TheBanyanTree: Crazy on Planes

[B Drummond]

Bravo, Monique.  If you were on a stage, at this point I would be on my feet, clapping, and shouting, "Bravo!".

Sent from my iPad

On Mar 11, 2012, at 5:18 PM, Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yesterday’s cursory review of the news was full of mental illness stories.
> If by full, I mean there were several. There were also the old standbys:
> War, famine, the economy, politics, but there were also stories of people
> lost in their own minds.
> 
> 
> There was a video of a flight attendant losing it on a plane, before the
> plane was in the air. I clicked on the video, and watched several minutes
> of passengers holding up cell phones to capture the activity and the
> screaming as the flight attendant was restrained in the front of the plane.
> The passengers were avid to capture anything on their cell phones that they
> could, and occasionally they’d comment on what was going on. Also,
> occasionally, they’d laugh, as if something particularly amusing was
> happening.
> 
> 
> Because there’s nothing funnier than witnessing a person losing their mind.
> I use the term “losing her mind” loosely, because I don’t know if she was,
> I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know what will happen to her. I do
> know, having witnessed such breaks myself, that for the person that it’s
> happening to, it’s pretty damn horrible. It’s frightening, it’s scary, and
> when it happens one can’t really imagine any other reality than the one
> that is happening right then, at that time, in that space. It is their
> reality, whether it bears any relation to reality as the rest of us would
> define it.
> 
> We are a wonderfully compassionate people.
> 
> 
> We’re certain that sort of thing won’t happen to us because, after all,
> WE’RE not crazy. It only happens to crazies. Only other people. Is that why
> some of us laugh? Because we’re so safe in our own reality that we don’t
> need to consider those in pain as people just like us?
> 
> Sometimes when I’m in an uncomfortable situation I’ll laugh. If I’m nervous
> it relieves the tension, or it’s a nervous habit, or it’s one of the ways I
> cope with pain. Stew and I often laughed about his mental illness, but we
> were in the thick of it, not watching from a distance.
> 
> 
> I don’t know why people laugh when someone else is in obvious pain. That’s
> what mental illness is, after all – it’s pain, and because it affects who
> we are, how we act, what we do, it scares us. It should scare us. it’s a
> scary thing. But it’s scariest for the person experiencing it, that much
> I’m sure of, as certain as I am that one should never end a sentence with a
> preposition.
> 
> 
> I’d like to say we shouldn’t laugh at people in pain, but then I’d be
> accused of telling people how to act, and I don’t have that right. That’s
> true. But I would like to know why we laugh. As someone who has looked out
> over the precipice, I can’t imagine having the certainty that I would never
> have a loss of mental health. Maybe I’m missing something because of my
> brain chemistry (and here someone will tell me that there’s no such thing,
> but they can believe what they want and I’ll believe what I want), and
> maybe if I had that absolute certainty that crazy people are always someone
> else, then I  would understand.
> 
> 
> As long as I’m on the subject, as much as we pity the mentally ill and tell
> ourselves we’re not like that, why do so many then want to characterize
> themselves as crazy? We try to  one-up each other with stories of how our
> family and friends are crazier than your family and friends . . . Maybe
> crazy is cool? As long as it doesn’t manifest itself as seeing things that
> aren’t there, magical thinking, major depressive episodes, mania, paranoia,
> psychosis . . .
> 
> 
> We want to be crazy, but in a good way. But with crazy, you don’t get to
> choose, do you?
> 
> 
> Should I ever have occasion to suspect I may become psychotic, I shall send
> out notices in advance in the hopes that everyone will gather round and
> capture the moment with their smart phones. So there’d be proof, because
> what fun is it being crazy if you can’t prove you really went there?
> 
> 
> It’s like having your passport stamped when you’ve been to a country you
> didn’t really want to visit, but did anyway.
> 
> 
> Do make sure I have your contact info on hand. You’d hate to miss it.
> 
> 
> Monique