Today is a good day. I woke up feeling pretty determined. I’ve got family and friends, and I’m focusing on the great things that I have, and that I get to enjoy.
My hope is that I’ll be able to remain determined and focused. The other day, I was thinking of the intensity of our existence, and how we have no choice sometimes but to confront death, and the hardships of life. Often in life, we have to confront unpleasant things, and that can be difficult.
Remembering that death and suffering is a part of life is not easy to remember. It’s existential, the existential crisis. It’s difficult to have life, when many different things happen, and do happen, things we might not be ready for, but that happen anyway. When I think about what people I love have been through, it can be tough. It doesn’t make sense or seem fair, but it’s the way that it is.
Yet resilience is another important theme to all of this. I have been resilient in my life, and so has my loved one. I feel as though it’s important to remember what you have overcome, what I have overcome. While we have been through a lot, we do our best, and we do get through.
Resilience and determination are important to remember. Cultivating those traits is incredibly powerful for the unpredictabilities of life.
I’ve been thinking about mental health, and the complexities with those things, all it involves. It is complicated. People I know have been through a lot because of mental illness. It’s not something I ever would have expected, in retrospect.
I keep thinking of what I went through when I was twenty one, and how difficult it was for me, when I got off my meds and struggled with psychosis. Mental illness is not something that everyone goes through. But, it is genetic. I’m trying to have more compassion for myself for what I have been through with mental illness. It’s a tough thing that has deeply influenced my life, in so many ways, not ways I always anticipated. That’s not an easy thing to recognize. But the point I’m trying to emphasize is that I got through it. I persevered through it.
It’s not easy to remember the self-compassion piece. Mental illness almost uprooted my life when I was younger, and it’s hard to imagine that this was what happened. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want the struggle that came with it. It was the reason why I finally took my mental health so seriously, because I realized that my mind could do things I didn’t like without me being aware of it.
Why the mind makes things so difficult, I can’t really say. There are many explanations for it. It’s a confusing thing, though, even with the scientific explanations. Mental illness is not so easily understood, especially on a social and interpersonal level. I personally don’t understand it, and I lived through it. My assumption, though, is that the human mind is easily subject to delusion and confusion, at least in some cases, and it’s obvious that people experience that sometimes. The mind, in other words, is not always rational. There’s no specific way people have to think, and so it’s easy for the mind to wander in complicated and uncharted territory.
Believe me, I don’t fully understand the process, though I try to. It is a complicated process. For me, the way I get through it is by focusing on what I’ve overcome. I don’t know why humans struggle with such things, but it doesn’t stop it from happening.
Aside from unpredictability and other unknown factors about the human mind, it can be difficult to understand why we do the things we do in the first place, what process is at play. Learning to be aware of this is part of the process of getting through it. The human mind is complex, and it’s important to remember this.
Delusion, confusion, delirium, unpredictability: All of these things describe the human mind. I of course don’t want to only focus on the places where the mind is subject to such negative processes, because the mind is capable of good things as well. But that said, it is interesting where the mind can go, and it is important to acknowledge it.
I realize for myself how important it is to pay attention to the mind, even to the things I don’t like. I pay attention to my mind because I know that it’s often telling me something. It’s not an easy thing at all, because it’s easy to ignore our mind. But through my experiences, I’ve learned to be more aware, and that really helps me get through it.
It does confuse me how my mind has gone off the rails before, such as when I was younger. It worries me, because I know it can happen to other people, as it has. I’ve seen it happen. That can be difficult, to see mental illness in other people that you love, but it does happen sometimes. I’m glad that I still have my family, though. I’m grateful for them. I know we have gotten through a lot, and I’m grateful we have gotten through.
There were times where I wasn’t sure if I’d get through. And obviously seeing it in people I love is difficult.
Of course it doesn’t make sense why we go through these things. Notions of suffering in the mind aren’t really intuitive. It doesn’t make sense why people through it. I didn’t know if I’d get through, because it was such a complicated thing to experience, and I didn’t know what was going on. It involves so much of your attention and emotions, and without medication and therapy, it can be easy to go off the rails. This doesn’t make you a bad person, though, and that’s one of the things I continually keep in mind. People fear mental illness, but most people that go through it are experiencing something really difficult to explain and relate to, and that’s something I’ve acknowledged for myself. There were things I could have done differently in the past, of course, but quite a big chunk of it was out of my control. There is a lot about our mental health that takes time to learn, such as mindfulness and self-awareness.
I believe that people can definitely thrive with mental illness, though. I’m sad what the people I love have been through, but I’m also grateful that they have pulled through, that they are still here, living normal lives. I have to give myself credit, because I have gotten through it too, and that matters. It’s definitely a good place to be, where you feel that you have more control over your life. Personally I feel like I have more freedom in my life now, and that gives me hope. I’ve dealt with it. Mental illness is not something that will occupy your whole life, once it is under control. As I’ve told myself many times, life is about learning not to just survive, but also thrive. I find value in such a notion. It’s not just about getting through, but also enjoying life, and finding joy.
You can find joy in life, even with mental illness. I’ve found joy. Even though at times I fear death and the unknown, I’ve learned more and more that we can get through these difficult things, that we can have a healthy mentality, and push through the difficult things. I struggle with it sometimes, I seem to be very sensitive to the suffering of others, and I have visceral responses to pain. But we can get through. We push through. I may not understand what I’ve been through, or what other people have been through, but the people I love have been resilient. We are definitely resilient. That matters for pushing forward. No need to fear the unknown, when we’ve got each other. I’m hopeful for the future. I’ve learned a lot from it.
