Liability
The morning after the second worst night of my life, people saw me at breakfast and asked, “Hi! How are you?”
Pause:
I can still feel the hospital visitor band cutting off the circulation around my wrist. The pressure mimicked the tight grasp of a loved one’s hand, which had squeezed mine as he lay in a sterile twin sized bed, raving and disoriented. Wrapped in his jacket I felt trapped. Everything was taking so. damn. long. Hospital bureaucracy. When a nurse came in I asked her how long this might be. It was 3am and I was being held together by a single metaphorical thread that was in serious danger of breaking. She said they like to take things slow with suicide survivors because Oh My Gosh Sweetheart, The Other Week We Had A WACKO In Here Who Tried To Jump Off A Roof — And We Let Him Go Too Early, And Don’t You Know It He Went Home And Ate A Bullet Out Of His Shotgun!
Wacko.
I’d like to whack you.
Play:
“I’m good, How are you?”
I went to class.
Ya. You read that right. I went to class. I’d skipped for hangovers, all nighters and minor colds but the morning after I’d watched one of the most important people in my life try to take his own — I was front and center at my 9:05.
It’s not what you think.
It wasn’t apathy- truthfully, it was anything but. I found myself in such a raw state of hurt, terror and exhaustion that the only thing I knew how to do was to keep going through the motions of a Middlebury day. There did not seem to be any other option — I couldn’t imagine emailing a professor about it. Or telling a peer. When I ran out of the classroom mid-lecture to cry so hard I vomited, I texted a classmate to collect my things and told her I had a stomach flu.
Fast Forward:
My Dean mandated that I seek counseling. I didn’t blame him — it probably saved my life.
Two months in, my therapist starts throwing around terms like “Post Traumatic Stress” and “Major Depression”. I found myself wondering how to explain this to my friends. My mom. My little brother.
Stigma: a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.
Step Back:
If you are at all involved in the mental health community on campus — whether through your major, your interests, or your personal experience- you have probably heard stories like mine before. You might have one of your own.
The most important thing I can ask you to do for me right now is to recognize that I am not a unique case.
There are people in my life whom I love very dearly struggling with depression. With anxiety. With eating disorders and PTSD and grief. With loss. People who are pulling themselves out of abusive relationships and trying to ignore the pill bottle on their bedside tables. I’ve fielded late night calls from drunk and desperate friends who feel like it’s not worth trying anymore (friends who apologized the next morning for “being so dramatic”). I am hard pressed to find an individual who can always answer “Hi, how are you?” with “I’m good” — and mean it.
We are struggling.
And yet, in this community of dynamic thinkers who pride ourselves on academic education and social awareness alike — we refuse to talk about it. We have no idea how to talk about it.
How do you talk about your pain?
I write this now as a senior in college, soon to leave my familiar community for the infamous “Real World”. The scene I described above is two years in my past and I feel grateful for the separation.
But sometimes I still get triggered.
Mental health is insidious — you don’t beat it once and its gone forever. It lingers. There are good days and bad days. It is difficult. It is dark. It is very, very real.
And yet so much of our culture here supports the implication that mental health is a fabrication. Or a weakness. In order for someone to be depressed they must first justify why it is they are feeling depressed (“what is she so upset over?”)- and that justification comes with an expiration date (“shouldn’t she be over that by now?”). Don’t spare the gory details.
Spectacle.
The fact that we are not comfortable having these conversations is cultivating a culture of shame surrounding mental health on our campus. No one wants to be “crazy” or “unhinged” or “broken”. No one wants to be the first to admit that something is wrong. As one of my personal role models once put it, you become so used to the pain that you no longer fear the suffering inside of you, you fear the stigma inside of everybody else.
So what do we do?
If you’re struggling: stop referring to your pain in the past tense. Don’t pretend that you’re whole when you feel broken — your cracks are where your light shines through. Ask for help. Trust your loved ones. Know that you deserve their love.
If you love someone who is struggling (and you probably do): When you ask “How are you?”, mean it. If someone responds “not good”; do not eject yourself form the conversation. Think. Care. Open yourself to them. Be vulnerable. Hold their pain so they are not holding it alone because pain is heavy. You do not have to have a perfect answer — there is no perfect answer. Don’t let that scare you. And one day I guarantee you will need someone to lean on too.
I love the strength and drive and character in this community. But if we are not careful our unidirectional lust for success (as well as our unidimensional definition of the term) is going to suffocate us. We need to realize that having a mental health struggle does not define a person, it gives them layers. Being sad does not make you a liability and being strong is not about avoiding any weakness.
