Last Thursday, I attended a production of Tongue of a Bird which was put on by my school.

It was nothing short of incredible.

I walked in to it knowing nothing except that it tackled some heavy themes but was receiving rave reviews from some of my peers. In short, it is a two hour play that includes themes of suicide, mental illness and one woman’s search for her mother, herself and a little girl. It was heartbreaking watching the events of the play unfold, a familiar sinking feeling growing larger and larger as I realized that the things I had been hoping wouldn’t happen were definitely happening and were much worse than I could have imagined.

I am not here to write a review, however. I am here to participate in the conversation that the play invited the audience to take part in: a conversation about how we handle mental illness. Is it something to surrender to, hide or brush away as was portrayed in the mother’s character? Is it something to fear, as the main character clearly did? Or is it something to ignore, repress and pretend it isn’t there, like the grandmother did?

None of those options are healthy, but they are the ones that I find myself coming back to time and time again. It is easier, in some ways, to pretend that my mind is capable of functioning perfectly well without help, thank you very much. It feels easier to quietly pretend that everything is alright because everything should be alright. I can see things as they should be, and when my brain refuses to cooperate with my plans, it feels like defeat. If I can’t do something as small as my laundry (or homework, or dishes, or…), then how on earth am I supposed to do bigger things, like apply to grad schools, or have a steady friend group, or just function in the day-to-day?

It feels impossible—like I’ve lost the war before I even started to fight. So I take medication, see a psychiatrist, see a therapist, talk to my friends, journal, walk outside and eat moderately healthy. I do all the things I am supposed to do, yet sometimes it does not feel like enough. Sometimes my tongue feels like thick rubber, my mind a jumbled mess; there is a hole somewhere where my left lung should be because I can feel my heart beating but something else there aches and I can’t quite get the feeling that the world is ending to just go away—

There is a moment in the play where the mother tells the daughter that it “isn’t about love,” or something to that effect. You cannot love a person out of a mental illness, even though it feels like you should be able to—like your love could cross continents, fill oceans, find them in whatever desert they are lost in and bring them home—

But it isn’t about you. It isn’t about me. It is about the other, third self that I can see in my mind’s eye. The Emily who is happy, healthy and not mentally ill. The Emily who can see the cliff face and turn around, who is not powerless in the face of her depression. Who can listen while anxiety sobs about the end of the world and let it be. Who can, I don’t know, live. That is who this is all about, at least for me. I want to be that Emily, not the one I am now. I want to be the Emily who does not carry the burden of an inherited illness. I want to be her—I can see her, I can almost reach her, but I am still here. I am in this desert and I feel very, very alone.

But what my depression tells me—that no one else cares, that I’m being over dramatic, that I need to get over myself—those things are not all true. They might have some truth, but only a little, like the chocolate chips in a cookie. They are not all that the cookie is made of, there are other ingredients there, but there are enough chocolate chips that you can taste them.

There is enough truth in the lies that I can taste it.

What Tongue of a Bird told me is this: I may be here in this desert, I may be alone, I may be lost, but there are people in the world who will come looking for me. There are people I haven’t even met who will come looking for me. There are people I haven’t even met whom I will go looking for. That is what we owe each other, the play whispers—we owe each other the dignity of seeking. We will look, and look, and look until the lost are found and we can go home.

Some days I don’t know if I’m the one seeking or the one being sought, but that is okay. I am here. I am standing in this desert, but I have a choice. Do I stay here or do I go out and look? Both are perfectly acceptable answers and I have definitely walked down both paths. There is no shame in staying and waiting or in being found. There is no glory in seeking and finding. There is only this: there is the act of finding or being found, and in that act finding the humanity in the other person, and finding the humanity in yourself. It is coming face-to-face with your own struggles and saying it’s okay. It is heavy, and it aches, but it is there. And somehow, that is enough.