Every year on this day I pen something about how I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the sacrifice of Rick Rypien and the work of Kevin Bieksa. It would be easy to do that again because it’s absolutely true but this year has been one like no other in my life or in the lives of anyone reading this. Those of us who battle our mental illnesses on a daily basis were not ready to go it completely alone for the last twelve months. In fact, we’ve been told we should never have to and are encouraged to reach out as much as possible.
But things are different now. Psychiatrist, therapist, and counsellor appointments are over the telephone, meaning that the privacy and trust within those office walls are all too often swapped out for sitting in the bathroom crying while your mental health professional is helpless on the other end of a telephone line. Group therapy, cancelled for most of the year is finally getting back up and running using group chat aps like Zoom, but again ,they depend on having privacy in the home. I only deal with depression, anxiety and borderline personality disorder. I can’t imagine what it must be like for those with chronic post traumatic stress disorder and illnesses like it, where that trust between patient and health professional is fragile and nearly impossible over the phone or video chat.
COVID has changed everything and for many of us, going it alone for the first time in years, the prospect of at least another six months of this seems like an impossible moat which must be crossed. We feel alone, all over again.
So, I’m writing this with a simple request to those who have friends and family with mental illness in their lives. Check in with them, often. Don’t take “Fine,” as an answer if you are in a trust position with that person for fine usually means that they don’t want to bother you or don’t think you’ll understand or truly care. We’ve been telling those with mental illness to reach out for years now but in this year, at this time, it’s your turn to reach out to us.
“I’ll understand if you don’t feel like talking to me about what’s going on with you but I really mean it when I say that I’m here for you, even if that just means complaining about the rain to each other. I’m not going away because I care about you, no matter what.”
Trust me. We all need to know we are loved, now more than ever.
