Mental Health is a Bitch.
She smokes too much. She has long red finger nails that are chipped and jagged. Her words are raspy and cruel and cut like knives of ice. She calls when you don't want her to and she shows up on your couch when you least need her, dribbling ash on your cushions.
I understand why people who don't have this Bitch following them around don't understand. Just don't pick up the phone, just kick her off the couch. Just tell her to go away.
In every other health field there's a clear A to B connection. Have an infection, take an antibiotic. Break a leg, wear a cast, do some physio. Trust in your body to heal itself. Your white blood cells will fight the infection, your body's natural immune system will kick in. When it doesn't, we have this medicine to help it, to mimic what your body isn't strong enough to do. Ah, but mental health -- the anxiety, the depression, PTSD, bipolar, schizophrenia, psychosis -- that's a different beast. You actively can't trust your body to heal itself. Your body has turned rogue, your mind has defected and gone over to the enemy camp. The healing isn't physical, isn't physiotherapy with weights and tension bands and stretches. The healing is emotional, internal. It's walking the knife's edge of balancing brain chemicals we still don't accurately understand. The heavy lifting is done in a mirror reflected inwards, lifting and fighting internal voices and memories and emotions. Like fighting ghosts with a toothpick.
Trying to explain it makes very little sense. Of course it doesn't. When someone's entire life is spent trusting that their body will heal itself, trusting in the mechanics of nature to do their job, it seems unfathomable that the whole process can be suspect. No, it doesn't make sense that picking up a ringing telephone is terrifying, but it also doesn't make sense that my brain is actively trying to kill me from the inside. That's crazy. Why would your brain do that? If it kills you, it kills itself. It's the antithesis of the mechanics of nature, of survival.
Be that as it may, she's still on my couch. And she's still a Bitch.
