Today Just Seems Like It’s About Mental Illness

I’ve been thinking…

Photo by Dustin Bryson on Unsplash

I remember a person saying something to me about mental illness. She was a visitor to one of the classes I had in high school or middle school. She struggled with depression. She was a suicide survivor. I don’t remember what grade I was in when I met her, but I remember the words she said. There was one specific thing that stood out. She said:

I have good days and bad days.

That made an impression. That one sentence sums it all up. Clear and concise, those seven words promised to explain your behavior, tinge your daily mood with a bit of unpredictability, and at the same time, ask for forgiveness. I must have thought it profound then because I still remember.

The finer details of that moment are lost on me now, not only because my memory is pale. I, too, have a mental illness. This makes me… disorganized, we’ll say. It doesn’t help that my sole ambition is to be alone with a book or my writing device.

Thus, I have good days and bad days. Some days, I am relatively happy, content. On other days, I struggle to do the things I am supposed to. Some days, I have a plan to carry out. On others, I’m only doing what seems best for the next hour or thirty minutes. Through a single week, I might vary between a total disregard for the more suspicious…