You Should Know

Today, in church, Paul Lammon was talking about how we need to call folks, how we shouldn't depend on others to see what we put on facebook, when we are going through things.  How we need to connect with others and let them know what's really going on with us.
It was profound, hearing that, knowing what I've gone through this last week.
I didn't want to talk about it, but I found myself up in the middle of the night, falling to pieces, having cried for days, recognizing a ghost from my past.
For those of you who don't know, because I've never really discussed it openly, I have been mentally ill in my life, extremely, destructively, disasterously mentally ill.  Going to the doctor, laying on the couch, being doped to the gills, labeled, categorized, diagnosed, give the girl a check mentally ill.
Even now it's so painful to even mention.
There's a stigma so dark attached to it, I've only trusted certain people to know.
I spent days crying and somewhere in all of that I realized, "This is more than just getting my heart broke and being rejected.", "This is more than the usual weeping I experience.", "This is more than disappointment and being exhausted and frustration, this is something totally different."
Damn!!!!!!
I remember feeling like this another time.
Damn!  Damn!  Damn!  I thought this thing had gone away!
I thought I'd managed to get past this!
I hate the labels, the diagnosis, the categorization and the medicine.
I hate the way people tip toe around you and treat you with kid gloves and seem to be waiting for you to flip the hell out and go crazy.
It's not who I am, it's not my identity, it's not something I embrace or accept as being a part of me.
You'll hear me say things like, "They say this is what I have.", "This is what they've diagnosed me with.", "This is what they say is wrong with me."
It has to be something wrong with me right?  Not everyone is certifiable crazy.
I don't have a problem with the word crazy, it's all the scientific crap they try to blow past me that bothers me.
Extreme bi-polar disorder, manic deperssive with disassociative features.  Disassociative features, it's not a freakin movie set!
I'm deeply disturbed this is happening!  I'm even more disturbed at my urge to share it and put it out there for the whole world to see, but not nearly as disturbed as I was when a voice came along and started talking to me about ending it all.
It's such a long, horrific and tragic story, I don't want to go into the details.
It cost me everything, a marriage, my children, my freedom, and then some.
It sent me in a downward spiral that took me ten or more years to dig my way out.
It had me paying people who didn't give a crap about me or what happened to me, to listen and not help me solve my problems.  It had me taking so much of a drug I should be dead because even the psychiatrist was a quack.  It had me in a lot of deep dark places, doing really stupid and destructive stuff, it had me out of control.
Man oh man!
I keep seeing Jack Nicholson in The Shining with a hatchet busting the bathroom door, then saying "Here's Johnny."
Then comes Randy Quaid, the drunken pilot in Independence Day, flying into the space ship yelling, "Hello boys, I'm back!"
There are so many things playing out in my mind right this minute it would be impossible to describe them to you in a way that makes sense.
I don't have to accept it but I do have to own it, because I don't want to die.
I'm mentally ill.
There goes half the people I thought loved me and were my friends.  Bye.  It was nice knowing you.
I'm mentally ill.
There goes 90% of the men who may have wanted to date me.  See ya fellas, those others chicks you are chasing don't look real stable either.
I'm mentally ill.
There goes anyone else who wasn't true to start with.  What ever.  Bye Felicia.  Later.
Why am I telling you this?
I don't want to die!
I kept hearing Lamar Golden's sermon where he talked about the spirit of suicide coming on him, a great man of God, how it began to lie to him and tell him how no one would care, how easy it could be.
I don't want to waste away in this desert of emotions.
I don't want everyone being unaware of what's happening to me, because it is happening to me, it's not something I'm doing to myself.
I hate it, my heart is broken, my mind is in a million places and my emotions, they are locked in the trunk and driving at the same time, which is never ever a good thing.
No one can look at me and say, "Get your shit together Darlene.", because no one has the answers as to how that will actually be done.
I thought I did have it together!
I haven't felt this way in more than twenty years!
Why did it come back?
Did it not ever go away?
What in the heck is going on here?
I'm sure I'm not the only one.  I'm sure there are others just like me, who live in the shadows, don't want to talk with others about it, carry a certain shame about it.
Right this minute, I am the only one, the most important one and I'm telling you, I am suffering from mental illness.
There I said it!
Damn!
I'm trying to set something up so I can talk with someone, start trying to dig back into the root of the problem, find answers for something that will never be concrete and get through the next moment.
So why are you telling me this Darlene?
I don't know!
I need your help!  I need your love!  You don't have to understand me, just accept and love me!  I'm an open book, I'm not trying to hide anything from anyone and furthermore I can't afford to because this monster is so much bigger than I am to begin with.
I'm broken.
Now you know my deepest darkest secret, I don't know what I expect you to do with it, I'm just trying to get everything out in the open, release stuff I don't need and let people know what's going on with me.  I can't front and fake it anymore, it's not going to let me anyway.  You're liable to see crazy stuff that defies explanation, I hope you don't but it could happen.
I can't shut myself off, isolate from everyone and hide it, because it's there.  It's the elephant in the room and it has to be talked about.
I'm going to copy and paste some information I found, simply because people need answers, hell I need answers.  If you have information you can share with me, encouragement, stories of your own, that would be great and probably help.
I've used every ounce of courage I had, I'm completely vulnerable and at the mercy of the world right this second and that's all I'm going to say about it, for now.

Being mentally ill means:

Thinking outside of “normal” rational concepts, causing you not to participate in a normal life.

For a portion of one’s life, it is the inability to make one’s own choices based on what makes the most sense to them.

Possibly thinking self-destructive thoughts or do things that are self-destructive.

Sometimes having an inability to understand what people are saying to you and are not able to control your own behavior.

Having others be exasperated with you or treating you like a child.

Often not understanding the motivation for one’s own deeds or speech.

Constantly regretting one’s actions, but not knowing what to do about it.

Blaming others and your environment for your own feelings and difficulties because you don’t know who else to blame.

Assuming what others are thinking, and often misunderstanding other’s motives.

Being mentally ill does not mean:

That a person is irrational, but that their thinking involves a different kind of rationality.

That a person is violent, except in rare cases.

That a person has a lesser intelligence.

That a person cannot function normally in life, although they may need some special assistance or allowances.