It has been a long, hot summer. I love summer, but generally can’t handle the Heat very well. Go figure. I am handling the heat even less well this summer, as my mood stabilizer works as expected and produces additional heat intolerance.
I recently had to leave the pool area while watching my daughter’s swimming lessons to go and sit in the outer viewing section, because I was dripping with sweat and thought I might faint, or be sick, or both. I was just beginning to come around when we were ready to leave, and ventured out into a sickly humidity that feels like how I imagine it must feel in the Bayou, and I started to feel awful all over again.
We had to stop at the Grocery Store, because it was on the way home and it would have been stupid to go back out again. I tried my best to disguise how wretched I was feeling and not appear drunk or stoned – never a good look before noon on a weekday morning.
After dumping my purchases on the counter, I began to make small talk with the cashier about the soaring mercury and our mutual gratitude for our respective air conditioners. Never overly enthused with basic social conventions like discretion and propriety, and hopelessly prone to oversharing, I blurted out that I am bipolar and take a mood stabilizer which makes it more difficult for me to cope with the heat.
What happened next blew me away.
“I feel you, sister” she said. “I’m on medication too, have been for many years, and I would be in a really, really dark place without it.”
I realized something really important. Sometimes, when we are courageous enough to tell a part of our story, we give other people a chance to tell a part of their own. Maybe she happened to one of those rare people who is open and comfortable sharing that about herself. Maybe that moment was easy for her, or it didn’t matter to her. Or maybe this has all been a secret she hides, a history she protects, a battle she has never asked another comrade to help her fight. Maybe she needed to look into someone else’s eyes, if only for a moment, and see true understanding looking back at her. There is so much we have in common, all of us who walk this mental health journey, so much we don’t even need to explain.
Our stories are always personal, and always our own. Some parts of them will never be told, because they are too painful or too disastrous or we can’t find a way to forgive ourselves enough to speak the details aloud. We should never tell more than we feel comfortable telling, or talk to a person we don’t feel safe with. But when we do feel safe enough, or brave enough, or brazen enough, we could be handing the listener the opportunity to learn a little bit about mental illness. Best of all, we could be handing them a chance to do some healing, to look into a stranger’s eyes and see, unexpectedly, a kindred spirit looking right back.
