Aspiring Poet, heartfelt thoughts.I have Just Discovered that I can write

  “Why Didn’t You Answer Me?” — What You Don’t See Happening Inside a Mentally Ill Mind There is something I wish people understood about mental illness. Not something complicated. Not something that requires a medical degree. Just this: Sometimes I need a moment before I can answer you. You may ask me a question, and I may just sit there. Quiet. Looking at you. You might think I'm ignoring you. You might think I wasn't listening. You might think I don't care enough to answer. You might even ask again, a little louder this time. "Did you hear me?" Yes. I heard you. My mind is just trying to catch up. There Is a World Behind the Silence When someone doesn't have bipolar disorder, manic depression, schizophrenia, or another serious mental illness, it can be difficult to understand what happens inside the mind of someone who does. Most people ask a question and expect an answer. Question. Answer. Simple. But sometimes my mind doesn't work that way. You ask me...

  When Your Own Body Becomes a Stranger Dystonia Awareness Month — The Storms We Hide, the Families Who Stand in the Rain There is a kind of fear that comes with dystonia that is difficult to explain. Sometimes it isn't the fear of having the disease. It is the fear of admitting that you might. Because once you say the word dystonia , the possibility becomes real. And sometimes people would rather live in the uncertainty of “Maybe it's nothing” than face the terrifying question of “What if it is?” I understand that fear. I have lived through dystonic storms. And I have watched my sister fight them— every single day. So when I talk about dystonia, I am not talking about something I learned from a pamphlet. I am talking about something that has lived inside my family. The Storm Nobody Wants to Name Sometimes it begins with something small. A muscle pulling when it shouldn't. A movement that doesn't feel voluntary. A strange posture. A cramp that keeps r...

Surely I Can't Be the Only One When Mental Illness Becomes More Than a Family Can Carry There is something I have been carrying around in my mind for a long time. And lately, I keep coming back to the same question: Surely I can't be the only one. Surely my family isn't the only family that has reached that terrifying place where you love someone deeply, would do almost anything for them, and yet finally have to admit: We cannot provide the level of care this person needs. That sentence is incredibly difficult to say. Because it can sound like giving up. It can sound like abandonment. It can sound like saying, “You're too much for us.” But that isn't what we're saying. What we're really saying is: “We love you. That's why we're asking for help.” I'm Not Writing This From the Outside Looking In I'm not writing this as someone looking at mental illness from the outside. I know what it is like when your own mind doesn't alwa...

The War Beneath the Grave: When Grief Becomes a Battlefield of the Mind “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.” — Psalm 34:18  There are battles that nobody sees. No blood on the floor. No soldiers marching through the streets. No sound of guns. Just a mind sitting quietly in the dark, fighting itself. Grief can become that kind of war. When someone we love dies, the world tells us that we must eventually move on . But what does that mean when the person is still alive inside your memories? How do you leave someone behind when your mind keeps bringing them back? The grave says they are gone. Memory says they are still here. And somewhere between those two realities, the mind begins to fracture under the weight of what the heart cannot reconcile. I loved them—so I don't want to let go. I lost them—so I cannot hold on. And sometimes I wonder which hurts more. When the Mind Becomes the Battlefield There are moments when my o...

The Thought Behind the Verse “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 2:16 There are verses in the Bible that I read differently than other people do. Not because I believe I have discovered some secret revelation that nobody else can see, but because my mind does not always travel the same road theirs does. A thought can begin with one word in a verse, split into another thought, collide with something I have experienced, and suddenly I am standing somewhere completely different from where the sentence seemed to begin. And sometimes, strangely enough, that is where I notice something. Take this verse: “But we have the mind of Christ.” Most people read that as a beautiful statement about having Christlike thoughts. I wonder if there is something deeper hiding in the wording. Paul did not say we understand the mind of Christ. He said we have the mind of Christ. There is a difference. Maybe the Christian life i...

  There are thoughts that knock politely. This was not one of them. It came like something scratching from inside the walls—quiet at first, then persistent, until I could no longer pretend I had not heard it. My mind has always been an odd place to live. Schizophrenia has made some corridors darker than others, and there are days when even my own thoughts seem like strangers wandering through rooms I thought I knew. Yet sometimes, in that strange wilderness, a question appears that refuses to be dismissed. I was thinking about sinners. Not us. Them. That is how we usually think of it, isn't it? The sinner is always somewhere else. He is the addict. The prisoner. The man whose life has become a ruin. The woman whose past we whisper about. The one we hope Christ will save—provided their salvation does not require them to sit too close to us. And then the thought turned its pale face toward me: What if the worst sinner who ever lived is not someone history remembers, but the person st...