Oh to be Unhinged.

This is just a friendly note that what I am writing about can perhaps be triggering to some folk. 

I have been thinking a lot about Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade. All loss of life produces deep emotion, regardless of the context, but suicide is perhaps one of the most rattling. When the world looses a person like Anthony or Kate, the words on most our lips are “why?”

Most who know me personally would probably describe me as quite happy, bubbly and optimistic. This is my preferred state of being. I like to let love, forgiveness, grace and joy rule my life because to me, these things are indicative of the best person I can be. The other side my coin is mental illness. And sometimes I feel like a broken record when I talk about my anxiety: it isn’t a happy, bubbly or optimistic topic. And while I am not what doctors would diagnose as clinically depressed, anxiety often begets a level of depression in its sufferers.

I try my absolute best to carry on through life, being in my preferred state, smiling and laughing often. Yet there are those days, more than I’d care to admit, when I become unhinged, and the person I strive to be no longer rules my state of being.

It is the sad truth, but we live in a world where our differences divide us. We live in a world where most would serve themselves before others. We live in a world where ignorance is bliss and most would choose blissful ignorance over truth because truth doesn’t necessarily fit the mold to which we aspire.

There are days when I become unhinged, when the woman I am is swallowed by my anxiety. I become someone unlike myself and it isn’t pretty. And there are some moments when I become so utterly unhinged, that I am desperate for a connection from someone who will see me for who I am and where I am in that moment and tell me it will be ok.

I am so blessed. I have friends and family who, without judgement, do just that. And the moments wherein my happy, bubbly and optimistic demeanour is dampened by anxiousness, don’t become the ones that define me. They see both sides of my coin and truly accept them with love.

I simply cannot imagine where I would be without this. When I truly need someone, love emerges, whether it is a close friend, family member, coworker – what have you. Then I think about Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. Kate’s husband said she “sounded happy” the night before her death. Truly, it can be a moment of feeling undone in which you make a decision that changes your life, and lives of your loved ones, forever.

So many simply ask why a person doesn’t get help. Why don’t they reach out? Why aren’t they seeing a therapist? And this is a dark but truthful statement: sometimes it doesn’t matter. You could be using all the right channels but still wind up in a moment, so desperately engulfed by your illness, that you simply snap. And no matter how much joy they radiate, no one fits into their own mold one hundred percent.