Antepresente

The most common occurrence of this I’ve encountered is the following: over dinner, a friend was explaining to the company how she’s depressed and has to take a number of medications daily. Most people around the table kept repeating how she looks very neat and happy, and surely she’s in a position to stop the medication now. She had to explain, multiple times, that the drugs help her be who she is and not regress and have another crisis. They could not understand that. Only when I said that she takes medication daily similarly to how someone with a heart condition might take BP regulating medication for the rest of his life does, there were a few “Oh, OK”s heard. People are just quite ignorant about mental health issues. We both fear and shun people with such problems, still.

Lonely is seeing something so beautiful that you feel your heart cannot contain it all by itself, that it is going to burst from the radiance that it is longing to express. It is wanting to turn to someone, anyone, and say “Look at that. Isn’t that wonderful?” and realizing that, as with so many other memories of late, there is just no one there to share it with

So I took to my bed for about a month, and when I woke up I found I was institutionalized, and when I saw the other inmates, I realized that I had found my people, my tribe. Because they became my only friends, they became my friends, because very few people that I knew — Well, I wasn’t sent a lot of cards or flowers. I mean, if I had had a broken leg or I was with child I would have been inundated, but all I got was a couple phone calls telling me to perk up. Perk up. Because I didn’t think of that.