There's No Coming Back from This

by Ann Garvin

“Mental illness isn’t personal, it’s illness.” Going on to say, “You wouldn’t take another person’s diabetes as a slight against you, would you?”

In those moments I’d sync my headphones and listen to my daughter’s Spotify playlist. It was the best distraction I had, and I spent a lot of time rewinding rap songs to figure out what in the world they were saying about their dicks. It was very grounding.

Admitting that you’ve lost everything might bring empathy, but it also brought difficult questions. If you were sleeping when a tornado hit your house, the people on Twitter would blame you for living in a place where tornados can hit your house. If your accountant stole your money, everyone in your book club would agree that you should have been paying better attention. The blame ball, in the game of life, rolled downhill and, as often as not, hit the victim.

I’m going to give up people pleasing if that’s okay with everyone.