No witty title -A Rant-

And because I remain bad at this, I haven’t written since January…

I have time to write, but like so many others my brain gets sucked into something else – and very rarely is that something else ever good. I have a lot of books to read, and I love reading and am excited to read said books, but I don’t pick them up. I have grown to really enjoy some video games, but since school got out I haven’t picked a single one of those up either. I will mindlessly scroll through social media, looking at pictures and videos, and trying to find interesting articles to read – and then I get sucked into the hell that is modern America and everything goes dark inside of my head.

I have written here years before, but I have depression. It is much easier to write that out now without spiraling down. I also have “clinical anxiety,” which basically means between the two my brain is not a very fun place to be. But I have gotten better about talking about it.  I actually do talk to my students more about mental health, and when I teach the Freedom Writer’s Diary, I am very honest about my mental health. There are parts that I leave out of my own life, but there are many times I have sat down and talked to students one-on-one when they feel so alone in that darkness about my own struggles. That always ends up with me having another child who wants to come live with me – I wish I could express the heartbreak when a teenager asks if they could live with you because then someone might actually care about them as they are for who they are.

I’ve even been able to talk about my mental health in front of a local council I sit on representing all the local school districts, as well as in conversations when I am at meetings for my state-wide work for my Education Association (Educator’s union, both teachers and Education Support Professionals). I serve as a Director on my states’ Association, representing two counties in my state – that is 13 local districts and over a thousand Educators I have been asked to represent at the state level, and then where I work on behalf of over 44,000 Educators in my state.

I do all of this work, and there I can talk fairly candidly about my mental health in my professional life.

It is my personal life that is the problem. I only speak to my boyfriend about it on a limited basis, usually when I am crashing. He knows full well what I have in my head, and he gives me whatever space and time I need or ask for, and when I am able to talk he is there.  Next month is our 11 year anniversary, and I am so very lucky to have him in my life.

As always the problem is my family. Especially my mother. I actually got into an argument with her this week around mental health, and she has refused to talk to me since then.

My state actually just passed a law that students can have/request mental health days and have those as excused absences from school. As a person who really could have used that when I was a student, and as an educator that sees what my kids go through, I get it and I think this is fantastic. I know there is concern about students “taking advantage of it,” but the types of students who would are also not the type to be fully aware of the law or the rights as young people.

The reason my mother and I got into an argument, she called to make fun of the law and any kid who would use it. She actually said “Do they think older generations didn’t have problems? Do they need safe rooms now to deal with their pretend bullshit.” And I lost it. I fucking lost it.

I told her about my student who attempted suicide this past year in-between classes in the bathroom – she should have been going from health to my class. There was a hell of a lot of things going on… but something happened in health that day, and she just couldn’t anymore. She walked out in the middle of her health class, went to the bathroom and overdosed. A friend in her class waited for a bit for her to come back, and then she walked out too to find her – thank whatever gods might exist that she did. A lot of shit went down, and we are so far out it usually takes emergency crews 30 minutes to get to my school. EMTs were there in 15. Understandably, a lot of people were messed up from this incident. The young lady was in the hospital for about two weeks and has been in counseling ever since; she is getting the help and care she needs now.

When my mom, hell when I was in school, schools actually had nurses, academic advisers, and professional councilors. I never talked about my mental health then, but when I needed a safe space I had places I could go and I took advantage of that, and never once spoke to my mother about it.

Right now, teen suicide rates are going up – UP – and maybe if we do something to make it okay to TALK about mental health instead of acting like it is something shameful that should be kept behind closed doors it could save someone’s life.

In my losing it on my mom, I told her that I can’t go to another student’s funeral who died from suicide, that my own mental health couldn’t take it again. I can’t bury any more of my kids. – This statement was met with silence – I told her that the death of a child from something we should be able to help them with is never acceptable.

And she ended our conversation saying that she didn’t want to speak to me when I was worked up and hasn’t spoken to me since.

I’m not sure I want to talk to her still. It’s been 5 days, and we were supposed to have a family get together this weekend for my brother’s birthday, but no one is talking to me. So yippy fucking skippy. Just like my last entry, I am the outsider still in my family – this time because I called someone on their bullshit by essentially saying “Kids taking their lives is a problem, and trying to actually deal with it and come up with some way to start helping them shouldn’t be a joke.”

I don’t even know how to end this. I am still angry at my mother because she clearly has not listened to me once in my life when I have tried to talk to her about my own mental health or needing help.

At least anger is something I can deal with, I have no idea how after 38 years to get my mother to actually not only hear my talking but to actually listen to a damn thing I have to say.