A Road Diverged

Mental illness requires making a choice, with fundamentally only two options, like meeting a fork in the road. One can choose to stop living by literally ceasing to live via sailing out an open window, sucking on the 3rd rail, eating a bottle of pills, or what have you. A lot of ways to do it. Also, one can figuratively stop living through isolation and avoiding treatment. Either way, it's the same choice, which is to not fight back and seek a bit of happiness. Contrary to the mythology, it's not by definition the "easy" choice. It can be brutally hard coming to the conclusion that you're not worth the paper you're printed on, and to do the world a favor by jumping off the train a little early. But that's the first option, Option "A" as it were; literal or figurative death.

The second option is, naturally, to get some help, take pills and go to therapy and pursue a "normal" life. Feel free to call that Option "B." I remember when I first heard that phrase, "pursue a normal life." Referred to as if it were the ultimate goal, pure good, the shining path through the Promised Land. It was spoken to me this way by an intake nurse late one night at The Arbour, a nut-house in Jamaica Plain, Boston. She said, "With the right medication and therapy the hope is that you will be able to return to a normal life." A total mind fuck, when you think about it. Up until that day, I wasn't aware that the best I could hope for was normalcy. And clearly I wasn't "returning" to normalcy, given how fucked up I was and am. And even if I were normal, it wasn't something I was very fond of given how I got to The Arbour in the first place. I had just arrived from the hospital.

But I understand what this kind and very tired nurse was saying. We were hoping for a return to normal function, even if I had never functioned normally. I always knew that my noggin wasn't screwed on quite right, and a parade of frank and honest friends over the years confirmed that fact. Whatever the problem, it was (and is) preventing me from functioning at school and work as I once had.

After my second suicide attempt I decided to focus on the second option. I took up the practice of seeking professional help, and the necessary habit of taking pills and tablets. And also comfortably labeling myself as "crazy" or "mentally ill" or "bipolar." Whatever I had (and have) to do to find a hiding place from the guilt, the deep, merciless knowledge that I am a marginal human being who isn't to be taken very seriously; a man of no consequence, as I'm fond of saying. It takes a long time to at least develop a modicum of comfort in the face of that unflattering outlook and defeated, pathetic disposition. I haven't found much comfort in the purgatory of mediocrity, but I'm hoping that just by living I'm somehow winning. I know that's a lie, though, a pleasant fiction. The truth is one must do more than just live, one must thrive. Otherwise, people resent you a bit. They talk about you behind your back and mock you and your failures. You come to represent something not only different, but lesser and sad. I sink, I fall, and I wither but I'm not wearing the wooden coat. It has been hammered into my head that that is supposed to be a victory in itself. It's dangerous for me to scrutinize the wisdom of that approach. There's only those two options, after all.

Medication provides certain molecules, massed in pill form, that I need to survive. Not unlike a fucking astronaught or deep sea diver who needs oxygen, also a molecule. Like being on life support. It's a better deal than most, methinks.