Can You Love Someone with Mental Illness?

Or are we “too much drama?”

The moon just darkened, which means I recently sent out one of my bi-monthly newsletters that I write at the new and full moons.

While writing these missives is often steeped in uncertainty for me (I strive to “earn” my right to show up in people’s inbox, which makes me feel a lot of pressure around writing a good newsletter), I love pressing the send button — because I know that over the course of the next two days, a handful of people will respond. I love this. I love to know that people actually read my newsletter and feel connected enough to write back. In some ways, that’s worth more than the comments I get on my articles.

But the other day, I received a comment from a reader who said I had been sharing so many of my frustrations lately that he especially loved the most recent newsletter, calling it uplifting and energizing.

Unsurprisingly, that innocuous comment led me into a spiral of emotion.

When you have depression and anxiety, it is hard not to constantly feel like an outsider. You always feel like you’ll never fit in with the “neurotypicals.” (I use that term more broadly than most people, and also, ironically, I do not believe that “neurotypical” actually exists, that it’s actually just a mold our culture wants us to conform to. But that’s another story for another day.)

You get used to people judging you for not being strong, for not being able to put a smile on your face no matter what, for not being able to get on a damn plane without having to fight off panic attacks. You feel like you can’t do the simplest things that any average human can do. You start to notice that your “issues” are often annoying to other people.

And so, even thirty years down the line, the littlest of things can trigger intense self-doubt and self-criticism.

Someone I don’t know sent an email commenting about my recent glimpses into my frustrations and that my latest newsletter was happy and helpful. Okay. That’s great, right?

But of course, my first response was to think back to the last newsletter, in which yes, I had written something sad, but then deleted it and sent a short, dispassionate update, instead. And the one before that? That one was definitely uplifting and positive.

Maybe he was talking about my writing, in general, I realized. My essays, my social media posts.

Okay. Sure. Guilty.

Frustrations. Depression. Anxiety. Grief.

Do I share these feelings often?

Okay. Sure. Guilty.

Ever since I decided last summer not to niche myself as a sex blogger and to use my writing to explore the whole of my life (for largely selfish reasons, I admit), I have been sharing a lot of my hardships and pain.

That selfish reason for which I do this: Emotional purging. Giving my pain a voice that it has never had before. Expressing myself without censorship. Digging up my trauma.

The next stop on this mental train is wondering whether or not I’m indulgent with my pain.

Shit. Okay. Guilty. I am a champ at bleeding the same wound again and again, hoping that one last time, one last endured moment of pain will make me feel more worthy of being on this planet.

But how indulgent? Do the shares of my hardships overwhelmingly outweigh the shares of the positives in my life? Am I indulgent to the point of imbalance?

I don’t think so. But then again, my feelings have always been quite muddled. My melancholy nature, while not necessarily palatable to others, has simply been what I know. That’s my norm.

When I was a little girl, I used to sit by the window in my bedroom and play my record of Kermit the Frog singing It’s Not Easy Being Green, while looking wistfully out to the street beyond. I knew the pain of feeling different, and even at 6, I knew there were others who felt that way, too. I knew the world was full of lonely people who just wanted to feel loved for the green freaks that we were.

My family teases me for this — for what a sad little girl I was. And yes, I was sad, but also…that was normal to me. I felt a strange comfort in my melancholy. It was just part of who I was.

But someday, you grow up and discover that the world doesn’t have much tolerance for that.

That’s where this train of thought always, inevitably ends up. I find myself wondering, for the trillioneth time: Is it possible to love someone like me? Someone with depression and anxiety?

Or am I too sad? Too frustrated? Too much emotional labor? Too much drama?

I get it. It’s so much easier to walk away from people who struggle with mental illness or at least to keep them at arm’s length.

Who wants to deal with all that “negativity?”

This is one of the many reasons why I’m trying to teach myself to be okay on my own. Maybe I will never have another relationship, mental illness or not. Maybe I will find myself in one and soon after find that my new partner just doesn’t want to deal with my shadows.

And yes, I try to make peace with the fact that nobody owes me love. That maybe someone with depression and anxiety is unlovable by human standards (though not Divine). What do I know? I’m just visiting this planet and 44 years in, it’s still an unravelable mystery to me.

But I do know one thing: I have always felt comfortable with the sad, sweet creature that I am, who is so confused and scared of this world. It’s only when other people have expressed their annoyance or criticism that I have felt like something was, perhaps, wrong with me.

While I want to be mindful of what I express and how I express it, I am mostly okay with how I’m doing. I’m comfortable with the level of honesty I’ve been sharing these past few months, as circumstances have challenged my mental health.

I share this only because I know how many people there are out there who are dealing with the same issues I am and who might feel similarly. I think it’s okay for us to express ourselves — even the dark stuff. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

If it bums people out…that’s okay. They can move on. If it’s too much for others, they can choose not to witness us.

And yeah, if it makes us unlovable to fellow human beings…that’s okay, too. Maybe that is not our flaw to bear, but the flaws of those who cannot find room for us in their hearts.

I don’t know what that email meant. I didn’t write this to condemn it or the person who wrote it. In fact, I’m quite grateful that he wrote to tell me he felt uplifted by the newsletter. That makes me very happy. (Thank you, sir!)

The fact that his comment about my recent venting of frustrations made me do a lot of inner questioning is not his fault. In fact, I have no doubt that he meant nothing but the best by his words.

But I think this was a good opportunity to do an internal audit and make sure I’m continuing to be mindful about what and how I share.

Yeah, if you stick with me, you’ll have to be ready to go into the dark woods with me on a pretty regular basis. That’s my natural territory. I’m a wild animal — I can’t help that.

There are a lot of trees out here, which means a lot of dark places, a lot of shadows, and layers upon layers of decaying material on the floor, all composting into something rich, fertile, and endlessly fascinating.

This is who we are — those of us who have depression and anxiety. We are feral, shadow-dwelling creatures. Trust me when I say that we know not everyone wants to venture into the shadows.

No problem.

But I’m not going to creep out and try to shapeshift into something different — a songbird or a butterfly. I can’t. Not even if it earns me all the love I could dream of.

I’m not pleasantly packaged, sunny and light, easy and breezy.

I am this: The frustration and anger and sadness and fear. The passion and longing and joy and deep love.

I am rich and fertile and…well, maybe or maybe not endlessly fascinating. For those who don’t mind the mess.

I don’t always believe this. But I’m trying to teach myself that it’s true.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

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