Last night I found out some very disturbing news. An old acquaintance of mine was found dead. He was very artistic, very intelligent, and he was young. He died in a dumpster amid garbage. My thoughts are, according to a newspaper article that he was trying to keep warm on a cold Midwest March night.
He came from a Christian family, went to a Christian high school and graduated from a Christian university. His family was a respectable middle class family. His mother was an artist and he seemed to have inherited her talent for the arts. He won an award or two for film making and his videos were creative, imaginative, young and interesting.
I didn't know him that well, but he made a video for me when I had a small, inner city school. He also did some house sitting and dog watching for me once when I was out of the country. Yet, lately, I found out that he has recently been homeless; drifting around a cold city in the dead of winter, alone.
He was found in a dumpster, dead. The newspaper article stated that his parents said he was mentally ill and refused to take his medications. My heart breaks! After hearing the news, and then going to bed not long after, my dreams were filled with strange images from my past and dark feelings that made no sense at all. But the feelings totally aligned themselves with how I felt about my friend's death.
Strange enough, the day they found him, I had been watching some tedtalks on my computer. The ones about mental illness specifically drew my attention and I watched with an alluring curiosity . When I was a child I knew that my family didn't resemble other families. My mother had electric shock treatments when I was about eleven or twelve.
"Electroconvulsive therapy is a procedure in which electric currents are passed through the brain, intentionally triggering a brief seizure. ECT seems to cause changes in brain chemistry that can quickly reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses. It often works when other treatments are unsuccessful." (mayoclinic.org) As a young girl, when I asked what mom was going to have done, it was simply explained to me that she was going to have treatments that would help her forget the "bad" things. In the sixties, these treatments were done without anesthesia
No one really talked about things like that in those days. I just knew something wasn't right, especially when she went to the hospital and stayed for what I thought, was a large amount of time. I remember my father taking me to visit her in the psych ward. It felt so strange, the atmosphere had an ethereal, sad quality that I felt immediately after I got off the elevator. I can't remember how it came to be, but I was asked to sing "Has Anybody Seen My Gal" to an audience of people captured under the title of mentally ill. Their blank stares and empty faces made me think of zombies and people absent from their bodies. I think I was about twelve.
I was always sort of afraid to tackle the thought that anyone I knew had mental illness, let alone, myself. I remember my sister saying our mother was mentally ill and how it made me feel defensive, as if it was a huge insult to be in the league of the mad, and insane. Now, I see that type of thinking is more damaging than the illness itself. Still, any sort of "illness" bothers me. Maybe I'm a perfectionist? I know I'm codependent, I've been through therapy. Yet still, the stigma is shadowy, grey and certainly not something you want to discuss at a cocktail party.
My friend didn't take his medications, wound up in a dumpster, and was accidentally killed in that dirty, circular file of other peoples waste and items of rejection. He didn't take his medications! WHY?
I believe people diagnosed with mental illness, at least the ones that I know, have all been and are pretty perceiving to things "normal" people aren't. To live in a world where everyone is expected to think along the lines of someone else's definition of normalcy is difficult if not impossible. Not to forget the trendy thinking of "not depending on chemicals" to "fix" a problem...everything should be "natural", "healthy" and "organic". Lastly, you have religious solutions to mental problems that say if you pray hard enough, or do just the right thing, say the right thing that God will "deliver" you. And if God doesn't, just try harder or have other people pray for you. Whatever!!! Sometimes those theories are the most damaging.
I truly believe that most people, upon further inspection, fall in the category of "mentally ill". I know some who suffer from such severe anxiety that they break out in rashes, or try to plan their lives out ahead so much that the moment is non existent. These same people view counselling or therapy as something for other people; poor souls. Mentally ill? I believe so. In denial? Absolutely! They believe that you have to be in a near vegetative state to even have therapy.
I met my friend when I attended an inner city church filled with people who would be diagnosed mentally ill if they had the money for treatment. I loved that church and funnily enough, felt more at home there than anywhere. There was a woman who was certainly bi-polar, and very kind. Once she was in one of her moods she threatened to kill me over something trivial in my mind, obviously it wasn't trivial to her. (I was educating her son.) It was almost amusing that I had no fear in me whatsoever! I knew she deeply loved me and appreciated what I was doing for her and her son. And, I knew her heart.
A young life is gone and I don't understand why. Brilliant, creative and good hearted, he left too soon and he left in a way that grieves me as much as his lost life. In spite of the fact that I haven't spoken with him in years, it still hits hard and heavy that he left our world. I hope he has found peace.
