I See You

I’ve wanted to write this post for a while now but I’ve never been able to find the words. Like smoke drifting towards an empty sky, they elude me. Come back, words, come back. But they won’t – not ever – because words like this aren’t meant to be captured or contained. It’s maddening, the way they dance just beyond my reach, but it’s the only way they can exist.

Still, I have to try.

In 1983 my mom’s older sister, Jacqueline, died. I don’t know a lot about her except that she was beautiful, smart, and suffering from a mental illness the world would later come to know as bipolar disorder. One night, alone in her apartment, she swallowed a whole bottle of pills and never woke up. No one ever talked about her sickness after that. I’m not sure they talked about it before either.

During my postpartum anxiety struggles I thought about Jackie often. Every time I unloaded my compulsive thoughts onto a family member I wondered if she had someone to talk to when she felt afraid. Every time I logged onto my computer I wondered if she had a community of other women to support her when no one else could. Every time I spoke to my therapist or took my medication I wondered if she had medical experts or prescription drugs to help her when she couldn’t help herself. I wondered.

I still wonder.

I have no doubt Jackie was a kind, wonderful woman. The respect and empathy I have for her is insurmountable. Although we traveled similar journeys, she did it alone and because of that hers ended differently. How isolated she must’ve felt without the tools and support that exist today. She needed someone to acknowledge her story – someone to say “I see you” and mean it – yet all she got was silence.

Jackie? I know it’s long overdue but I want you to know I see you.

I see your pain and your doubt and your fear and I promise to utilize the resources you never had. I live in a world that’s finally starting to validate the very real struggle that is mental illness and I won’t ever let what you could’ve done – what you would’ve done – go to waste.