I imagine it must be hard

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jb-london/ / CC BY 2.0

Empathy is an amazing thing. The ability to put yourself in someone else's situation and relate to them is essential to humanity. Without it, isms would run rampant and there would be even more violence than there already is.

But there is something to be said for having someone you can talk to who gets it. Who has faced the situation as you, has had to make some of the same decisions, who truly knows exactly what you're going through.

On Saturday, I attended a memorial for family members of an acquaintance. Four members of her family died in a car accident last summer. Her two surviving siblings both have disabilities, and she is the guardian for both. She is in her late twenties. When she got up to speak, she thanked many people, and it was clear she'd had a lot of support from friends and family. She'd had a lot of sympathy. She'd had a lot of empathy. But she still felt alone, like no one really knew what she was going through. And then she got a call from a local organization who put her in touch with someone who lived in the area, had also lost her parents, and was raising a brother with a disability. I can't begin to imagine what she's been through, what she goes through every day. But I'm glad that she has someone she can talk to who does know.

I hope you have someone like that, and if not, I hope you decide to reach out and look for someone. Whether it's through NAMI or another organization that offers support groups for caregivers, or through the internet, through groups like Children of Parents with a Mental Illness, it will make a big difference. To mention something and not have to struggle to articulate the full scope of the experience. To describe something and have someone nod in affirmation.

We take for granted that understanding when we talk about relationship problems or being stressed out at work or school. When we talk about dealing with poor customer service or having to fill out twenty different forms to get our insurance to pay for something it's supposed to cover. It's easy to find someone who can relate to all the trivial things in our lives. And usually we can find someone who can relate to the big things, too: losing someone close to us, or becoming a parent for the first time. It's not always that simple for the things that we don't talk about, and it makes it that much more important. We all need to know that someone else has felt the same, survived the same. Not just in the helpful advice and mentoring way, though that is certainly beneficial. But ultimately what we need is proof that we, too, will be okay.

How much better would your life have been if it had not been full of secrets?

As much as I sometimes disagree with her and sometimes find her posts slightly manipulative, at other times I very much enjoy reading Penelope Trunk's blog for her voice, her sense of humour, the way she gets me thinking, and especially for her candor. And she's done it again.

She recently posted an explanation of why she is so open about things many of us would never dream of talking about, at least not out in public on the internet with first name last name picture and everything--getting divorced, having two abortions, her company's financial troubles, her romantic life, you name it. Here's an excerpt:
My point is that my childhood was ruined by secrets.

In hindsight, so many people kept the secret: my family, the police, teachers before my freshman year. Decades later, when I asked my high school friends what they thought of me in high school, two of them told me that everyone thought I was nuts coming to school beaten up so often.

I’m not kidding when I say that I thought I was keeping that a secret.

So what I’m telling you here is that I’m scared of secrets. I’m more scared of keeping things a secret than I am of letting people know that I’m having trouble. People can’t believe how I’m willing to write about my life here. But what I can’t believe is how much better my life could have been if it had not been full of secrets.

So today, when I have a natural instinct to keep something a secret, I think to myself, “Why? Why don’t I want people to know?” Because if I am living an honest life, and my eyes are open, and I’m trying my hardest to be good and kind, then anything I’m doing is fine to tell people.

That’s why I can write about what I write about on this blog.

And when you think you cannot tell someone something about yourself, ask yourself, “Really, why not?”

In some ways, growing up in house with a mentally ill parent is not unlike growing up in a house with abuse, alcoholism, or some other dysfunction. There's so much secrecy. So much feeling like nobody else gets you. So much wanting to be normal, trying hard to pretend that things are normal. As if growing up weren't full of enough fear of being judged.

Funny how shame maintains its grip even when we have done absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. For me, it is a mixture of a little bit of shame and a lot of fear about how people will react. Mostly because even after having written a lot about my mother's illness and what it was like to grow up with her, I still have a difficult time articulating a lot of things. To come up with some sort of elevator speech for it seems an injustice. But it's a really hard thing to understand if you didn't grow up with some type of dysfunction and secrecy at home, if you didn't grow up much faster than you should have.

And I want people to understand, but can't seem to communicate it, and so I don't say anything at all. And I'm still terrified of people rejecting me, or that they'll stop talking to me or not ask me questions because they're scared of it and don't know what to say. I hate when people say things like, "That must've been hard." Um, well, it wasn't fun. What do you say to that that doesn't sound like you're seeking pity? I'm also scared that they will ask me questions, and even though that's what I'd prefer, that I'll just lose it when they do.

How open are you? Who was the first person you told? Do your friends know? Your significant others? Coworkers? Random strangers on the internet?

Reaching out vs. Respecting boundaries

Earlier today, I was talking with a friend about our 4ths and she mentioned her significant other's parents had visited and how the dad is wont to talk incessantly, not about anything necessarily related to the current conversation, and he'll follow you around and keep talking to (or rather, at) you even as you're shutting the door to the bathroom. He's always been like this, apparently. I really wanted to say, "My mom does that, too," but then somehow we changed topics and the moment passed.

I remember once overhearing a former boss say to somebody else on the phone about how her husband was depressed, and she was trying to explain it to whoever was on the other end of the line, but she didn't seem to be having any luck. I wanted to say something, to tell her that it's something I've also struggled with, but a.) I had overheard it, and b.) I didn't know if she wanted me to know.

Sometimes opportunities present themselves and usually I do not take them and then kick myself afterwards. What if I told them something they didn't want to hear? Like, hey, your father-in-law's odd behavior sounds like my mom's and she has a mental illness so maybe he does too! I mean, I guess it is better that he get treatment if that is the case, but then again it may just be some quirk of behaviour that has nothing to do with mental illness. And then there is always that question of how much is too much information to share at work.

Illness and abnormalities make people really uncomfortable. Just ask anybody who's an amputee or visibly a burn victim. Yeah, there's all this ra-ra-bust-the-stigma and it's cool to smash taboo and whatnot. But just like in cognitive behavioural therapy (or whatever that method is for helping people with phobias through gradually increasing exposure), I think dealing with stigmas is one of those things that is a nudge-over-the-edge type thing rather than a sink-or-swim type thing. (Such an articulate sentence, I know.) Sometimes getting to know someone of that "other" group or some other type of interaction/experience speeds this up a lot, but rarely are such planned occurrences effective. All those exercises about stereotypes in school were just awkward and sometimes self-defeating.

Sometimes too much too fast just pushes people in the opposite direction. Not trying to knock Augusten Burroughs, and admittedly I haven't finished the book b/c I can't remember where I put it, but Running with Scissors just seemed like another memoir in the veins of I-had-a-fucked-up-and/or-bizarre-childhood. Augusten Burroughs is "that guy" at the party, much like Dave Pelzer or [insert name of someone else who wrote a memoir about traumatic experiences here]. The further something is away from our own experiences, the harder it is for us to identify with them, to truly empathize, and to understand. We don't even try; we just pity them. For me, the first book that really spoke to my experience was Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's The Keeper. I read it and kept thinking, "Yes, I know that feeling exactly!"

Anyhow, getting back to my original quandary....

When do you reach out to someone, take that step in their direction? And when do you respect whatever boundaries they have set about what they're willing to share with you?