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Dusk before dawn
Confirming bias
I watched a show yesterday showing a mother having a delusional episode while her family was trying to hide her illness in real-time. She was dismissed and shunned and tucked away swiftly.
Immediate fear swelled in my chest. I related to her. Anything she said that was nonsensical to others at that moment was attributed to her mental illness first before attempts to understand her or accommodate her occurred. Everyone anchored her undesired actions to her mental illness refusing to see that they may be misinterpreting the situation. I felt her vulnerability and her helplessness. They dismissed her as crazy and didn’t trust anything she said or did. She was consistently second-guessed. Having your sanity, thought process, and cognition questioned is frustrating and scary. Trusting yourself and your knowledge of yourself is key. If not, you will succumb to someone else’s interpretation of you and your sense of self. Your ethos will no longer be yours.
My cognition stayed intact thankfully. I am still organized and trust my memory and thoughts. I hang on and have faith in myself. I am not “crazy “or “damaged” and I have a gauge of what I can handle. This is an improvement. This is progress.
Tears
I silently yelped into my blanket crying. Mom flew back to Texas after coming to DC for the…