I’m Doing the Best I Effin’ Can

You know, it is always fascinating when these self righteous, pretentious, ignorant people are critical of others with mental health issues.

Imagine, you get to judge someone from your normal eyes, with your normal brain, existing in your normal world, with your normal rules, just for someone who wakes up  to be normal just for your sake. The entitlement and ignorance is upsetting. 

Let’s talk.

Why really are you so judgmental of something you will never be able to understand unless it affects you directly?

If you’ve never suffered from cancer, do you need to feel and relate to every single thing the person is feeling before you understand they’re suffering and offer any kind of empathy? 

Is it because the idea that anything that provides a different perspective than your picture perfect reality you’ve conditioned yourself to believe, is scary and unsettling?

Is it that you’re so self absorbed and selfish that you could never take the time to possibly examine the idea that a reality for some people exists outside of your idea of what reality is? 

Before you call us weak and sensitive, do you even know what real strength is and what it is like to actually be extremely sensitive and still exist in a world with people like yourself judging us?

You like to speak of strength. Let’s switch shoes for one day and see how strong you are. 

So boom! You’re in our shoes now…

You were either born with this “sprained brain,” for lack of a better term, or some traumatic experience (or a series of them) completely restructured the entire chemistry and function of your brain.  Now you have to figure out your existence and how this brain works, in a world that is not exactly accommodating and understanding towards people with brains like yours. 

But before you do all of that, you have to act normal... like nothing has happened to you.

Because god forbid, someone learns of your handicap before you even figure out how bad it is. 

You have to figure this out probably right after you’re completely potty trained, and you’re thrusted into your first lesson of socialization with the other “normal” kids at school.

Or, trauma shifted and changed your whole life, and now as an adult, you’re still metaphorically thrusted into the world of “kindergarten” trying to coexist with the normals. You soon also realize that this “impaired brain” (if we are being assessed by society’s normal standards), affects every other organ in your body, how your body functions, and every fibre of your existence. How you eat, sleep, breathe, weight gain, weight loss, etc.

Before you even begin to remotely understand who you are, you’ve already crafted a perfectly molded mask of normalcy to hide beneath while you fit the pieces together by yourself in privacy. 

To go along with your mask, you’ll need armor. Armor of protection from the cold callous world, because a symptom of your sprained brain may be hypersensitivity. Showing any kind of sensitivity and being judged for it will not only blow your cover, but will also injure you and that’ll be a major setback in understanding and coping with the weird brain you’re blessed with. 

Because really, this brain cannot handle any kind of stressful situations, given that you have way more stress hormones than the average person and no mechanism to deal with them yet. 

So a simple situation of you being under duress could feel like it’s literally killing you, and you are involuntarily triggered into a trauma response… but have to do it within the confines and safety of your mask. 

Everyday after a long day of dragging around this heavy armor– while making it look like carrying feathers–and hiding behind the masked smile of perfection, you get to finally fall apart. 

Just for a few hours, you get to finally be your true self (whoever that is), feel everything,-- then try to figure out, how do I make the best of this sprained brain?

That is, if you do not have a family or spouse which provided the framework of the mask of normalcy you’ve crafted. If you do, then ouch! You’ll have a few minutes in the bathroom to scream into your palms hoping that the sounds of water running from your shower will drown out the escaping sounds of agony.

Finally, you still your racing heart and thoughts, and manage to finally fall asleep. Relieved that you live to fight another day, yet distressed that you’ll live to fight another day. 

You rest to gather enough strength to put that heavy armor back on, and that perfect mask, to do it all over again the next day. 

You play your part in this scripted monotonous narrative of normalcy; overwhelmed underneath, spiraling and bursting through the seams, but no one notices. Because you’ve gotten so good at it. Until one day the mask falls and breaks, the armor gets too heavy and you fall. You are now shattered. And now finally everyone knows your secret. You’re exposed, completely and totally broken in front of the normal world for all to see. 

Then they call you weak. They tell you everyone is going through something. They tell you about people dying with “real illnesses” to invalidate your suffering. They tell you to suck it up. They act like you’re overbearing. They try to fix you with medicine that makes everything worse. 

Now that everyone knows, they don’t want to deal with you. They call you crazy. So now you’re stuck with dealing with; being exposed, judged and oh, you still haven’t figured out how this sprained brain works. 

The next time you think of judging someone who suffers from mental health issues, put yourselves in their shoes for one second and think of the strength it takes to be someone like them. 

Because just maybe, they could be the strongest people you know. 

Everyday could possibly feel like death for them, but they wake up and still function in your normal world. Just maybe they are in the most excruciating indescribable pain that they’ve still managed to smile through to maintain YOUR sense of normalcy to please you. 

They might be scared to death every single day but still wake up and function in your normal world. They might be highly sensitive and empathetic and the overstimulation of this world is constantly overwhelming for them, but they wake up and function in your normal world. 

Just maybe they wake up everyday in the most excruciating pain with no real relief,  isolated with no support system, but they still manage to function in your normal world. 

And before you call them overbearing and selfish, their only reason for still being alive could be the thought of you being hurt if they should die. 

And before you call them weird, crazy, handicapped, and challenged, just maybe if you try to see the world through their eyes, you’d see how uniquely amazing and genius their minds really are. 

The imposition of your expectation of “normal” is selfish. Being judgmental is cruel, ignorant and entitled behavior. 

It’s very easy to judge. But empathy isn’t hard either. 

We expect to understand every single thing about someone before we show any kind of care/ As if simply being kind to others is an accolade they’ll need to earn. 

The hypocrisy. 

You expect people to simplify and explain their existence to earn your understanding, when really, do you even understand your own self? 

It’s easy to judge, but empathy and kindness are a lot easier– because they are gifts we can share without explanation or understanding.