Tragedy Overload

Saturday I woke up to breaking news of another mass shooting. Barely a day has gone by since the pipe bomb suspect was arrested and now we have something else. My heart broke as I clicked the news video, and it sank deep into my chest as I learned, in horror, that this one was targeted at a synagogue.

Something in me broke.

Something I had been pushing around for some time now, a sense of doom and hopelessness and sadness. This morning, I felt it. The utter sense of sorrow, of grief, of acceptance of tragedy. The point I realize I cannot leave, I am not immigrating to Europe, this is real and this is my life now. This is our American reality.

Each time something happens, I tell myself I am done. I will fight this. I will vote. I will protest. I will move far away from this dystopian reality. But this morning, as 8 souls were snatched from this world and hundreds of lives forever changed, I just sank.

I checked my Facebook obsessively. I shared a post, I followed the breaking news. My feed was filled with Jewish friends and family sharing outrage and non-Jewish friends expressing fear and sadness.

I didn't know if I could take it anymore. So I stopped.

I turned it off. I clicked away. I put mu phone on silent and my media on pause, just for a minute. And you know what? It was okay.

I made myself some iced tea. I changed my sheets. I tidied my floor. I cast on a new knitting project. And it felt alright.

No, it didn't solve anything. The news was still there when I got back, and the hurt and the pain came rushing back. But that afternoon, I needed some time to shut off before I shut down.

What We Talk About When We talk About Mental Illness

Roseanne, Kanye, and Mental Health Awareness Week

Photo Credit: What I Be Project by Steve Rosenfield

October 7-13 was mental health awareness week, with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) starting a CureStigma campaign. You may have seen posts on social media of friends or acquaintances posting about their struggles or their allyship/offers of support. If you hadn't seen or heard, I don't blame you-- I had to google it prior to this post. I had heard the term "mental health awareness week/day/month" floating around, and I figured now was as good a time as any to share my personal thoughts.

In addition to NAMI, the constant news cycle reminds us of how prevalent and even marketable serious mental illness is. Kanye West, for example, was recently at the white house, rambling about our country's problems, his solutions, men, male energy, alternate realities, the 13th amendment, and more. He mentioned the Unabomber and prison and bipolar disorder. In general, it was an extremely disjointed and fantastical discussion. (If you are interested, here is the full transcript)

Roseanne Barr, an up and coming (and subsequently fallen) reboot star was recently on the Joe Rogan podcast. She discussed her infamous tweet, her personal history with serious mental illness and psychiatric hospitalization, and the fallout from her drugged out post. I have not finished the full episode yet (it's a two hour podcast), but it is available here if you are interested.

This is a lot to dig through. This is a representation of not only our attention seeking culture, which values the extreme, but also is subsequently a version of how we understand mental illness, specifically psychosis or other dissociated forms of reality. 

To be fair, it could be worse-- at least we're not talking about mental illness because someone with a firearm took that constitutionally protected firearm and used it to murder innocent people. And at least these people in the spotlight are successful in some regards. They are creative geniuses despite their demons. There are so many angles to approach this question of celebrity culture and mental illness.

What is a self described mental health advocate to do?