I’ve never actually met someone
in recovery, he said…
I’m not sure how one raw statement could capture so much and at the
same time embody such haunting emptiness.
Part of me heard. Part of me couldn’t believe. Part of me wanted to
weep. Was this hyperbole for emphasis? Hyperbole for blogger’s sake? Some kind
of strange juxtaposition to keep me grounded in patient’s reality? I forget too
easily. I forget that no one is supposed
to get better. I forget that no one is
supposed to be in recovery. I forget that no one is supposed to be cured.
No one in recovery. Oh, yeah.
Right.
And yet, it captured the essential brokenness of the system.
No one in recovery.
It took me to the gut wrenching pain of watching an extraordinary boy
be told that this diagnosis meant a
lifetime of blunted creativity, a lifetime of a nuanced cocktails of Lithium,
Seroquel, or some new sexy drug with its very own marketing minions. Walking
past the day room parked full of rockers seemingly keeping rhythm with unseen inner
worlds. Visiting meant, tolerating scowls from hardened psych nurses thinking
that family members might be part of the
dysfunction. Visiting meant, suppressed tears held back by hopelessness,
seemingly reincarnated as my brother’s mouth ran with drool after the heavy
sedations.
No one in recovery.
It captured the plight of so many forced to put up with so much, already.
The diagnosis morphing into strange
stares upon returning to college. The
shame and stigma morphing into the court ordered treatments and outrageous
removals of human rights hiding behind the hollow legs of patriarchal medicine.
The disease that affects your brain must
be causing you to not want to take your meds. It can’t be that you want
something different because you are
an autonomous human being.
No one in recovery.
On so many levels it captured the essence of the case of the mental
illness of the system. The failed American mental illness system that parades
about destroying hope. Swallow the pill. Do not ever quit your meds. Do not
question. You have a serious mental illness.
Certainly, no one cured. No one in recovery. No, I’ve never met someone like that.
