The dignity of risk and the right to fail is much clearer to me than ever before, but it means so much more than securing a job or obtaining success. For me, it’s about surviving. It is the core battle within me as I am destined to thrive. I have been fighting a sense of oppression that I myself have embraced as my calling.
I was conditioned to deal with failure from a distorted perspective that was never my own.
From my dad complaining and commanding me to stay, and rest because I look sick and exhausted, to my partner picking a fight because I do too much and couldn’t possibly learn a thing from the books I read or the people I seek. I’m impulsive, destructive and hyperactive they say. I have grown tired of hearing that I do too much for an undeserving society, or that I shouldn’t tell my story because it is shameful, and disgusting. I should stop before I lose my benefits. My dialogue is a figment of my imagination and an unwillingness to move on with forgetful ignorance.
Do you know what it feels like to be alone surrounded by people? To feel so consumed by doubt, and overwhelmed by an external noise that penetrates the internal drive with repetitious intrusion, and invasion of your sanity? To be alive yet barely living? Just simply existing. Do you know what it feels like to run home and hide because you look “sick and tired”? Have you ever felt contagious, repulsive, ugly, and unworthy? Or, to drink yourself to sleep because you are full of energy and restless so you feel the need to suppress your thoughts, and disable your own free will to do anything at all?
Do you know what it feels like to be sick and tired of being sick and tired? I do. I began to ponder upon this these self defeating practices of mine, and then I saw “it”. I saw my distorted reasonings for what they really were. They were someone else’s adversity, not my own. My actions were the conditioned responses to my own ignorance.
I would be nothing without my connection and attachment to mental health, and other social services. I wouldn’t have a roof over my head if it wasn’t for supportive housing, or funds to feed my family if it wasn’t for social security. I wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for the peers who believed in me. Surely I would have perished by my own defeated hands.
I fearlessly terrified and desperate to find a way out of the rabbit hole. I want to buy my own car so that we can safely travel without the exhaustion of lugging our belongings around. I want to sign a lease to my very own home so my family can have a safe place to call their own, and I wouldn’t have to travel so much between so many homes. I want a love that is unconditional and supportive rather than possessive and coercive. These are things that can not be attained by hiding in silence. I am empowered, motivated, and able bodied. What’s the worst than can happen by simply trying,
Author Info:
mentalhealth
Max E. Guttman is the owner of Mindful Living LCSW, PLLC, a private mental health practice in Yonkers, New York.
