Even The Oblivious Can Still Find His Mercy

I have learned over the last few years of having definite “blind-spots” that have shaped my mental illness. These are things that I can never grasp, and my attempts at grasping on to it are like holding on to mercury. It simply can not happen. The tighter I grip, the further it escapes me.

I enter a complicated life. Without even realizing it, I’m quite disturbed. It’s like being completely oblivious, and yet rushing out to play the game without understanding the rules. I have no concept of how things work, I just jump in and with a flurry of activity, it does get ugly fast. I don’t understand. Things are moving fast and with an apparent purpose, and I have no clue.

There were times in one of the mental hospitals, where I was very much disconnected from the real world. I went through weeks of not understanding, I wasn’t able to mesh with the routine around me. I sincerely thought I did, and I wanted too very much. But the ‘gears’ wouldn’t come in to alignment.

Struggling with mental illness will very often take you into places you have never, ever dreamed. As a matter of plain fact, you’ll hardly will grasp what is real. That is when you sink into insanity. And you will realize, without really knowing it, that you are gone.

My heart goes out to those who are lost in their own minds. But certainly to those ‘loved ones’ who are completely muddled as they so want to explain what is happening. Those of us, ‘on-the-slide’ down, must realize that we are effecting all those lives of those who are nearest to us. This is not a guilt-trip, but a simple acknowledgement of what ‘falls-out’ on the recipients of our twisted confusion.

“My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”
— Anne Lamott

The point of this is we must accept that there are places in our minds which are “no man’s zones” where logically none can go safely. Those of us start to transgress that ‘zone’ and we become casualties.

Destruction rules in us, and we are undone. To mix metaphors, we work out of a place of anesthesia, we don’t feel all that we are experiencing. We are numbly moving into a deeper confusion. Mental and physical pain are ’brothers.’ All you want to do is to escape from what is hurting you. Maybe that is why abusing alcohol and drugs is so prevalent among hurting people.

I do want to encourage you who are waiting for a dear one, a loved one to emerge from their confusion. They are lost, and have disappeared into the fog. It’s hard to see them anymore. Your heart breaks because of their condition. But you must trust in the Grace of the Father. You really have no other options.

“We are workers together with God, so we beg you: Do not let the grace that you received from God be for nothing.”

2 Corinthians 14:1