Baby, It's Me

 

Don't label people.

 

I don't know how else to begin except by jumping into this. Although the problem of "beauty in baldness" is my reason for this blog, I want to write about the problem that is really closest to my heart:

 

Mental illness.

 

If you suffer from a mental illness, you will be labeled. People will look at you and see nothing but your illness.

Everything will go through that filter. If you get angry, which you often will because any emotion you feel is attributed to your ill brain rather than your heart-felt experience, any action you take based on that anger will be seen as exaggerated, and if you really lose your temper as many people do, those actions will be seen as dangerous, threatening, possibly psychotic. Never mind that many people lose their temper; yours is to be feared.

If you cry, you are over-emotional. If you lose your temper with your child, who by the way is physically attacking you in a temper tantrum out of his or her control due to another illness, you are not to be trusted to care for your child.

No doubt, a mental illness (depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder) really does change how you view the world and your power within it. But people struggling bravely with mental illness have as much right to express emotion as people struggling with mere "normal life". In fact, I would argue that we "crazy" people are more in tune with ourselves than those who have no idea what mental illness feels like.

But labelling us and predicting that we will lose control? That gets into our psyche and tells us that we will, in fact, lose control. That we can't, in fact, be trusted.

I really have a hard time believing caring people who tell me that the struggles in my life and family are not all my fault. Instead, I keep trying to find new therapies, workbooks, projects and prayers that will finally "work" to get me well so that peace can be restored to my chaotic home and love to my dysfunctional relationships. But I've tried it all--individual counseling of all kinds, group therapy, prayer groups, girl's nights out, pills and more pills...and I still lose my temper and cry when I feel sad. Go figure.

So what else can I do? I don't know how else to make people see me and not my illness. Or my baldness. Or my teaching. Or any other one part of me. I am a whole. And my experience of life is real.

I feel like the tree in the picture up there. I am standing alone, looking at a world filled with life, activity, excitement, and potential for love. But I can't move from my spot, stuck by my roots. I will bloom and be beautiful, but then I will droop again when the season calls for it. And people will walk by, assuming I am bound by my nature.

This is how I'm feeling today, reeling after recent days of difficult circumstances and hurtful words carelessly thrown around by me and others. I have other days when I'm feeling like my spot near the city is sacred ground, where I have my shape and my purpose and my beautiful view, and that I provide a place where people can see beauty and gather and feel inspiration.

Both of those experiences are valid and part of me. Not to be feared, not to be labeled, not to be walled off. I, like everyone, want to be loved. I am learning to understand how I am loved by God. Understanding how to love myself so I can love others? Well, that's much harder.

But I will get there. We all can. That's the beauty of life--we are constantly blooming and maturing and changing. Even when the leaves fall to the ground, the process of creation is playing out how it should.