Why is mental illness ignored?

Many people do ​not think about the struggle that other people go through. It is never thought about until someone famous takes their own life. People do not think of the “little” people who are suffering. No one sees what a person goes through. Unless you suffer you do not truly understand what it means to want to feel your inside pain on the outside. To want to feel the physical pain of what tears through your body. No one understands why tears randomly fall, plans get cancelled, excessive spending occurs, or other things happen. Unless you suffer from mental illness you do not fully understand what it is like to feel like you have a vise on your chest and the squeezing that feels like it will never stop. To feel like your drowning without water.

How do you help someone who never says anything is wrong? How do you help the person who is always helping everyone else, burying their own pain?

For years I have suffered in silence, too embarrassed to admit that I needed help or that I needed medication to help me through. When I have taken medicine, it has been in silent because I didn’t want to be judged for suffering. I didn’t want people to know the struggle that I went through. I never wanted people to truly know where the mysterious marks or cuts came from or that I would punch myself in the head. I never wanted anyone to have to try and understand what I meant when I would say that I wanted to feel my inside pain. I wanted to feel the out of control spin. The needle piercing my skin was a temporary fix, but it was what was needed. I was able to physically feel the pain that I struggled with.

Name a medicine and I have taken it and it either worked or didn’t for whatever reason. Medicines were tried to help multiple issues at once. It wasn’t until recently that I had a doctor stand up and say that they didn’t want to mask my symptoms, they wanted the proper help for me. How does one help when doctors make excuses not to see you?

The real reason we have such a problem is because doctors are too afraid to help. No amount of money is going to make a doctor properly prescribe a medication. Take one medication and you aren’t allowed to take one that helps you. What do you do then? You have to suffer through it. You have to try and figure out a way to help yourself. Do you break one doctors rule to help yourself or do you suffer?

It saddens me to say that I have thought of ways to hurt myself. I have gone down that dark path. I am forever grateful for the people in my life who have brought me out of that dark place. They know how to help me before I make myself feel my pain. Whether it is taking me out for a day of nothingness or sitting and listening to songs that make me laugh so hard I am crying. My family has learned my signs and how to help me. It saddens me that they have to live through my struggle but gives me hope at the same time that there are people that care. I have my people that know and understand how to help me without putting me into a hospital where I would be medicated and ignored.

I have suffered since I was a teenager. I have seen counselors who never helped. Coping with a death? Well it must be your fiancé’s fault. Issues in your relationship with your spouse? Well it must be your parents fault. It wasn’t until my son and I needed help to work together that I had a doctor see me for me and help me, without medication. To this day my son knows how to help me. He recognizes the signs and is there. When the tears begin to fall he doesn’t joke and brush it off. If I am showing my struggle he knows that I am hurting, my entire family does. Each person has their own way of helping me.

I understand that my struggle will never end, and that mental illness is something that I will have to live with my entire life, but I have hope that I will have people who care about me and will be by my side through the good and the bad. I just hope that I can do right by them.

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