no easy thing...

mental illness is one funky thing to try to hold and accept and deal with.

first of all, there's soooo many different kinds.......
and then we're not taught about them.
shoot, why is that???
i really feel like mental illnesses should be a standard class.
it's all around us and yet we don't know anything about it.
and it shows up in so many different ways.
so many many many different ways.

in sharing in someone's frustration yesterday, i tried to say that i
was in no way minimizing the pain involved, but that this was in
a different league than just someone being obnoxious. that there was
more here goin' on and that it was important to remember that.

i walked and thought of how i had such a hard time keeping that in mind.
how things hurt and i wanted things to be different and it seems crazy
that it can't be.

exactly.
that's the point.
it's crazy.
crazy making.

i walked and held that.
held the pain of the stories involved.
i held some other stuff that was hard too.

i thought of the mix of life.
you can't have people without this mix, i thought.

and you can't change it, you just gotta keep workin' on yourself.

and i thought of that....

last nite i looked at my sons after telling them one of the crazy making
stories. and i told them 'the inner work you do has GOT to be for yourself.
it can't be for your ego, it can't be to get other people to see you. it's
GOT to be for yourself. the other just won't work.'

imagine trying so hard to paint yourself red.
you work and you work and you work on it.
and you think that the red is beautiful and people can see it.
you can see it and you can feel it.
and someone comes along and says 'she's so green. she got that from
her father. she's green, and see that black there? that's so her.'

and they say it with disgust and sadness.

you look down at your arms, your legs.....they're red.
you can see it, touch it. you've been workin' on it for years.
you know it's red.

they see green and black. and they not only see different colors,
they see it as a bad thing, where you see good.

did you do the red in the first place for them?

do you do it for them? do you do it for you?
and when you finally finally figure out that their eyes are
sick and they can't see the red, do you fault them for it?
can you fault someone for sick eyes?
or do you offer compassion? even when they're talkin' about
your ugly colors behind your back?

it's gotta be compassion. it's gotta be.
if you never did it for them in the first place,
then you need to step up and offer the compassion.
or your reds really do turn green and black.

but there's gotta be compassion in there for yourself too.
because it's no easy thing to be a beautiful red dancer and
hear the gossip that you're a green and black drag.

and it's no easy thing to hold that it's more than just jealousy
or whatever you had tried to label it with. that there's
mental illness involved and that will never be addressed and a life
will have lived without ever being able to even see red.