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Fair warning, this one is probably going to get a little heavy. Ready?

 

Okay, so a few weeks ago, a friend reached out about something she was going through. It brought up a lot of feelings I thought I’d already dealt with. Feelings I am in no way, shape, or form ready to dig into right now. I mean, this really isn’t great timing. I’m over here barely hanging on as it, just trying to hold it together, and now I need to figure out what to do with these unpleasant feelings and memories.

 

It started with a very simple text that said “Hey…I know you’re getting home and settled. I don’t even know where to begin.” I didn’t have to read any more because I already knew what she was going to tell me and my heart sank. A few weeks earlier she had confided in me about a loved one. I heard the red flags coming through the phone as she spoke, but I didn’t want to cause alarm in her, so I just gave her encouragement and support. This text meant I was right and I hated that. I continued reading and stopped again when she said “I know you have dealt with some of these things before.” I had. Too many times for my liking. She wasn’t texting to vent or gossip. She was texting because she was scared and she didn’t know what to do. Someone she loves so much was struggling. I tried to say all the right things – I’m here for you, I love you, you can’t take this on all by yourself, it’s not your fault if you can’t get them help, you’ve got this – basically all the things I wish I had heard when I was in her shoes. Every question she had, I tried to give her an honest answer based on my own experiences. Every concern she had, I tried to validate. Each new text, brought more memories to the surface. I remember being in her shoes, waiting for a call or text, praying for the best possible outcome, while also secretly falling apart because I didn’t want to add to anyone else’s already big worries.

 

Obviously, I’ve been thinking about her and her situation a lot lately. Lately, I’ve been trying to go where I feel like God is leading me, and I think maybe He’s leading me to share a bit of these experiences. I’m not going to lay it all out right away. That would be too much…for me and probably you, but I am going to start digging in.

 

I found out the hard way that loving someone through something you can’t fix is a bad place to be. It’s bad on so many levels. You try to take on the load for them. What they lack, you try to make up for. You overextend yourself trying to fix things for them. You end up in complete crisis mode while the person actually going through the mental illness and everyone else in your life is just living another normal Tuesday. You find yourself completely distracted while doing all of your own daily responsibilities. You’ll be cooking dinner while checking your phone for an update, or you’re cleaning while trying to get information from the crisis center, or working while doing research on ways you can actually help. You make to the end of the day not remembering half of what you did, but realize you were more productive than you’ve been in a long time, you just spaced out for most of it. I’m not even sure how that makes sense other than I think your body or nervous system goes on auto-pilot. There’s a whole span of work that I do not remember. I see projects I worked on during those times that I have no memory of whatsoever. I have vivid memories of my husband and I cooking Christmas breakfast one of the times my dad was spiraling. I was dreading going to see him, but was feeling guilty for not wanting to go. I was so caught up the mix of emotions and what I would find when I saw him that I burned myself getting the dish out of the oven.

 

You know what else weighs on you when you are watching this unfold? Feeling like a failure because you can’t help. It’s not even your fault that you can’t help because the system was built like that. It has made itself so hard to navigate and virtually impossible to get someone you love help. It’s like the system requires you to be well enough during your crisis to admit you’re not okay, or nobody can touch you.

 

In each of my father’s manic episodes, he was not able to see that something was very wrong. Not even the night he burned down his own home.

 

I’ll tell you that story another time. Right now, I just want you to know that a person can be standing in the middle of the fire, quite literally, and still not be able to see that they are on fire and need help.

 

No one can save them. Not even you.

 

The guilt gets you too. Guilt over what? I don’t know. Nothing. Everything. Some of this. Some of that. I felt guilt because I couldn’t fix anything. I felt guilt because I couldn’t find a way to even try to help. I felt guilt because not even one doctor would talk to me to get what I felt was valuable information. I felt guilt because I was lost in mist of the chaos when I was supposed to be navigating.

 

And speaking of guilt…you know what happens when you become so incredibly overwhelmed with hopelessness, you’re scared, you’re exhausted, you’re out of ideas…you get angry. Angry at yourself, angry at everyone around you, and angry at the person at the center of this crisis. After you’ve spent some time with anger, you start feeling guilty again because how dare you want one hour without thinking about them? How dare you want to find a little bit of joy in your current world of chaos? How dare you start thinking about what life would be like if this whole thing just disappeared? You start hating yourself because you are just being human and just want a break. Living with this day in and day out, especially during the actual crisis phase, makes you tired beyond belief. You get quiet, irritable, and sometimes downright mean. You find yourself looking for an escape plan that feels like a violation.

 

One of the biggest things that shocked me each and every time I’ve gone through these things was how lonely I felt even when I was surrounded by people who love me. My husband was by my side through every part of every time, but I still had this feeling like I was the only one in the whole room who felt the full weight of it all. I’m sure some of this was because my husband, probably pretty similar to other husbands, can rationalize things. He can compartmentalize things. He sees things for what they are, and me being more on the emotional side, took everything on in a completely different way. Clearly a way that left me feeling the full weight of everything even when it wasn’t mine to carry.

 

I’ve lived this multiple times now. I’ve been there as a mother watching her child go through this and as a daughter watching her father go through this. Reading those texts from my friend, I realized I never actually finished feeling any of it when it was happening. I think I felt so relieved that things we’re getting better or things were just getting quiet, that I started pushing it all away. I mean, what was the point in prolonging those desperate feelings? So, I just moved on. It was the easier thing to do. Or so I thought until her struggle let my suppressed feelings out.

 

I’m not saying everyone feels these things, but I certainly did and if there’s a chance someone else is out there struggling through a mental health crisis that isn’t their own, I want them to know that I get it. I get all of the stress, anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, frustration, guilt, and especially the confusion.

 

I know this episode felt very one sided. That’s because it is. I don’t have the experience, thankfully, to talk about a mental health crisis from a different point of view. I hope I never do. I just have this view that I can share. I am not making light of anyone’s personal struggle with mental illness. It has to be horrible to personally struggle through your own crisis or long-term mental illness. But I am trying to explain that loving someone who is mentally ill is hard on everyone who loves them and the system that was built to help them stands in the way a lot.

 

So, I guess that brings me to my two things can be true at once spiel. You can love someone with everything in you, and still not be able to save them. You can love someone so much that it hurts, and still need a break from them. Both of those things are true. Neither one makes you a bad person. It just makes you someone who loves hard, in a situation that has no good options.