The easiest way of dealing with a crisis is to pretend you don’t have one. When you have, for example, a challenging mental health condition, if someone asks how you are, the easiest thing to do is to lie. “Yeah, good thanks.” Because no one expects you to give a different answer. “No. I feel like absolute shit. I can’t sleep properly, I am hopeless failure. I’m struggling.” How does anyone respond to that? That’s why you lie. “I’m fine.”
Lying doesn’t come easy to me. I couldn’t be like, say, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump and lie routinely, legitimising dishonesty. When someone recently left a penny in my car, I put it in an envelope in order to return it to him. If I fret about having possession of someone else’s penny, how on earth could I do a runner with someone’s millions? So, I did some research, via Mr Google, on what I could say, how I could avoid lying. It was so obvious, really.
When asked how I was, I adopted more truthful, albeit slippery, replies. Instead of “all right” and “good”, I replied “still breathing” and “still in the land of the living”. Delivered in a semi-frivolous manner, I figured they would be seen as light-hearted. And in a way, they were. It’s a tactic of deflection.
Once I began to adopt a truthful reply, I became aware that I had not exactly come up with a stunningly original idea. On the contrary, I’d use the same, “How are you?” line to someone else and they’d reply with the honest, slightly frivolous and slightly evasive “still breathing” routine. Of course, they could actually be saying that because they might have had a one off shitty day, or used it as a figure of speech. Or just maybe they actually felt shit. I am now at the stage where, I think, I have worked out who is being honest because they can’t face the untruth of pretending all is well.
I like to think I am a high-functioning clinical depressive who is not as stupid as my one O level suggests and I certainly know about how my condition affects me better than anyone and everyone else. But I am not sure it pays to be honest.
The 12 year old me did not know I was mentally ill but the 21 year old certainly did. I kept it entirely to myself, as I did for decades afterwards until my civil service ‘career’ started to run down. I’ve definitely seen my life chances affected, if not ruined, certainly professionally, because of my mental basket case status. I know that all except one of my teachers in senior school expected nothing from me and made no real efforts to squeeze even something out. I know that when I started work, mental health was all about being fed up and no one took it seriously, so I struggled on, going nowhere slow. And later in life, I found to my horror that there were still people who treated people with mental health issues – ie. me – abominably. I’m looking at you X and Y at the British Red Cross. (I’ll never forgive you, by the way, and when and if I bump into you, well don’t worry, I won’t be violent or abusive but I will ask you, very politely, to say sorry.)
I’ll never know what I could have done and could have been because I always assumed I wasn’t smart enough to succeed and felt that everyone else agreed with that. Then again, I wonder if I had been better supported at school, in work and in life in general, I could have achieved so much more, for both myself and others, but almost no one would take a chance on me. Now, I know they never will.
Sometimes, I am totally overwhelmed with a low mood but luckily I am able to concentrate in the manner of a true professional to do whatever it is I am being asked and paid to do to the best of my ability.
I don’t think I ever had the chance to make a success of my life because of what happened in my formative years, which led me to make life-changing and life-limiting decisions on the basis of wholly inadequate skills at making good decisions.
If I had told the truth about how I was feeling all those years ago, I reckon things would have been even worse. Imagine the 12 year old me telling my peers that I had been having night terrors and panic attacks? I’d have probably been laughed out of school, not just by my fellow pupils, but also by some of the teachers. Boys don’t cry. I did for quite a lot of the time but there was another lie: I usually managed to hold it together – sometimes only just – when in the presence of others. I was fine, I was good, everything was great.
Now, when I hear people say things like, “Don’t bottle it up: talk to someone”, I simply say this: be careful who you tell. If you live in a warm and loving family, talk about it. If you work for an employer that you know genuinely invests in its staff by having strong policies on mental health, talk to them about it. It shows real courage to say you are not right. It should be okay to say you’re not okay. Not for everyone, everywhere, it isn’t.
We’re still in the stone age when it comes to studying and dealing with poor mental health. Some people, some organisations, some employers have made major strides to help people because, if for nothing else, a mentally healthy workforce functions better for the business.
When someone honestly says, “Still breathing” when you ask them how they are, how do you react? Who knows? If you’re just passing through or it’s a passing encounter at work, I’d suggest you do nothing. But if you know someone, there’s no harm in asking if that’s as good as it gets for them.
Next year, I’m self-publishing something more substantial about this and many other subjects. I don’t think many people ever believed in me, but then neither did I. And I still don’t. If I had my time again, and I was far mature earlier on, I probably would have been more open and honest and achieved even less. Maybe then I might not have been so ill. Who knows? I could have been worse or even not here at all.
