Remission

I think that most people who suffer from a mental illness, "depression," "anxiety," "bipolar," "borderline personality" etc. often are, or become on some level, a hypochondriac. In my life I have watched my mother call in sick, go to emergency rooms, see doctors for things she didn't even have wrong. I have gone to emergency rooms more times then I can count for things I knew damn well were not wrong with me. Any weird feeling, new bruise, or mark. My mind always goes to the worst, or most the times I go because I get so overwhelmed and anxious with my life I feel I have to go.

I am starting to think that maybe this is because a mental illness has no cure, has no definite diagnoses. No, go in, do some test, get a piece of paper that says what's wrong and what you have to do to fix it.

There is no fix. Sure you can take some medications, go for a walk, sulk in a bubble bath. Do all the things your therapists suggests you do for self help. Some of these things may make the bad days better, but you can never make the bad days go away. Not forever at least.

It's like a relapse from drugs. You can feel great for a week or a month, and almost forget you had a mental illness. Then bam, one person says one minute, insignificant thing that just hits you the wrong way. Or one thing on a shelf of boxes could be out of place, and you cant help but itch that scratch. That's when you realize it's back. While you're sitting on the floor in a pile of mess you made just to fix one little thing that didn't impact anyone at all. Some times it's even a physical reaction, you can be at the grocery store and your face starts to go numb, or your hands fall asleep. When I get these odd body ticks, I know instantly—half my head goes numb and my vision blurs a little bit and I know, its back!

It's all these things inside of us that we cannot help that trigger us. We can be happy mothers or fathers, and live a great life. Go to work and be spunky and delightful. Shit, some of us work in customer service, and our job is literally to please other people, and were damn good at it. We have customers that come just for you. Just for your personality and your smile. But they don't know it's fake. They don't know sometimes pretending to be that person can be so hard. But sometimes it's not. Some days you wake up and think damn its a beautiful day, I look great. Nothing is going to ruin my mood. I will be happy today—that could last the day or even a week. But the darkness will come back again, it always does.

Things that are normal to you like driving home from work and having the sudden urge to drive off the road. When you go out to places alone you feel like a lost SIMS. Sent to a place, but don't know why. Constantly telling yourself over and over in your head “no one talk to me, no one talk to me! for the love of god please don't make eye contact!’ Those things don't go away.

But those things are not normal to everyone.

So maybe that is why we always hope something is wrong with us that doctors can see, can point out on an x-ray or cat scan. Find something we can fix. Something to recover from. Because in mental health there is no recover, only temporary remission.