THE UNBEARABLE LIKENESS OF BEING
What cannot be cured must be endured.
- Robert Burton (1577–1640)
Bearly Moderate I Would Say!
THE UNBEARABLE LIKENESS OF BEING
The call came in Friday afternoon, once again the woman had been brought into the ER by the Paramedics. The difference this time I was waiting for it, her screaming at the voices had been escalating. This time RCMP didn’t respond to the first calls, only the later ones. She’d been seen agitated, and screaming at what wasn’t there; the same way we see the homeless arguing with the bicycle, and bicycle is winning.
Mental illness, the invisible disease with no cure. Only inadequate Band-Aids that allow the streams of sanity to ooze out the sides like the pus of a gaping infested wound. An illness that is judged, ignored, stigmatized, hidden and shamed as if one has the scarlet letter M on their forehead.
The victim, family, and children endure a disease that has no cure. Only the lucky ones with an advocate escape the cascading spiral down the rabbit hole — a hole filled with abuse, drugs, vagrancy, suicide, and dying a slow death.
Our mental health system in Canada believes that should one choose to live at risk, let them! Because who are we to decide what is right for another; however, those with severe mental health issues who choose to live at risk are not capable of choosing health for their voices whisper to them otherwise.
That sweet sweet voice saying drink me, as they reach for another bottle; that sweet sweet voice that says give into me as they dance in the fountain at the mall, that sweet sweet voice that whispers it’s ok, your deepest darkest desires are justified.
Schizophrenia, personality disorders, bipolar, manic depressive, disassociative identity disorders, depression, suicide ideation, PTSD, and psychosis — names given not to cure, but to categorize according to the latest DSM. Don’t you think that’s a great name, “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”? You’d think it might have a list of cures, but sadly over time, those so-called cures for mental health have ranged from lobotomies for being gay to vibrators for women to cure their hysteria. But sadly not a single mental illness has an actual cure like cancer does.
Like attracts like, especially in relationships. Those with the most severe mental illness cases have a strong chance of ending up with a partner who is just as ill. The engulfing feeling of loneliness and despair is gone with just a touch, where they get confirmation that the out of body travel is real.
That longing for a soul mate, they will find in the arms of another displaced ill soul, and if they are lucky a child will come along. Not a child to dote on and raise, a child who will be nothing more than a slave to care for them and their needs. A slave that will only reinforce no home is needed, no running water, no toilet, and no food as that slave has never known anything more.
SPOKEN LIKE A TRUE MODERATE
“Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words”
- Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)
The years pass, moving to a new town, a new state, a new tent, a new cabin every few months. Seeking the riches of gold in the hills of the Similkameen, the man played with raw mercury. Nothing like adding a touch of that hatter madness to the schizophrenia; where the man really believed he saw someone threatening to blow up the hotel in his room and cleared out the Princeton Hotel.
His beautiful mate, the one with so many illnesses that offset his, she paid homage to his every need like a doting school girl. She offers their child to him in what she felt was a selfless moment, like a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. She later twinges with regrets as the cascading manic state sets in, and she screams,
“She’s just a child! She’ll never remember!”
Like a Kafka movie snippet, the New Mexico parking lot’s surreal scene unfolds as the paramedics arrive. Fear and terror leach out of the woman, stagnating the very air that the child breathes, witnessing paramedics wrangling the woman into restraints. The screams of the woman’s soul felt as if Gollum had lost his Precious to a transient vagabond.
The child, grateful she would have solace from the screams and ravaging destruction seen when the depths of the woman’s abyss grew. However, counteracted by the dread that grew in her, knowing she would be sacrificed more for his needs — each sacrifice shredding the child’s soul into parts that resembled Voldemorts Horcruxes. One would expect the child to fear, but she did not know that emotion; she knew what she must do with no questions asked.
He had to keep his family together and keep them safe; he could not lose the woman or child. Without them, who would confirm he was a king so second wives and subjects would join in the chaotic madness.
Years pass by, the child observing, watching, growing, and knowing she would be free one day. She had heard of another like him, and his name was Manson. They followed the man and did his bidding as others did for Manson, but she knew the truth, that he was not a king.
How does a child survive in a house of horrors ravaged by the destruction unchecked mental illness brings on? As they know no other life, there is nothing to survive; that is their normal
One day there would be no more; the man and his illness impacted her the last time as she broke 3 of his fingers. She was only 15, but anywhere was safer than there, and somehow that strange genetic compound of two very ill minds had given her the most incredible tool to escape, a brain. She would not have to go the street route; she would go to the early university with full-time work.
The child’s 16th birthday came, she opened the card the woman had sent her, only six words were inside of it, “I’m sorry for all the hurt.”
A few years later, she looked upon the man with pity as cancer drained the life from his soul. The problem with schizophrenia is you never know what is true or false. She listened as he spoke of his stories, of the box they once made him climb into as they locked the top and shot the gun through the holes. She listed as he spoke of how he had found God when the angel visited him. She listened as he apologized for his actions, but apologies she did not need; she needed his chapter to end so that she could be free.
However, she never would be free. After the man died, roles would reverse — the child would become the woman’s caretaker. The woman tried independent living, but it never worked.
One night at 2 AM, she received a call that the woman couldn’t stay any longer. This time the woman was making accusations against the landlords, and she needed to leave right then. The woman had figured out the walls were embedded with microchips so that the landlords could communicate it was time to pick up the children they had kidnapped for the aliens to abuse them sexually.
The woman’s said her skin was crawling, and she knew she had to tell her daughter the truth of all those years. She turned to her daughter and explained:
“The aliens were responsible for your life; they planted a chip in your head and used you as an experiment. All the bad, all the hurt that happened, it is the fault of that chip and the Aliens.”
SHOTGUNS ARE BIPARTISAN
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
- Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
A few months in the psychiatric unit and the woman was up for release, the social workers told the daughter there was no group home available. The daughter had no choice but to take her into her home or find somewhere for the woman to live. In tears, the daughter finally resigned to the fact that this chapter would never end in her life. She was forever paying the price for something she did not cause. No longer able to handle the guilt of pushing the woman’s behaviours onto another soul; why should her burden become the burden of others.
Years would pass, each year the woman decaying further and further into the abyss of her frozen ego states until she was too much for the daughter to handle. Group housing was an option; however, the mental health system decided the woman was a perfect candidate to live independently since she had been stable for 18 years. The system failed to accept that this was due to the daughter sacrificing whatever was needed to keep the woman stable.
The Canadian systems mantra, if people want to live at risk, we let them. Instead of working towards a healthy answer, chose the path of least resistance.
Those calls will never end until the final chapter closes, but that is ok. The daughter, able to let her soul finally rest, knows that her childhood story is nearing its final chapter. There is no love for the woman; there are only numbness and pity where warmth, compassion and tenderness should be. Her ethics will not allow her to walk away, for the things she witnessed taught her culpability.
For mental illness can not be cured, so it must be endured.
