This post is one of three that Rebecca has kindly submitted in celebration of I'm NOT Disordered exceeding a quarter of a million readers! THANK YOU EVERYONE!
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Rebecca Lombardo: http://www.rebeccalombardo.com/
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In
2013, I attempted to take my life. I was admitted immediately to the hospital
and placed on suicide watch. Because I have a lot of friends on social media,
my husband thought it would be a good way to keep people updated about my
condition. I don’t blame him, in fact, I
gave him permission. It seemed logical and was not at all meant to hurt anyone.
I considered most of the people on my page to be close friends, and I know a
lot of people were asking about me.
What
we didn’t ever stop to consider was the people that didn’t want the updates.
Some of those friends were people I had known 20 years or more. When I was finally
released from the mental institution that I was transferred to, I hoped for support from my friends. I had just
been through a major trauma and the hospital I was sent to was just a horrible,
horrible place.
Much
to my dismay, the first time I signed on to Facebook I discovered that I had
lost quite a few friends. Some were hardly noticeable, but some were people I
considered family and I was stunned, and I was furious. I was so angry that I should never have been trying to
communicate with any of these people. I should have taken a step back
and approached it at a later date. I
knew I was only going to be met with more
negativity, but sometimes I have trouble controlling my anger.
As
I started to approach certain people, I was shocked to hear that they deleted
or even blocked me because of my husband’s updates. They were apparently too
depressing for some people. My feelings at the time were shackled to resentment. I kept thinking, “It was hard on YOU
that I almost died? Are you kidding me right now?”. The more I thought about
it, the angrier I got.
One
friend, I had known for more than 20
years. We even lived together at one point. I felt like I had always been there
for her when she needed me, so I couldn’t
understand why she couldn’t be there for me when I so desperately needed her.
My husband explained that he had privately messaged her to tell her the
situation. Apparently, up until that point,
I had done a great job of hiding my disease from her. Either that or she wasn’t
paying any attention. I’m inclined to believe it was the latter of the two.
He
was met with stereotypical stigmatizing
statements like, “What could she possibly have to be so depressed about?” and
“Suicide is just taking the coward’s way out of life.” So, he dropped it and didn’t tell me about it right away for
obvious reasons. When I went to message her that I was home and found out that
she not only deleted me but blocked me as
well, I had to email and ask her why.
I
don’t recall our exact conversation; I
think I’ve blocked a lot of it out. I do remember my anger reaching boiling
point as I wrote my email. I let her have it. Now that I can look back at the
situation, I do regret getting that angry. However, when I started to get the
comments back about me being a coward and having her only refer to it as “my
so-called illness,” well let’s just say I
lost it. It only took three emails to
decimate a 20+ year friendship. That was in July of 2013, and we still don’t talk.
Some
days I miss her. Most of the time, the feelings of loss are immediately
replaced by resentment. Then there are the days where I begin to wonder. What
if I had approached it differently? Why if I had gotten out of my own way long enough to realize maybe she was
afraid of losing her friend and that fear turned into anger?
What
if I had tried to educate her on my condition? What if I had just come right
out and told her why I did what I did? Despite my part in the whole sordid
affair, I have to put part of the burden on her as well. She could have
approached me kindly without tossing stigma and judgment
out at me. She owed me that much after more than 20 years.
The
moral of the story here is that there will be people in your life that no
matter what, they will not understand your illness. They won’t even try.
They’ll hear the term mental illness and
cut and run. You have to keep reminding yourself that it’s not your fault. You
didn’t ask for this disease, and you
certainly didn’t ask for the ignorance you run across. You can explain it to
them, but you can’t understand it for them.
On
the other side, try to remember that a serious
mental breakdown may scare your friends or family members. They may be afraid
to discuss it with you for fear of making it worse, so their only instinct is
to get as far away from you as possible. I’ve witnessed this first-hand. Perhaps their first instinct is anger; that
is not your fault either.
The
person you need to be concerned with right now is the one looking back at you
in the mirror. Other people will come around at their own pace, or they may not ever come around at all. It’s not up to
you to figure it out for them, and while the loss may be painful, it’s good to
know who will be by your side when the going gets tough. If you do lose
someone, that is their issue, not yours. You have to get yourself better; you can’t focus on becoming what they
want or need you to be. In the long run, you’ll realize that if they’re out the
door at the first sign of trouble; they
weren’t friends anyway.
For more on Rebecca's personal journey visit: http://www.rebeccalombardo.com/about
And to buy Rebecca's book visit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692509739/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
