Mental illness is highly misunderstood and difficult to admit. While it is as debilitating as any serious physical illness, embarrassment and denial make it a closet epidemic. While no one has a problem admitting that they have a broken leg, admitting that part of one’s brain or emotional abilities is broken is much harder. The uncomfortable silence that surrounds diseases of the mind leave those who suffer (and those who suffer with them) with few resources.
Without professional involvement, how does the average person determine if someone they know is clinically depressed or is merely depressed because of a bad day? Persons who suffer from mental illness are sometimes the last to notice that something is seriously wrong. The deeper the sufferer sinks into depression, the less able he or she is to rationally judge his or her own behavior. The warning signs are ignored.
One night about a year after my diagnosis, I walked out of my home and disappeared. Because I was an adult and had left willingly, the police would not aggressively search for me. The fact that I was seriously mentally ill did not seem to matter. Unfortunately, the lack of proper education regarding mental illness affects all of society. Even the police felt that this was my problem. The sad reality is that a person suffering from mental illness is everyone’s problem. Not only is this person a danger to him or herself, but is often a danger to society at large.
After living on the streets for 4 months, I forced myself to go to a facility for help. For the next 30 days I was hoping to learn the skills I needed to repaired my broken soul. It is something about being fragmented, tainted by scars, that we as people learn more about ourselves and about others. What does it mean to be broken, however in a sense, it means not to go through the conventional path of life. It means, seeing different perspectives and understanding how people live their lives. We cannot be immune to the ravages of time, of old age, however what is broken within us will remain, concealed.
The broken have always been more evolved, because they have evolved through what is broken.
