Because I'm bored of being told to be pathetic
For those who haven't yet picked up on this, this past year has been a tough one for me. Somehow everything suddenly stopped making sense and I ended up spending most of my energy on just fighting off anxiety. You can read more about what that was like for me here.
One of the things about not really being able to do normal life very well is that you start to listen when people tell you that you need to take care of yourself. Well and good; I do actually massively agree that it's important to take care of yourself. As part of that I invested a lot of energy I didn't have into making sure that a couple other people, at least, knew where I was at and knew if I was having a bad day. That didn't go too well because I was pretty much incapable of articulating what was going on (you might notice the blog post I linked to above was written in January this year, i.e. when I was already getting a lot better and had been for a while).
What I don't like, is that now that I'm better, there seems to be this sense that I will have 'learnt my lesson' - that I won't do things anymore that stretch me beyond what I'm capable of, that really challenge me. I have dozens of issues with this, a very few of which are listed below.
The first one is that if that had been my attitude when I was struggling, I wouldn't be any better than I was. I'm where I am now partly because of lots of lovely people looking out for me, partly because it never got so bad that I couldn't manage it most of the time, partly because of some helpful lifestyle and diet changes (you know the old 'running is cheaper than therapy' - actually running shoes are expensive and I get my therapy free, but keeping my mental health in order is the main reason I run). Partly, though, it was because I refused to be put down by the fact that I couldn't do my normal life. Long before I had any mind trouble of my own I was an activist for recognising that mental health problems are real, and I'd watched friends and family deal with similar struggles, so it wasn't a stretch or a surprise for me to admit something was wrong and to be okay with the fact that I just couldn't do my life well anymore.
I learned to roll with the punches, to spot the differences between the days when trying harder would fix things and the days when trying harder would make things worse. I learnt to let myself off the hook when trying harder wouldn't help, but to rise to the challenge if just putting in a bit of effort would make things better. I realised pretty quickly that I had to want to get better, even though it would be so much easier to just let myself get worse until it becomes someone else's problem.
When you're dealing with a mental health issue the smallest things can seem impossible, and every day is a fight, even the good days. On the good days when your head's above the waves you learn to quickly spot the shore, make a dash towards it, even knowing the next wave will push you right back out again. When you're underwater you focus on holding your breath, not panicking, not breathing in water. In practice that means on a good day I would make sure I had food in the cupboards, do my laundry so everything was in place when a bad day hit again; and try to spot one or two things I could do to make it easier next time. On a bad day I'd focus on breathing slowly and waiting the feelings out.
Basically what I'm saying is that being ill didn't just teach me I had limitations, but taught me that I could actually deal with a real challenge (which have been a bit thin on the ground in my happy little life so far). I don't come away from it thinking, let's turn away from challenge so it doesn't happen again, but thinking that I want to keep embracing the challenges, running with them. Be wise about when you take challenges, make sure that there's support around you; but whatever is or isn't there, I never ever want to make backing down my default.
Secondly, I want to stand with the people out there who don't have the option of just clocking off for the rest of the day. Across the world there are people who won't eat today if they don't work today. In my city there are many parents who go without to feed their kids. There are people who work long hours with no rights or recognition to give their children a better chance. There are people who live with chronic illness, and people who have no homes to go even when it's raining, there are people who can't express themselves when they're in pain and have to simply hope someone will guess what they need.
I don't want to use my privilege - my health, financial security, youth, talents, contacts, qualifications - to ringfence myself into a little secure cell that no hardship can break through. I don't want to learn to be soft living in a hard world. I don't want to get to my eighties and develop Alzheimers only to find that I don't know how to cope with my own inadequacy, or be made redundant and find that I'm afraid of uncertainty, or lose a loved one and find that I don't know how to deal with pain. Tough shit happens, and I don't think we do ourselves any favours by avoiding it.
Nor do I want to use my privilege to do things that will make me feel good about myself without actually costing me anything. In Mark 12:41-43, Jesus and his mates are watching many wealthy, generous people tipping wads of notes into the local charity buckets. Then a little old lady shuffles up and takes two 10p pieces, slips them in among the banknotes. Jesus says she's given more than anyone else - why? Because what she gave cost her. She didn't have anything else, and rather than going to spend that teeny little on a couple carrots or a banana to stem the tide of hunger for a few hours more, she gave it away.
Sometimes people tell me I'm doing enough because I do a job that's 'helping people'. Spoilers guys: I get paid to do my job. It's tough sometimes, but it also means I have a roof over my head and food in the cupboards, and I get to eat out on people's birthdays and buy the right shoes for running and take a trip overseas once in a while; in other words, I've got a pretty good deal. Maybe I am doing enough, but if I am it's simply because that's what God has called me to now, not because I'm living some sort of extra-holy life by doing something that happens to benefit others. If God calls me to give up any of that, I won't get anywhere by saying 'but God I had to make a difficult phonecall today, so bad I had to have a slice of chocolate cake to cheer me up afterwards, so you really can't ask any more of me'.
God can ask whatever He wants of us (this is point 3 by the way). It's in the job description. As a Christian I'm thrice His, created by Him, bought with Jesus's blood, surrendered in my own decision to follow Him. There are some things we're all called to, others that are specific to individuals. I want to draw your attention to this one, which is a call - an order - for everyone who's chosen to follow Him. It comes in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is calling His listeners to embrace much higher standards for their own behaviour than probably any of us can live up to, and He says it without apology: 'Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect' (Matt 5:48).
'Give yourself a break' they say. 'You can't live up to that standard.' Actually, I can. I haven't managed it yet, but Jesus says I can. Yes, there's grace when I fail, which means He won't be angry and I don't need to kick myself either. I know that much from experience, because of all the days so far that I haven't been perfect (it's coming up to 24 years of them). But I'm not going to set a lower standard for myself than the one Jesus set for me, even if I haven't made it yet.
If I'm honest, I don't think that's a very healthy attitude on my part. I guess I want to counter that I'm not called to be healthy; that if something's not valuable enough to risk my wellbeing for, then it might not be worth pursuing anyway.
I want to finish on just one final point, which is about trust. This one's just for the Christians out there, because it only makes sense if you rely on God having your back. This is simply that to take risks, to live on the edge, to pursue challenge, is an act of trust. I don't want to make my decisions based on what I'm afraid of, but that's not because I think my fears aren't valid (I'm pretty sure they all are!); it's because if I truly believe that God cares for me and is with me, then I can trust the consequences to Him, knowing that He won't leave me to deal with them on my own.
Okay, rant over. I kind of don't want to publish this because I don't want anyone to feel like even-more-of-a-failure than they already do (including myself). I guess I just don't think the right way out of feeling like a failure is to lower your standards. Maybe it helps to remember that forgiving ourselves for our failures is a challenge too; take up that challenge and run with it, and learn what it takes to forgive yourself as Christ forgave you. It's a tough call, but I'm pretty sure it's worth it.
One of the things about not really being able to do normal life very well is that you start to listen when people tell you that you need to take care of yourself. Well and good; I do actually massively agree that it's important to take care of yourself. As part of that I invested a lot of energy I didn't have into making sure that a couple other people, at least, knew where I was at and knew if I was having a bad day. That didn't go too well because I was pretty much incapable of articulating what was going on (you might notice the blog post I linked to above was written in January this year, i.e. when I was already getting a lot better and had been for a while).
What I don't like, is that now that I'm better, there seems to be this sense that I will have 'learnt my lesson' - that I won't do things anymore that stretch me beyond what I'm capable of, that really challenge me. I have dozens of issues with this, a very few of which are listed below.
The first one is that if that had been my attitude when I was struggling, I wouldn't be any better than I was. I'm where I am now partly because of lots of lovely people looking out for me, partly because it never got so bad that I couldn't manage it most of the time, partly because of some helpful lifestyle and diet changes (you know the old 'running is cheaper than therapy' - actually running shoes are expensive and I get my therapy free, but keeping my mental health in order is the main reason I run). Partly, though, it was because I refused to be put down by the fact that I couldn't do my normal life. Long before I had any mind trouble of my own I was an activist for recognising that mental health problems are real, and I'd watched friends and family deal with similar struggles, so it wasn't a stretch or a surprise for me to admit something was wrong and to be okay with the fact that I just couldn't do my life well anymore.
I learned to roll with the punches, to spot the differences between the days when trying harder would fix things and the days when trying harder would make things worse. I learnt to let myself off the hook when trying harder wouldn't help, but to rise to the challenge if just putting in a bit of effort would make things better. I realised pretty quickly that I had to want to get better, even though it would be so much easier to just let myself get worse until it becomes someone else's problem.
When you're dealing with a mental health issue the smallest things can seem impossible, and every day is a fight, even the good days. On the good days when your head's above the waves you learn to quickly spot the shore, make a dash towards it, even knowing the next wave will push you right back out again. When you're underwater you focus on holding your breath, not panicking, not breathing in water. In practice that means on a good day I would make sure I had food in the cupboards, do my laundry so everything was in place when a bad day hit again; and try to spot one or two things I could do to make it easier next time. On a bad day I'd focus on breathing slowly and waiting the feelings out.
Basically what I'm saying is that being ill didn't just teach me I had limitations, but taught me that I could actually deal with a real challenge (which have been a bit thin on the ground in my happy little life so far). I don't come away from it thinking, let's turn away from challenge so it doesn't happen again, but thinking that I want to keep embracing the challenges, running with them. Be wise about when you take challenges, make sure that there's support around you; but whatever is or isn't there, I never ever want to make backing down my default.
Secondly, I want to stand with the people out there who don't have the option of just clocking off for the rest of the day. Across the world there are people who won't eat today if they don't work today. In my city there are many parents who go without to feed their kids. There are people who work long hours with no rights or recognition to give their children a better chance. There are people who live with chronic illness, and people who have no homes to go even when it's raining, there are people who can't express themselves when they're in pain and have to simply hope someone will guess what they need.
I don't want to use my privilege - my health, financial security, youth, talents, contacts, qualifications - to ringfence myself into a little secure cell that no hardship can break through. I don't want to learn to be soft living in a hard world. I don't want to get to my eighties and develop Alzheimers only to find that I don't know how to cope with my own inadequacy, or be made redundant and find that I'm afraid of uncertainty, or lose a loved one and find that I don't know how to deal with pain. Tough shit happens, and I don't think we do ourselves any favours by avoiding it.
Nor do I want to use my privilege to do things that will make me feel good about myself without actually costing me anything. In Mark 12:41-43, Jesus and his mates are watching many wealthy, generous people tipping wads of notes into the local charity buckets. Then a little old lady shuffles up and takes two 10p pieces, slips them in among the banknotes. Jesus says she's given more than anyone else - why? Because what she gave cost her. She didn't have anything else, and rather than going to spend that teeny little on a couple carrots or a banana to stem the tide of hunger for a few hours more, she gave it away.
Sometimes people tell me I'm doing enough because I do a job that's 'helping people'. Spoilers guys: I get paid to do my job. It's tough sometimes, but it also means I have a roof over my head and food in the cupboards, and I get to eat out on people's birthdays and buy the right shoes for running and take a trip overseas once in a while; in other words, I've got a pretty good deal. Maybe I am doing enough, but if I am it's simply because that's what God has called me to now, not because I'm living some sort of extra-holy life by doing something that happens to benefit others. If God calls me to give up any of that, I won't get anywhere by saying 'but God I had to make a difficult phonecall today, so bad I had to have a slice of chocolate cake to cheer me up afterwards, so you really can't ask any more of me'.
God can ask whatever He wants of us (this is point 3 by the way). It's in the job description. As a Christian I'm thrice His, created by Him, bought with Jesus's blood, surrendered in my own decision to follow Him. There are some things we're all called to, others that are specific to individuals. I want to draw your attention to this one, which is a call - an order - for everyone who's chosen to follow Him. It comes in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is calling His listeners to embrace much higher standards for their own behaviour than probably any of us can live up to, and He says it without apology: 'Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect' (Matt 5:48).
'Give yourself a break' they say. 'You can't live up to that standard.' Actually, I can. I haven't managed it yet, but Jesus says I can. Yes, there's grace when I fail, which means He won't be angry and I don't need to kick myself either. I know that much from experience, because of all the days so far that I haven't been perfect (it's coming up to 24 years of them). But I'm not going to set a lower standard for myself than the one Jesus set for me, even if I haven't made it yet.
If I'm honest, I don't think that's a very healthy attitude on my part. I guess I want to counter that I'm not called to be healthy; that if something's not valuable enough to risk my wellbeing for, then it might not be worth pursuing anyway.
I want to finish on just one final point, which is about trust. This one's just for the Christians out there, because it only makes sense if you rely on God having your back. This is simply that to take risks, to live on the edge, to pursue challenge, is an act of trust. I don't want to make my decisions based on what I'm afraid of, but that's not because I think my fears aren't valid (I'm pretty sure they all are!); it's because if I truly believe that God cares for me and is with me, then I can trust the consequences to Him, knowing that He won't leave me to deal with them on my own.
Okay, rant over. I kind of don't want to publish this because I don't want anyone to feel like even-more-of-a-failure than they already do (including myself). I guess I just don't think the right way out of feeling like a failure is to lower your standards. Maybe it helps to remember that forgiving ourselves for our failures is a challenge too; take up that challenge and run with it, and learn what it takes to forgive yourself as Christ forgave you. It's a tough call, but I'm pretty sure it's worth it.
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