And You Will Love Them: The Thing About Having Mentally Ill Friends
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And You Will Love Them: The Thing About Having Mentally Ill Friends

A story of jadedness and joy.

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And You Will Love Them: The Thing About Having Mentally Ill Friends
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Here is the thing about having mentally ill loved ones: they are beautiful, but they will also break your heart. You will love them but they will not love themselves and you will not find a means of remedying this paradox. This is a dissonance that cannot be ignored, as it remains that what you care so damn deeply for is often in the process of destroying itself from the inside and there is little you can do about it.

There is nothing like the moments in which you sit at odd hours of the night laughing to the point of physical pain at topics too obscure to recall, nor the candid moments in which you may admit vulnerabilities you previously didn't dare because they may be met with such a sacred caliber of compassion and understanding.

There is, however, also nothing like the canyon in your stomach as you find them sprawled across the bathroom floor vying for consciousness, and there is nothing like the seemingly physical twist of your heart as you watch them broken down by something that you cannot physically see or touch. You will often feel as if you are in some perpetual state of bittersweet mourning, and this can be an odd manner in which to live. It is simultaneously one of the best and worst things to happen to you.

They will be wonderful. They will teach about music, art, healing, history, math, the brain, comedy, new food joints. You may learn (and argue) about different terminology for words like "soda," you play ridiculous games at 1:30 a.m., you stop at random Greek diners at odd hours and laugh over pancakes, you sing in a ridiculous manner to the radio in the car, and you continually find moments in which you realize that the mere act of existing with others can be something well worth the hassle.

They will also be in pain. They will be plagued with demons that will, sometimes, win. You will learn how to steal glances in search of wounds beneath sleeves or how to look for watery eyes that may be indicative of a "bad day." They will teach you what it means to be worried sick, and you will learn the sensation of your heart dropping to your feet upon realizing, time and time again, that they may be in trouble.

You will realize, each time you bid them farewell, that this has the potential to be the last time you may see them alive and well. You will be faced with the constant and very harsh reality that the depth of their battle is one which they cannot escape, and it is also one that you so wish they didn't have to fight.

I've often felt that the reason so many of those I know as mutual friends have experience with some form of mental ailments is because there is something worldly about them. We frequently joke that we are all somehow "attracted to each other by the crazies," but the reality is that these people I know are some the kindest, though possibly the most weathered, I've met.

Perhaps it is our experience with the underworld that makes us, somehow, more humanitarian, or maybe we somehow are more receptive to human nature because we've been face-to-face with the intricacies and flaws of it for so long or, perhaps, we're just really goddamned sensitive. There is something humbling, however, in fighting a battle against yourself and it is something that, I believe, can somehow bring you closer to what it means to be so flawed as to be human. This is what I've found in those I've encountered who have been touched by mental illness and who, coincidentally, often tend to be my closest of friends.

I've been what could be considered ill for a good period of my life, but I did not realize what that meant until it became a terminology applicable to those intimately involved in my life beyond myself. I can speak for very few, but I find that we often grossly neglect to acknowledge in ourselves what is invoked by our empathy and compassion for others. Essentially, we care not for how "screwed up" we are until we realize how much we care about how "screwed up" our loved ones may be.

You do not realize your capacity for compassion until it is prompted by the fact that you have people that you want so very much to help. You do not realize how willing you are to sacrifice self or how able you are to feel the range of human emotion or, perhaps, just how alone you are not until you find these things worth caring about in others.

These friends that I speak of have definitely offered some of the more unique, not the mention the most elaborate, takes on life I've encountered. These range from living in a manner that is contingent on appreciation for the moment to a rumination on the past that may offer future insight. I believe if we were to incorporate all of our philosophies into one we may definitely be on to something, though I also suppose this is easier said than done.

They have still, however, taught me so much. They love pretty openly and think very broadly and accept very easily, for they've had more time to look into the face of life and death and dark and light than many people ever do. We must focus more on the act of solely being alive and we, therefore, appreciate the minute components of as much. We love you for taking a shower, for eating a meal, we are proud of all of your successes, even those as small as merely remaining alive. We know that you are not made a bad person simply due to what you may have done in the throes of your sadness and we will try desperately to understand.

There was a point, one night, in which I was perhaps a little tired, subsequently, continually compared the weight that rests on the minds of those around me to characters in classical literature. Those who were present will laugh at my mention of this, but I could not stop comparing those whom I perceived as burdened to characters such as Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. Perhaps this comparison is a little indulgent of my English major literary obsession, but I can stand behind one thing I slurred out that night, and that is that we have all, in one cliche way or another, lost our "innocence" to this. We have lost our peace of mind, our undiluted contexts of living, our ease, our unburdened nature.

You may encounter the realm of the fundamentally flawed human either directly or as a second/third party, but the fact remains that, of those I know, we have all watched the metaphoric ducks leave that god dammed pond and hell if we don't wonder where they've gone or if they will come back. We'd all be lying if we said we didn't, and we'd all be lying if we said that our own nature and our companions' nature isn't, in some respects, something heavy that we bear. But here is the beauty in that, and it is one that I would dare argue outweighs the negative: we do it because we care.

We do it because we love, maybe a little too much or too unconditionally, but we do it because we are given the supreme fortune of experiencing the depths of the human capacity TO love. We do it because we are so very hopelessly human, we do it because we've met people that we've managed to connect to on such a strong level, and we do it out of choice. In exchange for the hearts heavy with weight that we must carry, we are given the opportunity to experience what it is to have hearts heavy with what it means to be joyously human on the most basic level.

It is in all of this speak of the good and the bad that there is a reality to be derived. I lack a manner with more couth in which to say this, but it is the truth as I have found it.

It hurts.

Arriving in the psychiatric ER to see your best friend looking broken and bruised hurts. Watching them carry one away on a stretcher as her face contorts into a sob hurts. Watching the love of your life writhe and shiver with panic on the floor hurts, getting the call that your childhood companion has a tube stuffed down her throat, catching sight of scars on the skin of the guy whom you can't help but consistently fret over hurts.

Watching your closest confidant waste away, your roommate draw back into shadow, hearing an admittance as to just how hopeless they feel, lying awake worrying about their access to pill bottles, catching them amidst their breakdown, there is no way of getting around the fact that it hurts, all of it, and you will never come fully to terms with the fact that this is happening to them.

It will also hurt when you look into your boyfriend's face and see the worry lines that are, admittedly, your doing. It is painful when the sweetheart of a young woman confesses that you preoccupy her mind with a pending sense of worry and dread daily, the same way it is when you hear the crack in a companion's voice as they beg you to please, for God's sake, be careful.

When you catch the eye of one who surveys you warily upon the return from a post-dinnertime trip to the bathroom or when he glances at the cut on your arm, when you hear the collective response to your personal dismissal as a chorus of "yes, I am worried, yes, this is serious," it will hurt badly and you will not come to the terms that this hurt is so beyond you. It is so very hard, you realize, that those you want to protect so desperately are being harmed by you and by something in yourself that you have no agency over. My heart has broken so many times upon seeing others battling their own demise, but there is also nothing like the hurt that comes in tandem with watching the sad smile that emerges under their tired looking eyes when they tell you that they are constantly fearing for your life.

However, there is another reality, and it is that all of this will also bring you unprecedented joy. You do keep these people in your life, in spite of the fact that they are what could be described as "fucked up," and this is because they give you something so immeasurably great that you know you could not find it anywhere else. They will make you feel more loved and more connected in such a basic, necessary way that you have not known it before. You will find comfort in their unconditional regard and presence, in their mere existence.

You will discover a kindness that you almost forgot the feeling of, and something that simply restores in you whatever faith you may have lost in the goodness of your kind. They will help you find that the world can be a place painted in a much brighter color and different perspective than you knew, and you will find wisdom. You will find insight. You will find compassion. You will find pride and motivation and nostalgia and the bittersweet nature of life. Godamn, they will teach you. They will rob you of sleep, sure, they will piss you off and worry you but they will teach you more than you will ever fully appreciate in the process.

They will make you laugh until you cry. They will make you laugh when you are muddling in the dark, they will make you laugh over the most stupid shit you could ever imagine and they will make you laugh until you remember what it means to be a child. To simply enjoy where you are. They will remind you to appreciate. They will pick up your limp body off of the dirty floor and carry it for miles on their own back until you may find it in you to stand again, and they will help you realize what it feels like to be so willing to do the same.

There will be memories with them which you will always hold dear, there will be so many small quirks of your personality that they had a hand in shaping, and you will have forever been changed in the act of having known them. They will be a part of some of the most precious moments of human life: those in which we realize happiness through singular instances of laughter, contentment, warmth. They will have given you trust, moments of singing your heart out, of crying, of peace, of fear and of hope. They will have given you a home. And, all cliches and melodrama and metaphors aside, they will have given you faith in what it means to simply be.

So this is the reality, and it is one fraught with both jadedness and joy. You will care for people who are mentally ill, and it will be daunting. There will be contradiction and hardship and a lot of shit no one may ever be capable of coming to terms with. They will be a part of your life.

They will be ill and they will break your heart. But they will also be insurmountably beautiful. They will give you hope.

And you will love them.


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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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