It's funny how posting on here in some way is cathartic. You're not sure who will see it, if anyone. A lot of the flares we're throwing up go unseen on a regular basis, but I think occasionally for some people this feels like a flare. It feels like maybe someone, somewhere will see it and know that you need help.
I'm writing a book about a girl who oh-so-desperately needs someone to see that she needs help. I love her character because she is a mess in so many ways that the rest of us are messes.
I think I'm slowly beginning to understand mental illness. One of the most profoundly resonating books I ever read was "Lisa, Bright and Dark". God, I loved that book. There are so few books I read where a character is created (or real) and I say, "Yea. I get her", but Lisa, I got. Deborah Blau from "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden", I got.
I never used to understand depression. I saw the world so beautifully and clearly when I was younger. It was hard for me to fathom a place so dark the light couldn't reach, whether that light was Truth or Logic or Love. All three of those things have saved me on more than one occasion.
I now understand depression. Perhaps it's something bigger than that. I won't pretend to know everything there is to know about the beast that is mental illness. Truth and Logic and Love haven't abandoned at me, but it feels like I'm looking at them through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. It doesn't matter how real they are and how well they present themselves. It feels as though they may as well be offering me a three foot rope for a ten foot hole.
I hate this.
Hate is a word I reserve for knowing that is exactly how I feel about something. I don't want to throw it around loosely. Hate, to me, means I want whatever it is to suffer. And I'm not talking congestion or skipping one meal. I mean, the type of suffering where your soul is screaming out for release, reprieve, hope, for anything better than whatever you're experiencing. Suffering, to me, is complete and total inescapable anguish. It's extinguishing the light called "hope" or dangling it in front you only to snuff it out. Suffering is believing there is nothing better, that nothing better will ever come. The sun will rise tomorrow, but you'll never feel its warmth. You'll receive food, but won't taste its richness or intent.
When I say I "hate" someone or something, this suffering is what I'm wishing on them. This is why I reserve the word and the sentiment for the rarest of occasions.
But this... feeling this way... I hate it. And it is ironic because the very thing that I'm wishing such ill will toward is the very thing that is making me feel that iconic sense of suffering.
I'm a solutions girl. I loved math for the reason that almost everything had an answer. It had a series of steps you followed and either you were right or you were wrong. I don't have a series of steps and I don't know how to shake this.
All of this, above and throughout and in between, I hate it. And I don't know what to do.
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