Silent Scars

I have a handicapped placard in my car.  I get dirty looks every time I park in a handicapped spot.  Everyone assumes that a healthy 30-something woman is scamming a spot that belongs to people who are REALLY handicapped.  I've started carrying a copy of my most recent MRI on my phone so that the next time someone has the gall to call me out on it (and yes, it does happen) I can politely show them my MRI.  Then they can see for themselves the lack of cartilage separating my vertebrae and how it's causing my vertebrae to develop cracks.  Then they can SEE my disability.

I don't carry the scans showing the stress fractures in my lower legs.  I don't carry visual proof of the advanced arthritis in both my knees.  And that limp you see when I walk?  I'm not trying to be gangsta.  I broke my foot almost 6 years ago but didn't go to a doctor because I was busy caring for my mother and holding her hand while she died.  By the time she passed 3 months later the bones and tendons had already healed improperly making it permanently painful to put pressure on that foot.

These are invisible scars that I carry with me every day of my life, but they aren't the only ones.  I also suffer from a neurological disorder that causes chronic migraines.  If you've never had a real (and don't come to me with a headache and say it's a migraine. It only makes me want to punch you) migraine, you have no idea.  Here's how I KNOW that you don't have a migraine.

1. You've never thrown up on  yourself because you were unable to see and/or too dizzy to make it to the bathroom.
2. You've never had to walk out of a movie theater because, with the house lights blacked out, the screen feels like a flashlight burning your retinas.
3. You've never had to take unpaid leave from work because the micro-flashing of the computer screen that most people don't even notice is making you want to kill yourself.
4. You've never had anyone accuse you of being moody or bitchy because they can't see you're actually just fighting pain that they could never imagine.
5. You've never cancelled plans (repeatedly) with friends at the last minute.
6. You've never been denied a job or promotion because, no matter how talented or qualified you are, the hiring manager doesn't want an employee that calls in sick all the time.
7. You don't avoid certain women who decide to bathe in perfume each morning. Oh yeah, and you aren't able to smell EVERYTHING around you.
8.  You've never worn sunglasses INSIDE because the office lights are too much.
9. The sun is not your enemy.
10. You eat all you want at potlucks because you don't worry that someone might have brought something with an ingredient that could trigger a migraine and ruin your life for hours, days, or weeks.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point.  Migraine is yet another silent scar that I carry every day of my life.  Whenever you see a doctor they always ask how you feel on a scale of 1-10.  On my best, most excellent, most fabulous days I'm still at a 2.  Yes, I am in pain every minute of every day of my life and have been for the past 27 years.  I get told regularly that I should see a doctor.  Seriously.  People ACTUALLY say that to be helpful.  What they don't know is that I've seen 22 different doctors and tried 47 different medications and counting.  I could tell them, but pain is just exhausting and I've given up on trying to "fix" anyone.

So I've shown you two types of silent scars.  But there's another that is more destructive, more malicious, more ugly than those.  A pain born silently by millions.  It's called mental illness.   I've personally suffered from depression and anxiety most of my life but it didn't become truly serious until 2001.  That's when I started taking medication.  I didn't start seeing a therapist until after my mom died in 2011.  Best decision I ever made.  The problem with mental illness is that there are millions of Americans that don't believe it exists.  They believe eating healthy, drinking water, and exercising will cure mental illness.  Now, I'm not bashing a healthy lifestyle. I agree on the importance of trying to live a healthier life.  I've changed my diet, given up sugary drinks in favor of water, and work out with a trainer 2-3 times a week.  But guess what?  I still have anxiety and depression.

Society has placed such a stigma on mental illness that many of its victims are too afraid to seek help.  Some are too afraid to admit that there IS a problem.  Suicide is one of the leading killers in this country because we aren't doing enough to provide resources to combat it.  This is especially true for the homeless or low income individuals.  Thousands of individuals are languishing in the prison system because our "Tough on Crime" legislators don't grasp that these people need doctors and medication, not bars and cells.  They only thing confinement does for those battling mental illness is place more stigma on them and make them even more mentally unstable.

We've decided to place all disorders of the brain under this umbrella of mental illness.  Everything from depression to schizophrenia, to dementia. But they are all so very different and require completely different resources.  Especially dementia.  Dementia itself has dozens of different variations.  Most people are fairly aware of Alzheimer's disease.  And we are now becoming more aware of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) as more and more professional athletes are being diagnosed with it.  One you may not have heard of, though, is Lewy Body Dementia.  This is the disorder that caused Robin Williams to end his life in 2014.  There are dozens more forms of dementia, but no one has heard of them because no one is discussing them.  No one wants to have that conversation.

Silent scars come in a million different ways from a million different illnesses/injuries.  Just because someone looks fine does not by any stretch mean that they aren't fighting a war inside their body.  Most of us have adapted to powering through.  We don't show our scars.  We certainly don't discuss them with strangers.  Actually we don't even discuss them with those closest to us until they present a limitation or otherwise become an issue.  I know I don't.  Until now.

I'm sharing this with all you strangers because I need you to stop looking at others and judging them without knowing what wars they are fighting inside.  Maybe they fell off a roof years ago creating a permanent disability.  Maybe they were sent to war only to return with PTSD.  Maybe they were raped and now feel terror when out in public.  The point is, you don't know.  So stop making judgements.  They make those of us trying to get by one day at a time feel lonely and isolated.  I'm going to leave you with a quote from Robin Williams.  He is as inspiring in death as he was in life.

Good Company

I got some really good feedback on my last post (thanks everyone!) and it made me realize that I left out one super important fact.  For all of you who were, are, or ever will be dealing with mental health issues (so roughly billions of people), you are not alone.  Everyone goes through stuff.  Everyone. Everyone has their own story.  I don't mean to diminish your struggles.  I just want you to know that, should you ever find yourself in a dark place, you CAN talk to people about it.  I guarantee that whomever you chose to talk to has felt the same way at some point.  They will not diminish you or look down on you because they are you.

When I was younger I went to school with 4 girls who were all BFF's. I called them the Perfect 4. Perfect hair, perfect smiles, perfect GPA's, perfect families, perfect futures to look forward to at the perfect colleges.  Just completely and disgustingly perfect.  I'll admit I avoided them like the plague because I could never live up to their perfect brand of perfection.  I didn't want to be the bad guy for hating them, so I convinced myself that it was them that hated me. I was homely with an average GPA and a very lower middle class family.  I didn't have tons of friends.  I wasn't extraordinary in any way.  They must have thought I was beneath them, right?

I was wrong (duh).  Each member of the Perfect 4 had their own shit that they were dealing with.  I won't go into details because those aren't my stories to tell.  Just know that they were each lugging around their own baggage.  I don't know if they talked about it amongst themselves, but I have a feeling they didn't.  I know I didn't discuss my depression and anxiety with any of my friends (except for maybe Amy but that's because, as my BFF, she was technically just an extension of me and not a separate human being).

High school is rough, folks.  At my last reunion I asked people the age old question, If you could go back and do high school again, would you?  The answer is a resounding NO.  No from the band nerds, no from the drama geeks, no from the athletes, no from the cheerleaders.  Just no.  No one wants to go through high school again.  You live with your parents, you probably don't have a car, you have no money, and you have little to no say in what happens in your life.  Worst of all, wear the wrong jeans or shirt just once or get caught talking to someone not within your feudal circle and life as you know it is over.

As teenagers we like to think that our parents are clueless and have absolutely no idea what high school is like today.  It's so cute that teenagers think that way.  It's even more adorable that every generation of teenagers has felt this way since the dawn of high school, and that each generation thinks that things are different for them.  I'll admit that my parents didn't have Facebook or Instagram, but that just meant they had less opportunity to embarrass themselves publicly, thus rendering themselves social pariahs.

While I do believe that individuals can change, I do not think that the human condition will.  In high school everyone is pretending to be okay and just trying not to stand out.  Except the nerds.  This is one area where the nerds have it up on everyone else.  They already know that they are permanent outcasts so they are free to live their teen years however they choose.  They don't have a stake in the game.  Except the clueless nerds like me that thought they might have a chance of being upgraded from a life on the D list.  Silly, silly me...

Here's a little secret that might help.  You can pretty much bank on the fact that every person in your school feels just like you.  All of you are tiptoeing the line between 'healthy, happy emotional state' and 'Oh God!  Kelsie just frowned at me.  What does that mean???  Am I wearing the wrong color today?  It is pink day, right?  Am I out?  I'm going to have to change schools!  Aaarrrggghhh!  What does that look mean???'  Calm now.  Kelsie didn't even notice you.  She's just eating lunch.  Her mom packed her a tuna salad sandwich and she hates tuna salad.  Or maybe she just has resting bitch face.  Regardless, IT ISN'T ALWAYS ABOUT YOU.

Whew.  Felt good to get that off my chest.  I don't know how my parents survived having 2 teenage daughters in high school at the same time without killing us.

But back to my original point. You are not alone.  You all feel anxious and insecure and just generally 'less than'.  All of you.  Even Kelsie.  But you teens, and the teens from my day (Go Rams!  C/O '97!), and all the ghosts of High School Past have felt the same insecurities.  No one talks about it because everyone believes that talking about it will cause people to look down on you or belittle you.  It's really a shame, because that's not true at all.  Maybe if I had talked to the Perfect 4 all those years ago I would have figured that out.

Sadly, us grown-ups carry those same insecurities around with us long after graduation.  The great irony of mental illness is that people hold it inside  and refuse to talk about it without ever realizing that all those people they are afraid of are holding in the same secret.  It's not like a heroin addiction or a felony conviction (not looking down on either of them; just needed an example).  This is a universal condition.  It doesn't take anything away from you.  It doesn't limit what you can accomplish.  The only way mental health issues will limit you is if you don't get help. It's exhausting.  Please.  I'm begging you.  Ask for help.  From a friend, from family, from a professional.  You aren't alone so don't feel like you have to go through it alone.  You owe it to the world to put the luggage down and go out there and show us what you've got.

The Lost Generation

I stumbled upon this meme today. My first reaction was, 'Yes! They should do that!'  Then I started reading the comments accompanying the post.  Man are people ever heated about this topic.  What I hope to be just a very vocal minority blames people for shirking the responsibility of parenting and leaving it up to educators.  I'll give an example of the mindless prattle being ignorantly spewed forth.  I think it sums up the emotions of the peanut gallery rather nicely: 

Why is it the school's responsibility to raise our children and teach them the things parents should be? Come on people! Wake up and teach your children these things! No one else should be responsible for it but the parents. If the parents can't handle it, then maybe they shouldn't have been one to begin with. --Jenn Fulton

Dear Jenn: No, some people shouldn’t be parents to begin with.  But that doesn’t stop stupid people from breeding.  Do you really want to deny a scared teenager help just because his/her parents are tools?  Maybe you’re the one who needs to ‘wake up’.

Children don’t decide what circumstances they are born into.  They don’t get to pick their parents.  They don’t choose to be born into poverty or abuse.  They can't control if their parents are present or absent, whether physically or emotionally.  I completely agree that parents SHOULD be responsible for raising and protecting their children.  But what should be, more often than not, is not what is.

So, let's all just agree that children deserve help from someone and that that someone might not necessarily be a parent.

That being said, let's address the kids themselves.  We as a society have already decided that we need to talk to our teens about sex (or abstinence), drugs, peer pressure, and bullying.  Why are we so afraid to talk about mental health?  Topics like depression and anxiety have been clouded in shame and this does a severe disservice to our children.

I didn't have the best childhood, but I knew that my parents loved me.  They told me I was smart and beautiful and capable of great things.  But I didn't believe them.  I spent my every waking moment comparing myself to the kids that I felt were smarter than me (I'm looking at you, Shannon). and the kids that were prettier than me (like Kelly's natural beauty) and the ones I felt were more capable of great things than I would ever be (if only I had Damon's talent).  My parents spent so much time telling me how great I am, but they never stopped to ask how I felt about the matter.  My mother was of the Tom Cruise school of thought when it came to psychiatry.  If you're sad, just think about something else.  Therapy and drugs are for quitters.  She never once discussed mental health in a positive manner with me.

So each day my parents would tell me I was smart and beautiful and capable of great things, just like good parents should.  Then they would pat me on the head and push me out the door and off to school to fend for myself.  And each day I would get a little more depressed and anxious, which I had been taught was a weakness, so I felt a little more worthless.  Each day I left another little piece of myself on that front stoop while I silently cried out to be allowed back inside.  

Please don't misunderstand; I'm not blaming my parents.  They did the best they knew how.  I just truly wish that they had been able to talk to me.  Or that I felt I was allowed to talk to them.  Luckily the world has changed a little since I left home almost 20 years ago. Now I speak openly about my struggles with anxiety and depression.  I take medication and I see a therapist.  I am not a bad person, or a weak person, or less of a person because of it.  And neither is anyone else.

I know it's a difficult topic, but I beg of all of you, please talk to the kids in your life about mental health.  I don't care if it's your kids, your nieces and nephews, your best friend's kids, kids at church, whatever.  If you see a teen is struggling, please throw them a rope. Don't just hope someone else will notice and intervene.   Also, don't be surprised if they push your hand away.  They may not be ready to talk about it, but at least you can plant a seed of hope.  Let them know that you will be there to help when they are ready.  

Maybe you feel it's not your place to butt in.  Maybe you feel it should be their parents' responsibility.  Maybe you're right.  But what I hope I've been able to communicate here is that it doesn't matter who SHOULD reach out.  All that matters is that someone does. 

--shared compliments of Crissy Gwinn