What is mental health? I asked myself this question many times during my recovery from serious mental illness. For twenty-five years, doctors had medicalized my mental and emotional pain. Those diagnoses said I was sick, but how would I know when I was well? We don’t talk about mental health recovery. Psychiatry doesn’t have a manual for it. The media doesn’t run segments about it. Journalists rarely write about it.
Like many people, I was trying to recover on my own. At first, I assumed it meant going off medication and leaving therapy. It turns out recovery requires neither.
Then I made another mistake. I confused mental health with meeting societal expectations—specifically, the pressure to be in a romantic relationship, a.k.a. amatonormativity. Heterosexual single women are often perceived as being somehow defective and probably mentally unstable if they aren’t in one. In the dating world, the worst thing a woman can be is “psycho.” The potentially “crazy girlfriend” must be dumped and returned to singledom where she belongs.
It wouldn’t be till much later that I’d learn that recovery looks different for each person, and being “normal” or socially acceptable isn’t part of it.
*
The plan is to spend the weekend at Matt’s farm.
It seems like a good idea. Matt and I have been dating for a few weeks and I’ve known him for years. He’s driven all the way to Chicago to pick me up because I don’t drive.
It’s one of the coldest Januarys on record. Once we’re off the highway, Matt’s truck skids on the ice. Driving painfully slowly through this tiny town in Michigan (“town” is an overstatement; it’s more of a depot), we pass a seemingly vacant church, a closed feed store, and the Freedom Bar & Grill.
We pull into the driveway, and I realize I’m trapped. There’s no way out of here without a car.
His house is one story and has the feel of a storage unit. The kitchen and living room are one open space. Then there’s a bedroom, Matt’s study, and a bathroom.
There’s no heat. Well, there’s heat but only from the wood stove in Matt’s living room. He likes to keep his house cool, he says, to save money. And he likes the wood stove, likes the challenge of heating the entire house with it.
I put on my down coat.
He watches a football game on TV. I’ve never owned a TV. The sound of the commercials is like nails on a chalkboard to me.
I try to write. I’m working on a novel—a thriller—that’s not particularly thrilling. I get nowhere, so I read workshop submissions from the Introduction to Creative Writing class I’m teaching.
How will I make it through the night and then a day and then another night? Why am I there? I’m sick. I’m a sick person.
Or maybe this just genuinely sucks.
*
We make dinner. He chops peppers. Whack! Whack! Whack! We eat.
Afterward, we sit on the couch. Twenty, maybe fifty flies come from somewhere and buzz around the light.
Matt gets a fly swatter, stands on the couch, and starts at them: swat, swat, swat.
“This happens at night,” he says. Swat! Swat!
“In the winter?” I ask.
He shrugs.
Then it’s as if the night is inside me. My depression isn’t like other people’s—or at least not the way I hear people talk about it or the way it’s portrayed on TV. It doesn’t cause me to stay in bed all day. It’s jagged and sharp. Black, yes, and heavy but charged with irritability and unsettledness.
Pressure builds in my chest. I’m there, but I’m not there. I’m going to die out here. There’s a rushing energy behind my ribcage.
*
Part of the problem is that I never considered what recovered/mentally healthy means to me. I should have thought about the terms mental health, mental wellness, and mental well-being, so I understood what I was aiming for.
The WHO states that mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.”
Realize our potential, cope with stress, be productive, and be good citizens? Really? That seems like a very high bar to set.
Other definitions aren’t as stringent. Mental health can refer to our overall mental, emotional, social, and behavioral well-being.
Merriam-Webster’s definition is often seen as problematic: “the condition of being sound mentally and emotionally that is characterized by the absence of mental illness.” The WHO and others have taken pains to refute this description, stating that mental health isn’t just the absence of a mental disorder or a disability. I can be bipolar and have good mental health, i.e., manage my illness.
Then there’s mental wellness, which is basically mental health meets capitalism. Mental wellness is an industry with an economy that brings in $121 billion each year. It associates our mental stability with our ability to create value and revenue for a company. Its week-long mental health breaks are meant to combat burnout, which, in turn, increases profits. The term appears on job postings and corporate websites to signal on-the-job perks and “health-focused workplace environments.” It indicates medical benefits, time off, and life insurance. It can mean luxury: corporate massages, in-office meditation breaks, and catered gourmet meals. It’s epitomized by Googleplex, a corporate campus flush with tennis and volleyball courts, organic gardens, and “nap pods.”
Mental well-being has complex layers of meaning and a long history. Although it can be traced back to ancient Greece, it didn’t fully emerge until the post-WWII era. The 1940s saw the ratification of the National Mental Health Act and the creation of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Mental well-being—particularly hedonic well-being, i.e., how we find meaning, has been a subject of research by psychologists and sociologists ever since. Simply put, well-being is quality of life. It can be divided into two subtypes: objective well-being (how we’re judged by others) and subjective well-being (how we judge ourselves).
*
The flies continue to buzz as Matt turns out the lights. We go to bed. I manage to sleep but wake impossibly early. It’s still dark. Something isn’t right—not in my mind but in my body.
Pain lingers in my lower abdomen. Any woman who’s had a urinary tract infection will tell you the feeling is unmistakable.
I wake Matt and tell him I need to go home.
He gets out of bed—naked—and hugs me. I feel him—his warmth. Has he been this welcoming the whole time?
He’s not a “shitty guy,” just someone with preferences and a singular way of interacting with the world. There’s a woman out there who likes rural environments and doesn’t mind flies.
*
The two-hour drive back to Chicago is excruciating. A look of concern occupies Matt’s face. He drops me off. I go to Immediate Care and get antibiotics.
They make everything better. A simple remedy.
A week later, I walk my usual route through the park. Same path every day: from my apartment past the Benjamin Franklin monument, around the pond, along the lagoon to a tree I ritualistically loop, and then back again.
The zoo sits just west of me. It’s free, but I never go through it. Not on my usual route. No deviating from the path.
Recovery is different for each person. It doesn’t have uniform requirements. William Anthony, who founded Boston University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, put it this way: “Recovery is described as a deeply personal, unique process of changing one’s attitudes, values, feelings, goals, skills, and/or roles. It is a way of living a satisfying, hopeful, and contributing life even with limitations caused by illness. Recovery involves the development of new meaning and purpose in one’s life as one grows beyond the catastrophic effects of mental illness.”
I grew up blocks from here. Each morning, my babysitter, a Polish woman named Sophie, who was firm but kind, took me to the zoo. She’d sit on a bench and talk to the mothers and other babysitters while the other children and I watched the seals bob and glide in the water and galumph along the rocks.
Even to me, a child, the zoo was both exciting and not quite right. The animals’ cages were obviously too small; their “habitats” were dilapidated, made of tile and rope instead of dirt and trees. It’s a little better now—slightly larger areas for the animals, more natural-habitat-like.
On the left is a pond and beyond it, the flamingo atrium. On the right is the reptile house.
I stop outside the Lion House. In one of the outdoor cages is a tree that reaches almost to the very top. It takes a moment for me to spot the snow leopard. He’s stunning and regal. His plush fur is white and beige, dotted with black circles. His huge paws hang over the edge.
His expression should be pained, but it’s strangely serene.
According to the information plaque, his name is Taza. It also says snow leopards are solitary creatures who only come together to breed. Otherwise, they live happily on their own. They can’t roar, but they’re one of the few big cats that purr.
To support my work, buy my journalistic memoir Pathological (HarperCollins), a USA Today Bestseller that traces how we’ve come to believe that ordinary emotions are mental disorders. If you’ve already read it, thank you! You can gift a copy to a friend, your local library, or your favorite independent bookstore.
I'm about halfway into Pathological and loving it.
I spent my life in severe periods of major depression.
I was able to go off antidepressants for good about 6 years ago now.
I have good days and not so good days, but nothing that requires medication.
I'm very grateful for that.
But more importantly, I believe that you can be cured of 'mental illness', and so your book touches me on a very personal level.
Thank you for having the courage to share your journey.
"You Perfect Romantic Getaway" is so inspiring. You a perfect writer!