I am just ill

A little mouse sits on the boardwalk to Mandala house. As I sit next to it, it doesn’t move. It just looks at me, heart beating fast. There is no blood, no obvious wounds. But it is clear something is wrong. Why don’t you run little mouse? It isn’t safe in the middle of the path. When Francesca joins, we gather it might have been stepped on. She picks it up to put it near the herb garden. 

I’ve been tracking my thoughts lately. Each time I say or think something negative, I move my bracelet from wrist to wrist. I am amazed at how neutral and even positive I am. The gloomy girl I thought I was, laughs and enjoys a lot. But when I finally do go down, it is not my thoughts but my body that goes. My chest and throat feel constricted. Is the air getting more dense? I need space.

I muster all my energy to join the bhajan blast but things go downhill from there. Simple questions create fog and my eyes just want to cry. I cry on my way home, at the lake, waking up, at meal times, during karma yoga, in my room, throughout satsang. People come up to me to hug and support, and I just cry some more. Negative judgements start flooding in as I keep on breathing through urges of self harm and suicidal ideation. I am loved, I am strong, I just have to wait this out. I wear my silence badge as a coat of armor.

The little mouse didn’t have obvious signs of damage. I don’t have obvious signs of damage. Physically there is nothing wrong with me, but in my head of course there is. But aren’t neurotransmitters physical too? Someone the other day was talking of bipolarity as “disease”, making large gestures for the quotation marks. Later apologies were made. ‘I didn’t realise you were next to me.’ At the time I said, ‘no offence taken’, and meant it. But it lingered in my mind.

For here I am: able bodied, smart. I teach, I have a PhD. But obviously I am not trying hard enough. Obviously I am willing myself down the drain. And though I know that is not true I sometimes wish that mental illness would be visible. So I could remind myself and others: I am doing the best I can. I am just ill.