I Can’t Think of a Good Reason Why I’m Mentally Ill
Exploring the despair that comes with not having a reason.
For the fifth time this week, I find myself staring at the ceiling at 3 AM. The intrusive thoughts I’ve had since I was a child are back in full force now. These last few months have been less harsh on my mind, but now I’m paying the price.
It never fails to astonish me how quickly I forget the deep pain that my borderline personality disorder brings me when it attempts to worm its way into every facet of my life. When I let it run free it drains me like a parasite I can’t detach.
The thing about having a good period when you’re extremely mentally ill is that it can recontextualize your whole life. In this time period, I had doubts about my own BPD.
Did I even have the disorder? Was it just BPD-like symptoms overtaking my brain for a rough few years while my own life and the broader world experienced disaster? Did I spend all the time and money on treatment for nothing? Maybe I never was sick at all. Even this realization is more painful than it felt at first.
It didn’t matter though because the illness came back. Triggered by the most minor of things and resurfacing the moment I attempted to break the ennui of my healthy period.
Now my nightly staring contest with the ceiling is filled with brand new questions about the nature of my illness. I understand that mental illness is a very complicated mixture and that there are so many different factors that feed into if a person will develop a mental illness in their lifetime. Yet there are still some social factors and trends I’ve read about that all make much more sense.
Childhood abuse, homelessness, financial insecurity, obvious genetic factors. Any of those things make sense for why extreme stress could inspire mental illness in a person. But I don’t really know why I’m sick.
I’ve lived a very privileged life for the most part. Sure I’ve struggled a little with all sorts of things. I’ve lost people I love and I’ve been abandoned too. I just don't understand how that warrants being so ill. I constantly feel like a terrible person for having the same affliction as people who have been through so much more and have survived so much worse.
It’s getting harder and harder for me to look at our current reality. I’ve grown up in a world that has faced constant war and an impending climate catastrophe. In the year 2022, we’re still facing new wars and seeing bleaker outlooks on what our world may become. It’s exhausting to look and I question how anybody is okay. Despite everything some people still seem okay.
Unbroken by a world that presents no evidence of stability apart from a sun that will rise each day. I envy them because I lack the ability to cut my emotions off from the tragedy that I see in both my personal life and the broader world.
I’ve had a nice long stretch of seeming unbothered. Friends and family remarked on how my attitude has improved for the better. Realistically I’m just too broken to really express how broken I feel. I try to tell myself that we’re all like that. That everyone has lost some part of their mind and is quietly trying to survive each day because falling apart is not an option.
I think of how statistics for suicide fell in the years of the pandemic and wonder if maybe human beings are just predisposed to strength when the odds are most stacked against us.
I worry about the aftermath though. The moments when things feel a little lighter might be the moment where many of us finally fall apart. The sudden shock might be akin to cutting your leg but feeling no pain until you notice the deep gash. Sometimes I feel like I am the only person in the world who notices every minor scrape and cut as it happens, but I’m still forced to continue onwards.
Maybe that is the line between being mentally ill or not. You notice how damaged you are. Maybe my problems would all go away if I could convince myself that really I’m not damaged. I try, but it’s hard, maybe impossible.
Other people suggest that I simply don’t talk about what I’m going through enough. At least not in a direct and non-abstracted way. I’ve definitely had moments of deep honesty and sharing with other people, but at what point does sharing just turn into a masochistic exercise where all I do is rehash the past.
Therapy used to be a big help in this regard but lately, I find myself quieter and quieter in my sessions. I don’t know what the right thing to say is to the person that knows everything wrong with me. I grow tired of relitigating the same painful moments and revisiting the same strategies that only seem to work briefly.
I can’t think of a good reason why I’m mentally ill. They tell me that I don’t need a reason. That I’m valid. They tell me I’m accepted for who I am. My friends tell me this, professionals tell me this, people who matter to me tell me this. But I don’t believe it.
I try to gain strength in the face of adversity by telling myself that everything happens for a reason. That every single failure and misstep and fuck up is worth at least something. But how can I honestly believe that when I have no idea why my brain works the way it does. I try to tell myself that I don’t need answers to be able to believe but my faith has never been that strong. I resent people who can believe in religion or people or even themselves because every act of belief requires at least some faith.
It’s hard not to think about entropy and the famous quotes about it as I write this and explore every avenue of why I feel this way. I think about what Stephen Hawking talked about how an increase of entropy helps us tell the past from the future. I fear that my life will follow the same principle. More chaos and disorder with less logical answers for me to piece things together. With no faith to guide me and no answers amidst the chaos, what should I do?
I desperately want some answer that I can give you dear reader. Not even for your sake, but just because I need something. If I can’t find peace, at least I need to know why I’m suffering. Although I am certain that the latter will never be answered, I can at least hope that tomorrow’s chaos may bring with it a chance for some inner peace. I hope that whoever reads this finds that same peace.
