While talking with someone with multiple mental “illnesses”, I remarked about the tension between our internal state(s) and our external relationships. Work to balance these is never finalized. This is part of the never-ending journey of growth within both the individual and larger communal interactions. The dynamics of my story are always out of sync with those of every relationship I am a part of — sometimes more, sometimes less. Lives intertwine and ebb and flow in their smooth and rough places.
Sometimes, measured in decades, I handle this tension and resultant relationshipquakes rather well, thank you. Sometimes, without a moment’s notice, there is only fragility all around.
With this sort of lens, it can be stated that mental “illness” always stands at the door. In some way, it is a critical consultant regarding the latest re-balancing. In some way, it is a toothless specter whose visage is more fearsome than its presence. In some way, it is a foreshadowing of a cascade of divisions of self from self finally resting in death.
A middling thought rises when we remain attached to shifting our weight on the teeter-totter of time flowing differently through the various tensions we carry. If we were to speak of light through a prism we might see a rainbow dance; here we hear squeaks and grunts through water, muffled.
Given the difficulty of honoring a tension among tensions, we are reminded that personal mental illness seems to find its corresponding cultural illness where it can be exacerbated or nudged toward a more highly appreciated assurance of partnership with that which is not me.
Because we are so similar and numerous, we do find the categorization of illnesses to have a helpful component that can find generally helpful therapeutics. Yet their application needs seemingly infinite adjustment. At the same time, we find it so easy to be bamboozled by our established diagnostics, therapeutics, and cultural paradigms.
Being a people of Words, we continue to wrestle with ways to express meaning that doesn’t devolve into pat answers, gallows humor, or debilitating confusion. Measure well your assessment of the presenting situation.
