Help

I’m messy and emotional right now and staring at my box of blades and wondering if the only thing that will help me right now is the sight of blood.

One of the things that pisses me off to no end, in the spirit of the previous discussions regarding whether you are doing enough to help yourself, is this idea that if you just did the things to ask for “help,” to accept “help,” you would be able to manage your illness. I see this all over television portrayals and books and articles. This idea is that “Help is Abound” – this endless source of support is out there waiting for you to access, friends and family who will be there for you, mental health services that will make you better, pharmaceuticals that will make you feel better. All you need to be better is to accept your illness and accept help.

I don’t know if this is some mixed up advice that’s given to people who struggle with addiction issues or who are self-destructive that gets wrapped up in a bow and packaged to anyone who is suffering.

LET ME BE CLEAR. THERE IS NO HELP. THE HELP DOESN’T HELP. PEOPLE DON’T HELP. YOU CAN’T ALWAYS HELP YOURSELF.

“Yet even as our mental health crisis proliferates, even as streams of books and articles are published about depression and anxiety, the subject of mental illness has become another voyeuristic exhibition in the carnival of commerce. We talk about it, but we don’t talk about how to address it.”

First and foremost, I have always sought out treatment. And I’ve been turned away by therapists, by medical professionals and by insurance companies left and right. I’ve been utterly unable to find any out-patient programs that didn’t have insane waiting lists, most programs refused my insurance, i could not get into an in-patient hospitalization because no place will tell you if they have beds available and you must subject yourself to a night in a psych ER and just wait for the roulette to decide where you belong. I’ve been told by professionals at the hospital to not admit how suicidal I actually am, because the point of hospitalziation is to get out as quick as possible.

A doctor explains, “Suicide prevention campaigns encourage people to overcome stigma, tell someone or call a hotline. The implication is that the help is there, just waiting to be sought out.
But it is not that easy. Good outpatient psychiatric care is hard to find, hard to get into and hard to pay for. Inpatient care is reserved for the most extreme cases, and even for them, there are not enough beds. Initiatives like crisis hotlines and anti-stigma campaigns focus on opening more portals into mental health services, but this is like cutting doorways into an empty building. “

I’ve taken drugs, diligently, I have met my psychiatrist dutifully every three weeks for YEARS, never missing an appointment and changed my meds over and over again and nothing helped. So it’s not just some simple formula that I remember to be a good responsible girl and take my lithium and only if I’m a bad girl and decided to skip a dose I spin out. I will always spin out.

I spent inordinate amounts of money on 2 rounds of DBT treatment, did all my homework and showed up, went to 3.5 hours of weekly therapy for 6 months. It was supposed to give me skills that would help me for the rest of my life. And here I am. Ready to cut.

I read the book Chasing the Rainbow by a wife of a man who committed suicide and her struggle to have answers. The personal story is heartbreaking but her takeaways, are in my humble opinion, utter bullshit. She tries to claim that the pressures of being a “man” made her husband unable to ask for help, and women are better at opening up and relying on their friends.

I WANT TO SCREAM, PEOPLE DON’T LISTEN WHEN YOU OPEN UP. THIS IS THE MYTH YOU TELL YOURSELF WHEN SOMEONE COMMITS SUICIDE, THE WORLD, YOU BLAME THAT PERSON FOR NOT ASKING FOR HELP TO ASSUAGE THE GUILT THAT YOU WERE NEVER ACTUALLY ABLE OF PROVIDING SUPPORT OR HELP THAT HELPS.

My family likes to perpetuate this myth on all fronts, even times I’ve been seriously physically ill. They’ve never provided help. Help would indicate that there is some level of practical support, and amazing help, is one that someone does even though it inconveniences their life, requires some sacrifice on that part. Even though I feel that I’m this heavy burden on the people in my life because of my illness, no one has ever really helped in any meaningful way during all my trials and tribulations. There have been one-offs, the time I was spinning out, and someone helped me pack a suitcase for an hour, or helped me finish packing my apartment, or brought by something for me to eat. Things that if you are a good friend, you’d prob do for a friend anyways. I feel indebted to people because they answer the phone. That’s what help is to me, that’s how low the bar is.

No one has gone to doctors’ appointments with me, or helped me get out of bed and take a shower, or researched the insurance guidelines and helped me write an appeal. I have a lot of friends so if one time, a friend helps buy me groceries after being discharged from the hospital for physical injury i will not ask them for anything again for 5 years at least. Most of the time, I just need company in my darkest moments so the help people give is just letting me be at their house (I will have to travel there myself). But even doing that, offering company that is HELP in most people’s eyes, it is a sacrifice because their life is so difficult and busy, to let me in and sit and behave mostly normal (just a little sad) is still disruptive.

REAL HELP. That I will bail you out of jail and watch you be at your worst and bring you tea in bed when you can’t stop crying uncontrollably help, I’ve never gotten that.

My mom will still say that over and over again. Your family is the only people who are here to HELP you, that you can rely on. We want to HELP you. Don’t move to far away because you need to be close to family for when things get tough. BUT THINGS HAVE ALREADY BEEN TOUGH AND YOU DID NOTHING.

When I’m depleted and tired from physical or mental illness, you mock me, you steal my stuff, you ask me to stroke your ego when I don’t have the energy to even form a sentence. You complain about how difficult it is for you to deal with me and ask me to empathize with how painful it is to care for me, how unlucky you are. When I am mess, you ask me to do these “little” things, these small favors, disregarding how triggering and overwhelming they are in the face of my illness. You don’t let it go, you ask and ask and ask and ask and tell me how horrible of a person I am that I can’t do these “small things” for you.

I HAVE TRIED TO DIE MULTIPLE TIMES AND YOU just resorted to same brand of abusive behavior, because how dare I suggest that my loving parents contributed to me wanting to die! They love me! You are ungrateful! You are illogical! You are irrational! You are blind! Why doesn’t your therapist help you see the reality of the way you are actually loved, you silly spoiled girl.

So instead of actually reflecting or altering behavior that endangers my wellbeing, my parents want to keep stockpiling donations to put into my retirement accounts, even though it’s hard to imagine I can stay alive through the end of this year. That’s their brand of love and I’m too silly, immature or short-sighted to realize that is the most important support of all. It’s not helping through abusive employment / unemployment, housing insecurity, physical and mental illnesses, hospitalizations. It’s security for when I’m 65.

The world is definitely going to be under water, burned into flames, or bombed to nonexistence by then.

Fuck Help. There’s that person, right now listening to what I am saying and who will respond by saying, I have too high expectations. I don’t expect too much. I am just trying to get the world to realize their own hypocrisy. Don’t feed yourself this narrative that people with mental illness could be fine, if they just asked and accepted help. The world doesn’t just not know how to help, they don’t care to know how to help, they don’t want to do anything that helps that puts them out of their comfort zone, that inconveniences them, that requires any sacrifice or is out of line with their own priorities and agenda. They want to help, but only on their terms. You can’t have it both ways, to tell us we shouldn’t expect too much and that we could help ourselves if we just asked for and accepted help. Stop speaking in contradictions!

And this Blog, this blog, in some ways I feel like I decided to write these posts, that upon my death, there is no search for answers or meaning, the truth is all right here for you. You aren’t left wondering why? If only she had…. She did try everything. She fucking tried everything.

An no, you did not help her. You did not help.