Mental health?

What’s this? Oh, damn, Russ is crazy.

rorschach test

I mean, I did write a book about demonic pacts that turned people into serial killers and cannibals. Is that the work of a well-adjusted human being?

But if I can take my tongue out of my cheek for a moment, the time leading up to the publication of my first book was one of the worst of my life. It wasn’t just tough times. It hit me hard enough that I needed medical help to heal. In the aftermath, I had conversations that went like this:

“Hey Russ, haven’t seen you in a while. How’s life been treating you?”

“Awful. Buried my dad and two friends all within six months of each other, had a big health scare with some other family, had to cut contact with people I love, and lost my engagement.”

“… Um… damn. I’m sorry.”

“ Yeah, it’s not been my best year. But I talked to someone, professionally I mean, and it’s really helped me turn things around.”

“That’s cool. I’m glad to hear that. You know, I had to do the same thing. I had to go to therapy last year and it helped me to….”

The above is a conversation that I’ve had more times than I can count. I’m sharing it with you because maybe you’re walking through the world with the same glasses that I was wearing, the ones with lenses tinted by a belief that my problems are special and unique and no one else struggles the way I do, if they struggle at all. 

The most important part of those conversations I paraphrased above is that they shattered that worldview. I’m not special. I’m not unique. I’m a human being with 99.9% in common with other human beings, including my problems. The personal difficulties that raged in my head were a beast so many others knew just as intimately. Sure, maybe mine had claws and theirs had fangs, but the basic shape was the same. The savagery was the same. The attacks and the resulting injuries were the same. In short, I wasn’t alone. 

And neither are you. 

Oh, I know. “Bullshit. Why don’t you tell me more of the same crap everyone says?” I get it. I’ve been there at the bottom of that emotional pit swatting away the same support and encouragement that sounded generic and useless at the time. I didn’t want to hear any of it. It was useless anyway. 

One of the worst parts of my struggle was the feeling of isolation. No one got it. No one got me. I was all alone in the world. Sure, I had friends. I had amazing friends who loved me, but my emotional wounds and experiences erected a wall between us. I still loved and cared about these people, but they couldn’t cross the barrier between us, and so in the end it didn’t matter that they cared or that I cared about them. They were outside.

They were, too. That’s not a lie your mind is telling you. Those lovely people in your life who care about you are on the outside if they’ve never gotten lost in the darkness behind that impenetrable wall. But that doesn’t mean you’re alone. There are others on the same side of that divide. They get it because they’ve been there. They might still be there. Some have learned to scale that wall and get out, but they remember what it’s like.

So if you feel alone right now, I get it. I just ask you to believe me when I tell you you’re not. You know that famous phrase “there’s nothing new under the sun”? That’s Ecclesiastes 1:9. Regardless of your feelings on the Bible, I think we can all agree it’s an old book, and all that time ago someone wrote that all of human experience has already been done. What I’m saying is that whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re experiencing, it’s something someone else has gone through before you. You’re not alone. Someone, probably many someones, is equipped to understand you, to really get where you are and how you feel.

In short, this isn’t something you have to wrestle with by yourself, and I would urge you not to. Find someone. Talk to someone. Maybe it’s a friend. Maybe it’s a professional. Humans are beasts of community; we are at our best when we come together. The monster in your head and the tumor in your heart want to pull you from the pack and cast you into the wilderness to die alone. Please fight that pull. It’s a mighty urge and you may not feel like you have a lot of fight left, but I’m not asking you to beat this thing back. I’m just asking you find the right person to talk to.

When I was in the worst of it, I didn’t have much gas in the tank. Searching for help when I didn’t know where to begin wasn’t something I could do. Luckily, I had someone in my life who did it for me. I’d like to pay it forward, so if you don’t know where to look, here’s a few places where you can begin your search.

And in the meantime, hold on. You might not be able to see it now, I certainly couldn’t when I was lost in it, but the storm does have an end.