I Will Run (I Can No Longer Walk)

Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 10:57:45 -0500
Subject: Out of the Darkness Community Walk
From: afsp.houston@gmail.com
To:

Our walk committee is working on a project that will be on display the day of the walk. We see that you have registered as an "individual" walker and are not associated with any walk teams.  Please reply to this email and let us know the name of the person you are walking in memory of.

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Thank you,

Gina Rodriguez and Beverly Garza,
Houston Walk Chairs
www.myspace.com/afsp_houston
www.facebook.com/afsp.houston

Out of the Darkness Community Walks
http://www.outofthedarkness.org/

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
http://www.afsp.org/

When I first received this email from ASFP Houston I was both a little bit shocked and offended.   Last year, I participated in the ASFP Out of the Darkness Walk, something I firmly believed in and still do.  My only real problem last year was that I felt awkward and rather out of place amongst the sea of signs and blue balloons with the pictures and names of people on them who were no longer a part of this world.    My feelings basically were as such because of the term “survivor”, which when talking about mental health and suicide can mean two different things.    It seemed as if most of the activities for the day were geared around the survivors who had lost someone.   Whether or not this was completely true, as someone who was the other kind of survivor I did feel very out of place.

                To me, mental illness is a disease.   That is the best way that I can describe it, and really one of the only ways that it should be described.   This disease is treatable, yes, but you have to choose to seek treatment for it.   That can be an overwhelmingly hard thing to do in a world which has the beliefs that no such thing exists and people are just sad or lazy and need to get over it.   Taking medications for mental illness also comes with a lot more of a stigma than, say, being treated for cancer.   No one will ever say to you: “Why do you need chemo?  Is your body really that weak that you let it get cancer?  Man, you’re a loser”.    Yet, for people to have that mentality when mental illness is concerned is something that we still need to overcome as a society.

                Using cancer as an example, which in a lot of ways is what I liken mental illness to so people without it can understand it, if I was participating in a walk to promote cancer awareness, do you think that email would have been appropriate?   Basically, the email would be implying that even though you beat cancer, who cares, you’re not a surviving family member of someone who has died from it so we have nothing for you.     This again goes back to the stigmas and stereotypes society has when it comes to mental illness.   I’m not saying that someone with mental illness is the same as someone with cancer.  You can get cancer a number of different ways, but there are people who just develop it in their systems and have no real explanation as to why.   This is what mental illness is like—something in your body that you were born with and there’s no exact reason behind it.   Sure, it could be hereditary, but when you trace it back to its roots you’ll find no reason for it originating.    It could also be seen as something you’re missing that other people have, but that’s really one of those glass half empty/half full things.

                I ultimately feel like there is too much work to be done and too many people who are ignorant to mental health issues for there to be an “us” and a “them” within this community.    Yes, there are those who understand it (Whether they have been affected by it in some way or not) and there are those who don’t, but we shouldn’t be drawing lines between those of us who actually do get it.   To go so far out on a limb and past the term “survivor”, what about those who just happen to be opposed to suicide and mental illness?   You don’t have to have personally known anyone or been affected by, say, cancer, AIDS or whatever else to walk for it and know that it’s bad and a serious threat to our world.    People can wear pink to promote breast cancer awareness with only the mindset of “I like boobies”.  But if you’re going to distance one side of the people who understand mental illness- the survivors who have attempted suicide and been to that dark place only to be saved and seek help- then what does that say to those people who have never tried it nor known anyone who died from it?    This is mainly just seeming a lot like a place for people to get together and grieve, which is fine, but no one should feel isolated or left out (Especially when we’re talking about mental health issues like depression and social anxiety) and I just don’t feel like this email or the lack of response to it when I inquired makes anything feel warm or accepting.   You say you want to educate people and promote awareness, well, that’s hard to do when you’re seemingly excluding people.    Maybe over the next year or so you can find a way to remedy that and I’ll walk again, but this year I will no longer be walking or raising money for a cause I no longer fully agree with.