What is fear?
It is the distance between where you are and where you want to be.
It is measured in units of aspiration and regulated by conformity. To do what must be done is to invite fear. To resist what is expected is to invite fear.
It is the voice you hear when no one speaks.
It is what you do when you can't do.
Mental health is a shadow that obscures the reality of your experience when your experience falls short of what is expected. When you try to show the world that something is wrong, but there is nothing you can show them because your problems are invisible and can't be measured in broken bones.
This is the one aspect that separates mental from physical difficulty. Even though physical problems can be just as debilitating, perhaps even more so. Even though society can be just as judgemental toward those with such issues, these problems can be seen. As such they can be understood. A person with a broken bone can wear a smile and earn sympathy, a person with a broken mind can wear a smile and nobody will see how hollow it is. In fact in the eyes of others that smile will betray the depth of what they are feeling.
Not drowning but waving. Nobody sees the problem for what it really is. Nobody wants them to. .
Good piece Ghosty.
ReplyDeleteWithout the emotion of fear, we as a species would simply not exist.
I think that people find it hard to acknowledge emotional pain in any form because to do so with integrity, would require them to also acknowledge that human beings often treat each other in both overt & covert, brutal ways that cause serious, unseen harms.
Humans are too arrogant to deal with owning part of the reason why so many are in mental distress.
We are quite a cowardly species in some respects, I guess that cowardice is also a survival mechanism.
I couldnt agree more.
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