Beth McColl on the chronic nature of mental health.
workbooks and spent many long evenings researching ways to feel better. I want to shatter a small porcelain figurine or punch a trifle whenever I think of the collective time I’ve spent listening to terrible hold music before speaking to a doctor, sat on bum-numbing chairs in various waiting rooms, suppressed panic attacks in public places, lain my head down beside my laptop because the anxiety medication I’d just begun taking has made my blood pressure plummet.
I can’t ignore that there’s a real cost to living with an ongoing mental health issue, and it’s difficult not to long for a life where it isn’t a factor. Being neurodiverse and mentally ill has meant years of struggling to keep up with my peers, feeling like it was my fault when I failed to thrive or cope in environments which were simply not built for me. It has cost me peace and self-esteem. It has convinced me to lower all expectations for what kind of life I could have. It has meant internalising great amounts of shame and enduring poor treatment because I couldn’t believe I might deserve better.
At times my mental illness has felt like a black hole, swallowing relationships, job opportunities, days that had all the ingredients to be good but instead felt heavy and airless. When I’m depressed I forget that there is any other way I can feel. It’s a drop of dark ink in the water, obscuring everything else. When things are good there’s a similar sense of denial, and I feel sure thatthe giddy happiness will last. Of course, neither are forever.
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