And The Monsters: mental health in America

This is the first in a series about mental health in America

Lack of access to adequate mental health care in the United States is one of the things that’s tearing this country apart. 

I wrote about that on Twitter recently, and then decided to take a step back to figure out what it actually means.

The problem, in its various forms, has been documented extensively. There is a number of policy conclusions to be reached from such documentation.

I am not a policy expert and so I leave that part to the experts. What I am good at, however, is observation.

I have observed how terrifying and alone it feels when you are on a waiting list to get counseling, and how the feeling of isolation builds when the weeks turn into months.

Then there is the embarrassment. The inevitable feelings of, “Do I deserve to ask for help? So many people have it worse. They’re right to keep me waiting and to not answer my calls. They’re not overwhelmed — they just don’t prioritize me. Why would I be a priority? *I’m* fine! I’m just weak! They probably hear the weakness in my voice when I call to leave a message. There’s probably a lot of secondhand embarrassment they feel when they hear my voice.”

Then there is the extra personal humiliation. The hot, squelching feeling somewhere in the pit of your stomach. It drags you down, makes you fold in on yourself, building pressure until it rushes out of you all at once. Until you hurt the ones you love. It burns through you like acid and all you have left is your shame. The shame is a thing that lives with you now, it has rubbery wings and claws and rows upon rows of teeth, each one with a claim to a piece of you. You’re alone in the dark and the monsters are here. Every one of them has your face.

A few months ago, I wrote about a character in a short story, “… her anger made her feel exposed… Anger stripped her off her gleaming outer layers. Underneath them was something raw and uncooked, a deformation, drowned in its own proteins, filthy.” 

I didn’t know, at the time, that I was writing about myself. Even though everyone always writes about themselves, in the end.

I want to turn to air. I watch the wind worrying the trees by the Potomac, and I think to myself, why can’t I be that? Why can’t I be weather? Why can’t I just be? I can’t hurt anyone if I turn transparent over this landscape, rise, crackling, through the mortal coils, settle like fog. 

When you’re as sick as this, every detail of the topography, every being, is a monument to your pain. The squirrel busy burying the acorn in front of your feet — doesn’t it know better? How dare the leaves still fall. Mental illness is selfish like a tumor — it only feeds itself, and wants everything to turn into a version of itself.

It took me months to be able to see someone, even though I tried. I searched. I found phone numbers and called them and left messages. I described my symptoms. I got worse and worse and, for a while, the rot in my life became its own kind of normal. I was like one of those chickens that runs after its head has been cut clean off. For as long as the blood is pumping, you keep moving. 

Is my failure systemic? I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t try enough. Maybe I was too cavalier with my symptoms. There are a lot of maybes, and they form a corridor of echoes inside me, and I fear getting lost in it forever. 

All I can really tell you is that in addition to having to wait, I have found myself swept up in the bizarre culture of vulnerability as entitlement. You need something — mental health care, in my case — and so that makes you bad, a shameless drain on society. You should have made better choices, long ago. Did you consider not having been born? After a while, the endless static of prosperity gospel, the idea that the good are rewarded and the evil are punished here, in this life, mixed neatly with the static in my own head. I applied to myself every horrible thing that has ever been said about people like me. It’s darkly comical that I would never apply that kind of thinking to another person. That’s the other thing about mental illness — it thinks it’s special. 

My first appointment in a long time was last week, and I was able to get it only after I despaired and sobbed to an answering machine and said that this is it, I can go no further. By that point, so much damage had already been done that I have no idea if I will ever be able to undo it. Once again, a lot of people would say that this is a failure of the system, but from inside the pain, I really can’t say. 

I can tell you, though, that I see my symptoms in others. Ever notice how social media communication can become one long, public therapy session? I don’t think that’s a coincidence for many of my fellow Americans. In an increasingly atomized and automated world, it makes even more sense. We are alone. Talking through our devices at each other. Signals traveling through dark.

Image credit: Korry Benneth