I don’t know how to survive. Despite fully realizing that my circumstances must be far from unique (not in whole, but certainly in part), I feel as though I’m constantly screaming into a void when I ask for help. As a highly educated, sensitive person, I know one of the cardinal rules of effective communication is to know your audience and write (or speak) with them in mind. I do this to the best of my ability. I’ve asked and continue to ask for help surviving from spiritual guides/mentors, doctors and therapists, family members, friends, 12 Step recovery program sponsors, professors/teachers, compatriots in my profession, and state and federal aid programs. For each different individual, I diligently apply my extensive communication skills to the best of my ability (e.g., verbally explaining and preemptively begging pardon for my emotional dysregulation due to mental illness) as I describe my current circumstances and solicit advice for how to carry on. Please don’t misunderstand! I have received and continue to receive various kinds of help, including baptisms, shamanic healings, medications, numerous psychological tools to combat various diagnoses, shelter in a peaceful environment, state Disability insurance, and #SocialSecurity Disability Insurance. What I do not understand and, therefore, am here striving to “confess” is my pervasive and perpetual dismay and #Confusion over why none of the help that I have received and am now receiving has or is in fact working to make me “better” - better able to survive in the present and feel more certain that I can go on surviving in the future. Every day, despite the excruciating, recurring, almost constant certainty that somehow I have failed in absolutely every area of my life and the pain of that certainty is too great for me to continue to bear for even one more day, I do my best to employ the psycological tools, financial aid, social support, and material environment with which I’ve been provided for my recovery from debilitating illness. I pray and meditate, make art crafts, attend support group meetings, volunteer in my community, search for new opportunities, and give of my time and talents whenever and wherever I can. But then gas prices here in #California continue to rise from gouging to hemorrhaging levels and I can no longer afford transportation. Then my health insurance changes or is just cancelled and I’m forced in an instant to face discontinuing medications and relationships with healthcare providers which have taken months and years to establish. Then a family member who stated that they would be willing and able to provide help for my basic survival (e.g., financial assistance, emotional validation, or even just acknowledgement of my existence) announces suddenly that they are no longer able to help. All the while, social stigmas and taboos surrounding mental illness, mass medias’ and politicians’ blaming mental illness and poverty on the mentally ill and impoverished, and relig
Latest
