experienced worse. I understood before, but never with a sense of realization, that we perceive my trials differently.

I endure the "high tides". They roll in unpredictably and threaten to drown me, so I turn my head up and try to breath. I know, just as they are guaranteed to rise up, they will always pull back, and I will be stuck in the same sandy spot, alive, to wait until they overwhelm me again. And I know from experience not to fight the tides. The best way to handle them is to let myself feel what they bring me.

Mae feels the need for medication, and perhaps she needs it. I would say what she experiences is worse in many ways. She is responsible for treating it in the best way that works for her. Our personal struggles are dissimilar, yet very much the same, which results in misunderstandings.

She can tell me, without fear of judgement or overreaction, she does not want to exist because I have felt the same way many, many times throughout my life. I know we fight the pain as much as we can. Mae does not speak such words for the reaction, pity, attention, or as a cry for help. They are an admission of the war waging inside her in an effort to get a troubling weight off her chest.

At the same time, I cannot understand feeling too depressed to get out of bed or the mood swings she goes through. She does not understand the fear that sometimes prevents me from completing seemingly simple tasks or the frustration that makes me insist on doing certain things in specific ways. One would think two people with similar diagnoses could understand each other better. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that even when we are near those who wish to support us, we are still alone in our suffering. Never will there be a white knight in shining armor. No one can know us completely inside and out.

I suppose one of the lessons my high school taught me was the need to trust myself. My parents raised me with the concern I would inherit a particularly nasty disorder from my father, in which the patient is unaware of what they suffer. To my young mind, their overbearing worry felt like expectation, so I grew up insecure in my own judgement and learned to lean on others'. My senior year, I trusted my principal and those classmates who spoke poorly of me over my family and my counselor, who cared for me. My inclination to think harshly of myself played a large part. In hindsight, I wonder if their judgement was an extension of my own, since I was already so self-critical. But I also doubted the need for no forgiveness, and I should have trusted the small part of me that said my school was wrong.

Another thing I learned that year is friendship can grant strength. Caring about someone who cared for me was too much to handle at times. I never realized how shallow my relationship with my best friend was until our last year together. I knew how to cope with anger and sadness, but not happiness or missing someone who was days' travel away, or on a different continent. Foolishly, I tried to pretend they did not exist. I made them up or met them in a dream. That only made things worse. However, I did find solace in knowing I was wanted somewhere, even if I felt alone where I was. The multiple times I thought about cutting myself that year I also thought of their disappointment, which helped me abstain from the activity.