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0 By Avion Anderson
Even though most of us will never admit it, there comes a time in everyone’s life when we all feel helplessness, guilt and shame. When we do something wrong and don’t own up to it, or even for things we know nothing of – having mental illness, most times, makes us feel guilty.
Guilty and ashamed
That guilt we all feel, especially for those of us living with a mental illness, is explainable at times. Even before I knew I had a mental health condition, the guilt was already present in my life. I was having a hard time getting past everything. The pains of the past made me feel guilty; the hurtful names and things people said about me, or did, made me feel even more guilty and ashamed. It was like I deserved them and deserved to feel the guilt and shame.
I also felt like a monster – hideous, unloved and battered. Even though I turned on the television or watched inspirational shows on YouTube, nothing helped or mattered to me. I was beyond help and nothing good in life that may have happened to me ever registered with me that, yes, there was some good that came out of it.
Is guilt a punishment?
Trust me, guilt is one of the absolute worst feelings in the world, worse than shame, or any other thing, for that matter. I thought that feeling guilt was some form of punishment. For what? A lot of things flooded my head.
Then, years later, came the deadly blow.
‘Avion, you suffer from mental illness.’
That blow just threw me into more guilt and shame than I could ever imagine possible. I hated my life, my job, my family, my home, my friends, my community, my country, my government, and just about everything. I cursed myself, I even cursed my mom and friends on a few occasions.
‘Why me?’
‘Why is this happening to me?’
How can I not feel bad for the past?
That guilt is still ever prevalent with me to this very day; I wish that I never ever felt this way. I have often cried in silence in my bedroom, on many nights. Yes, I have even, at one time, cried freely in a maxi taxi full of people. It was embarrassing and I had no idea why I was crying. It was not like the driver was playing any music on the radio; the maxi was silent, and this was me, tears just running freely for no apparent reason at all. Many of the passengers was asking me what was wrong with me, while others was telling me that it was okay to cry, get it off my chest, that everything would be alright.
It’s easy to say, ‘Don’t feel bad.’
How can I not feel bad for the past, which many would say has already passed and why would I want to go back there? If they knew all that I went through in the past, they might understand. Then again, they will not. I have to live with all the memories of the things I did back then that will haunt me forever.
Mental illness is not our fault
Now in this present time, to be perfectly honest, it’s still hard for me to live with the guilt of the past, and to comprehend and come to terms with the reality of the past – that what’s in the past, must stay in the past. The present is here and it’s happening now; I constantly and continuously work on getting past the guilt and moving on.
Persons living with mental illness do not need to feel any guilt; it’s not our fault that we have a mental illness, it’s not our fault that most of our lives aren’t perfect, it’s not our fault that we are not ‘normal’ like everybody else. We all deserve to feel and be happy, just like everyone else. We deserve to have peace of mind, to have freedom of speech, to laugh, to love, and to choose for ourselves the lives that we want to lead and live to the fullest.
It’s time to forget the guilt and pains of the past
It’s time to stop dwelling on what occurred long time ago; it’s time to forget the guilt and pains of the past, because we can’t turn back the clock and go rewrite our past. If we could, I would definitely be like each and every one of you; I’d be the first one to travel back in time to rewrite my past and all my mistakes and take back all the hurt and the pain, do things differently, even create a new me – sadly, that’s not possible.
I know that it will never be that easy, for life is never one sweet song, life is what you make it. I just want to say that the present is here, it’s now and it’s happening to each and every one of us. Time to get up, take it day by day and you will be able to live your life to the fullest one day.
Reproduced with permission, originally posted on avionneslegacy
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