Every family has character traits that bind and tie its unique identity. Perhaps you’re gingers, generation after generation of flame haired beauties nicknamed Bluey? If you were especially lucky in the genetic lottery, you’re the spitting image of Angelina or Brad, so blessed by biology that your cheek bones could shave parmesan and your tears could be bottled for the unique purpose of repairing wounded unicorns. Musical virtuoso, piano prodigy or singing sensation; wouldn’t it be wonderful to wake up every day knowing you had the power to captivate millions without barely even trying? Intellectual giant, gymnastic elasticity, Rapunzelian locks, the grace of a gazelle, the wit of Wilde, anything really, would be better than our unique family distinction.
We’re all mad as cut snakes, nutters, creepy and kooky, mysterious and loony, shaky, anxious, morose and maniacal. Being as we are, fully functioning members of productive society, it will come as a surprise to many that we’re barely holding on, teetering at any time between then realm of the living and a week long stint under the doona dampened by the tears of hours spent begging the banes to exit the skin by way of our lachrymal vents.
Not wanting to speak ill of the living, my immediate family might be a bit annoyed at my naming and shaming, I’ll reserve my commentary to the dead, and myself, whose sanity I’ve never sanctioned. So maybe I should rephrase, only my father and myself are nuts, every other member of our genetic Diaspora is completely normal, tip top, ship shape and happy as Larry.
Sad isn’t it, we’ve reached a point in our collective evolution where it is more acceptable to be filmed having sex with a stranger than it is to admit suffering from mental illness. Divorce, sex before marriage, homosexuality, poverty, single parent families, domestic abuse, and paying actual money for music recorded by One Direction. All the skeletons in our Victorian closest are socially acceptable. We sit on the sofa of social media’s global talk show and share just about anything; who we’ve done, who we would like to do and who we can’t, but standing up among friends, let alone strangers, and calling out the diagnosis of the 21st century’s single biggest killer is shameful, hidden, swept under rugs and unnamed.
Crazy cats take to the streets, uncared for, untreated and unsupervised, they purchase fatal arms, or use whatever is handy, they kill, they maim, they execute and they assassinate, we spend hours analysing the outcome but never address the root cause. In many instances, those who suffer are undiagnosed and left wandering the streets. Entire societies are at risk of bedlam because we’re too scared to talk about it.
Well here goes.
I suffer from acute anxiety. The stress and pressure of the life I lead manifests itself in all manner of creative ways. My personal favourite is an inability to sleep, as I shuffle from side to side in the darkness desperate to close my eyes and my consciousness to the constant mental examination of what is, what might be and everything in between. I lay no claims to being an Air Traffic Controller, a Neurosurgeon, a Spy or a Sergeant; I am but woman, who has a job and lives in a very big city. Some days, that is just too much and my brain struggles to decipher it, breaking down and unable to cope with the more basic processes…like sleep.
Insomnia aside, the compulsive behaviour is pretty special. Checking every door, checking every power point, checking I have my passport, checking anything at all in a futile effort to control the uncontrollable. Anxiety is the fear of what might happen, OCD is the collection of behaviours one exhibits to mitigate that fear.
My father, that brilliant and damaged man whose face I see every day in the mirror, walks now in the sky with Lucy and her Diamonds. When he wasn’t sawing, sanding or singing, he was seesawing between the heights of mania and the depths of depression. His crazed eyes, his twitching fingers and his clenched teeth were the daily signals of a man who grew at a time when marrying a cousin was less shameful than admitting mental infirmity. He would live 56 of his 58 years before ever seeking professional help, before we had a word to describe what we tolerated for so long. By then he was living in a morphine dream and the damage had been done.
I’m intimately acquainted with people who talk about their digestive ailments, IBS, Crohn’s Disease and the intolerance of all manner of nature’s delights. As a society we’ve become accustomed to discussing our bowels, their movements and all associated excrement; we now discuss our shit but we can’t discuss the real shit.
Women sit together in cafes and stage whisper their secrets divulging a litany of complaints but never the shame of insanity. Uteri. Miscarriages. Menstruation. STIs. UTIs. Open season for all of our openings, but hush on the subject of sadness or risk your bestie shifting in her seat at the unwelcome intimacy of knowing that you are just barely keeping it together. There are so few obstacles to inclusion, why is mental illness the must-have accessory of the social pariah?
I don’t know.
I genuinely don’t understand how we’ve come to this place where absolutely everything is ordinary except the one affliction that blights 25% of the UK population. We film, we share, we like, we update, we photograph and we tag, so here is my #melfie. A photo of a mentally ill person, a Mad Hatter. This is what someone with mental illness looks like…completely fucking average, not hiding, not drowning, just waving.
I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
You rock. You brave, smart, self-aware goddess. Don't ever stop talking.
Posted by: Jo Weatherhead | 11/01/2015 at 09:25 AM