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đ§ Listen to Sarah read this installment of Cured:
What is mental health? I asked myself this question many times during my recovery from serious mental illness. For twenty-five years, doctors had medicalized my mental and emotional pain. Those diagnoses said I was sick, but how would I know when I was well? We donât talk about mental health recovery. Psychiatry doesnât have a manual for it. The media doesnât run segments about it. Journalists rarely write about it.
Like many people, I was trying to recover on my own. At first, I assumed it meant going off medication and leaving therapy. It turns out recovery requires neither.
Then I made another mistake. I confused mental health with meeting societal expectationsâspecifically, the pressure to be in a romantic relationship, a.k.a. amatonormativity. Heterosexual single women are often perceived as being somehow defective and probably mentally unstable if they arenât in one. In the dating world, the worst thing a woman can be is âpsycho.â The potentially âcrazy girlfriendâ must be dumped and returned to singledom where she belongs.
It wouldnât be till much later that Iâd learn that recovery looks different for each person, and being ânormalâ or socially acceptable isnât part of it.
*
The plan is to spend the weekend at Mattâs farm. It seems like a good idea. Matt drove to Chicago to pick me up. Itâs one of the coldest Januarys on record.
Once weâre off the highway, Mattâs truck skids on the ice. Driving painfully slowly through this tiny town in Michigan (town is an overstatement; itâs more of a depot), we pass a seemingly vacant church, a closed feed store, and the Freedom Bar & Grill.
Iâm not in danger (Matt and I have been dating for a few weeks and Iâve known him for years), but when we pull into the driveway, I realize Iâm trapped. Thereâs no way out of here without a car.
His house is one story and has the feel of a storage unit. The kitchen and living room are one open space. Then thereâs a bedroom, Mattâs study, and a bathroom.
Thereâs no heat. Well, thereâs heat but only from the wood stove in Mattâs living room. He likes to keep his house cool, he says. To save money. And he likes the wood stove, likes the challenge of heating the entire house with it.
Even after an hour, itâs not see-your-breath cold but cold enough that my long underwear beneath my jeans, the camisole and turtleneck under my wool sweater, and the double pair of socks on my feet arenât enough. I put on my down coat.
He watches a football game on TV. Iâve never owned a TV. (Movies and streaming are beautiful things.) The sound of the commercials is like nails on a chalkboard to me.
I try to write. Iâm working on a novelâa thrillerâthatâs not particularly thrilling. I get nowhere, so I read workshop submissions from the Introduction to Creative Writing class Iâm teaching.
My mind races: I want out. I want to go home. Two days. How will I make it through the night and then a day and then another night? Why am I there? Iâm sick. Iâm a sick person. Thatâs why I feel this way. Iâm bipolar. Iâmâ
Or maybe this just sucks, and Iâm not interested.
*
Itâs as difficult to find an agreed-upon definition of romantic love as it is to pinpoint when it started. If we go with the American Psychological Associationâs definition, itâs âa type of love in which intimacy and passion are prominent featuresâ and the beloved is idealized. The idealized part seems like it will always lead to trouble. (The meaning of intimacy is slightly unsettlingââan interpersonal state of extreme emotional closeness such that each partyâs personal space can be entered by any of the other parties without causing discomfort to that personââthough the fact that I find it unsettling probably says a lot about me and my need for âalone time.â) Marriages occurred in Ancient Greece though Plato said the highest form of love is non-sexual. The Prophet Mohammad and his beloved Aisha are thought to be proof that romantic love existed in the pre-Islamic era. Most scholars place the beginnings of romance in the Middle Ages when it was a mix of spiritual attainment and knightly chivalry. During the twelfth century, French poets invented lâamour courtois (courtly love) though that had nothing to do with marriage.
We assume romantic love is endemic to all beings. Yet we canât know if animals feel it. And pair-bonding e.g., âswans mate for life,â isnât the same as âbeing in love.â (Swans, by the way, donât all mate for life; sadly, they break up and have swan affairs.) Our closest relative, chimps, donât couple. Evolutionary biologists convincingly argue that humans learned to bond and form communities in order to pool resources and make other humans, but thatâs about perpetuating the species, not chocolate, roses, and an expensive dinner on Valentineâs Day.
Elizabeth Brake, a philosophy professor at Arizona State and the author of Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law coined the term amatonormativity to describe âthe assumptions that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types.â
Amatonormativity is everywhere. Itâs the dominant ideology in heterosexual relationships, the LGBTQ+ community (except those who identify as asexual and aromantic), and many polyamorous relationships. It makes bad rom-coms a box office draw. Itâs the reason comically uncomfortable lingerie exists.
It also tells single people thereâs something wrong with them. The message is that even a toxic or abusive relationship is better than being alone.
Despite the âmadnessâ often associated with passion, I equated romantic love with being acceptable and normal and normality with mental health.
*
We make dinner. He chops peppers. Whack! Whack! Whack! We eat.
Afterward, we sit on the couch. Matt looks at the ceiling. I do too. I didnât notice, but twenty, maybe fifty flies have come from somewhere and buzz around the light. Matt gets a fly swatter, stands on the couch, and starts at them: swat, swat, swat.
âThis happens at night,â he says. Swat! Swat!
âIn the winter?â I ask.
He shrugs.
Then itâs as if the night is inside me: depression mixed with mania mixed with anxiety, maybe mixed with something else. My depression isnât like other peopleâsâor at least not the way I hear people talk about it or the way itâs portrayed on TV. It doesnât cause me to stay in bed all day. My depression is jagged and sharp. Black, yes, and heavy but charged with irritability and passive-aggression.
Pressure builds in my chest. Iâm there, but Iâm not there. My cheeks go numb. A thought: Iâm going to die out here. Thereâs a rushing energy behind my ribcage. I canât catch my breath.
*
Part of the problem is that I never considered what recovered/mentally healthy means to me. I should have thought about the terms mental health, mental wellness, and mental well-being, so I understood what I was aiming for.
The WHO states that mental health is âa state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.â Realize our potential, cope with stress, be productive, and be good citizens? Really? That seems like a very high bar to set.
Other definitions arenât as stringent but are also not widely accepted. Mental health can also refer to our overall mental, emotional, social, and behavioral well-being. Merriam-Websterâs definition is often seen as problematic: âthe condition of being sound mentally and emotionally that is characterized by the absence of mental illness.â The WHO and others have taken pains to refute this description, stating that mental health isnât just the absence of a mental disorder or a disability. I can be bipolar and have good mental health, i.e., manage my illness.
Then thereâs mental wellness, which is basically mental health meets capitalism. Mental wellness is an industry with an economy that brings in $121 billion each year. It associates our mental stability with our ability to create value and revenue for a company. Its week-long mental health breaks are meant to combat burnout, which, in turn, increases profits. The term appears on job postings and corporate websites to signal on-the-job perks and âhealth-focused workplace environments.â It indicates medical benefits, time off, and life insurance. It can mean luxury: corporate massages, in-office meditation breaks, and catered gourmet meals. Itâs epitomized by Googleplex, a corporate campus flush with tennis and volleyball courts, organic gardens, and ânap pods.â
Mental well-being has complex layers of meaning and a long history. Although it can be traced back to ancient Greece, it didnât fully emerge until the post-WWII era. The 1940s saw the ratification of the National Mental Health Act and the creation of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Mental well-beingâparticularly hedonic well-being, i.e., how we find meaning, has been a subject of research by psychologists and sociologists ever since. Simply put, well-being is quality of life. It can be divided into two subtypes: objective well-being (how weâre judged by others) and subjective well-being (how we judge ourselves). Recovery entails the latter.
Meanwhile, Iâm in a strange house with someone I barely know with a whole lot of flies swarming around the ceiling.
*
The flies continue to buzz as Matt turns out the lights. We go to bed. I manage to sleep but wake impossibly early. Itâs still dark. Something isnât rightânot in my mind but in my body. Pain lingers in my lower abdomen. Any woman whoâs had a urinary tract infection will tell you the feeling is unmistakable.
I wake Matt and tell him I need to go home.
He gets out of bedânakedâand hugs me. I feel himâhis warmth. Has he been this welcoming the whole time? I wanted him to show me Iâm well, better, which he canât do. Heâs not a âshitty guy,â just someone with preferences and a singular way of interacting with the world. Thereâs a woman out there who likes rural environments and doesnât mind flies.
The two-hour drive back to Chicago is excruciating. A look of concern occupies Mattâs face. He drops me off. I go to Immediate Care and get antibiotics. They make everything better. A simple remedy.
*
A week later, Iâm walking my usual route through the park. Same path every day: from my apartment past the Benjamin Franklin monument, around the pond, along the lagoon to a tree I ritualistically loop, and then back again. The zoo sits just west of me. Itâs free, but I never go through it. Not on my usual route. No deviating from the path.
Recovery is different for each person. It doesnât have uniform requirements. William Anthony, who founded Boston Universityâs Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, put it this way: âRecovery is described as a deeply personal, unique process of changing oneâs attitudes, values, feelings, goals, skills, and/or roles. It is a way of living a satisfying, hopeful, and contributing life even with limitations caused by illness. Recovery involves the development of new meaning and purpose in oneâs life as one grows beyond the catastrophic effects of mental illness.â
I grew up blocks from here. Each morning, my babysitter, a Polish woman named Sophie, who was firm but kind, took me to the zoo. Sheâd sit on a bench and talk to the mothers and other babysitters while the other children and I watched the seals bob and glide in the water and galumph along the rocks. Even to me, a child, the zoo was both exciting and not quite right. The animalsâ cages were obviously too small; their âhabitatsâ were dilapidated, made of tile and rope instead of dirt and trees. Itâs a little better nowâslightly larger areas for the animals, more natural-habitat-like.
On the left is a pond and beyond it, the flamingo atrium. On the right is the reptile house. I stop outside the Lion House. In one of the outdoor cages is a treeâfake or real, I canât tell. It reaches almost to the very top.
A branch extends. It takes a moment for me to spot the snow leopard. Heâs stunning and regal. His plush fur is white and beige, dotted with black circles. His huge paws hang over the edge.
His expression should be pained, but itâs strangely serene.
According to the information plaque, his name is Taza. It also says snow leopards are solitary creatures who only come together to breed. Otherwise, they live happily on their own. They canât roar, but theyâre one of the few big cats that purr.
Continue to Chapter 12.