MENTAL HEALTH AND RELATIONSHIPS
I really thought he was the best thing since sliced bread but it turned out to be that he wasn’t even as good as ‘Agege bread’. What happened next is something that no writer, no matter how talented and imaginative can make up.
Clears throat loudly enough for all of Medium and beyond to hear: I do not know anything about relationships. In fact, I believe I am very “relationship challenged” which I think, at this rate, might be a medical condition; I should research that immediately after writing this. I have only a few number of friends and I haven’t had a romantic relationship in well, enough years to get my mother really concerned, really worried, really scared (I personally have no idea what the fear is about but the woman recently asked me if I intended to disgrace her) and at this rate, I’m sure she’s eagerly praying against demons and offering up sacrifices to God on my behalf. You know, I had thought that being the single, unintentionally ‘chaste’ child would be a thing of joy and pride for an African parent but apparently, I am currently the black sheep because I do not have a relationship. Who would have thought?
However, when it does come to mental health and relationships, I know a few things. In this context, I do not only refer to romantic and sexual relationships; I mean relationship as a blanket term to cover every form of human interaction ranging from friendships to family to workplace and school environments, etc.
I would not be going into the intricacies of loving or working with a person who has a mental health condition because that in itself is a herculean task, a topic that I personally haven’t figured out. I would just be focusing on a question that has been relevant to me in the past, is still relevant today and very likely, would always be relevant but now, not just to me but to everyone with a mental illness who interacts with people on a daily basis. The question is: at what point do you tell the people in your life that you have a mental health condition? I thought about this question incessantly when I first received my diagnosis and even now that I seem to have gotten the hang of my mental health, I still think of that question in relation to the future and by future, I do mean when I eventually have a boyfriend. Key word folks, eventually.
Do I tell him about my borderline personality disorder and depression on day one or day one thousand?
But then, it really isn’t just about a future boyfriend; it’s also about future work colleagues, current friends and acquaintances too. I strongly believe that everyone with a mental health condition has thought this question through before. When it comes to friends, at what point does constant absence from gatherings and constant excuses for missing events lead to “opening up” about the real reason why you are unavailable rather than the usual ‘I have a headache?’ When do you tell them why you prefer to be in bed all day AND night rather than kicking it with them at the club? Do you tell them to get it out of the way as soon as possible or do you tell them after they badger you with questions? At what point do you tell the people at your workplace that you do not have malaria or a cold whenever you call in sick but instead you couldn’t stop crying long enough to get yourself out of bed and to work?
I’d like to make an analogy with a physiological illness that is more easily understood than mental illnesses: HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS is an illness that has been highly stigmatized all around the world from the moment it hit, up until now regardless of how much work and money has gone into awareness. We have learned over time that there are various ways for one to get HIV/AIDS outside of unprotected sex such as blood transfusion, from a pregnant woman to her child and so on and so forth, yet the stigmatization is still very much present in today’s society hence why a person’s status is highly confidential.
Now imagine you had HIV/AIDS. Would you go around telling every Tom, Dick and Harry that you have HIV/AIDS? Regardless of how you got it and especially when it obviously can’t be seen because you are taking your medications and living healthy? No?
The honest truth is that whatever reason you came up with is the same reason why you should not be telling every Tom, Dick and Harry about your mental health status. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d assume your reason for not disclosing your HIV/AIDS status is that, first, most people would stigmatize and ostracize you. Secondly and most importantly, it’s not their business! Period. It really is the same thing with mental health. You do not have to tell someone that you started dating 10 seconds ago about your lifelong struggle with schizophrenia because humans have, somehow, developed and perfected the art of killing or worshiping things that they don’t understand and I’m pretty sure there are no temples anywhere in the world where bipolar is worshiped; you will, very likely, get killed emotionally. Your mental illness is medical and a person’s medical information is confidential. Now, this really only refers to a person who is mentally aware, and is putting in the work by going after their medications, therapy or whatever other measures are in place to help said person live a normal and healthy life. If you are not taking care of your health, mentally or physiologically, your illness will always announce itself.
Mental health is pretty delicate and fragile and telling everybody that you have a mental health condition is just not god for your mental health condition. No one would tell you that you are imagining your typhoid or that your body was overreacting to an infection but with mental health, they would. People do not understand BPD the way they understand typhoid; trust me, I personally learnt the hard way. I remember first getting my diagnosis, after processing it all and finally reaching the place where I could talk about it and be an “advocate”, I used to tell every person who cared to listen that I had recently been diagnosed with depression (it has always been easier to leave the BPD out as it requires too much work to explain). I was, at the time, a part of a church whose major practice is one on one bible studies; to be a part of or lead those bible studies required a level of vulnerability and openness and I took that quite literally. I would always tell people how I have depression but God makes me ‘superlatively’ happy until He didn’t. At the time, I really believed what I was saying about God and spirituality being a source of overwhelming joy and unending peace; I do not believe that anymore but I digress.
Anyway, with the bible studies and even random human interactions, I eventually reached a point where I had to literally tell myself to “shut the fuck up!’”. Not in those exact words but you get the drift. Different reactions and advice from people got me to that point but a key incidence was one time in university that I missed a class.
I was in my final year and I was class representative which basically meant that I couldn’t miss classes in peace; everyone would notice. On this faithful day, I had missed class because I had an appointment with my psychiatrist but I didn’t tell my lecturer. On getting to school for the rest of my classes, the lecturer whose class I had missed called me up to his office to inquire why I had missed class. I vaguely said that I had just come from a doctor’s appointment hoping that he’d take that for an answer and leave me alone but trust Nigerians to be incredibly nosy. He pushed and in the spirit of honesty, I “opened” up about my depression, telling him that I had gone to see my psychiatrist and refill my medication. What happened next is something that no writer, no matter how talented and imaginative can make up. This lecturer first looked at me crazy, mouth hanging open, disbelief and another emotion that I honestly can’t articulate but made me regret my words and want to enter the ground written all over his face, then he asked me to buy a bottle of water from the shop in my department. When I brought the water to him, he lifted the bottle up, said some weird incantation like prayer, sprinkled some water on my face and asked me to drink the rest. I was completely dumbfounded, disappointed and embarrassed, especially because a classmate was there. This was someone with a doctorate degree! He then told me to throw away my medication because I was now fine; after all I was too young to have depression (if I had a penny for every time that a person told me I am too young to have depression). Every time he saw me after that, he asked “how are you now? Fine right?” and no matter how much I was hurting that day, all I could say was “fine”. How then could I keep on telling random people in bible studies or anywhere else about my mental health? This really was the point when I decided to keep my shit to myself and only talk about it when necessary like in my writing and advocacy.
You would think that I learnt from the experience above but no, my silly brain decided to have a crush on someone. This boy was someone who I really liked and could actually picture a long term relationship with, so in my head, for us to work (and I quite desperately wanted us to work) I had to be upfront and super open about everything in my life so that he could really get to know me and like everything about me. I really thought he was the best thing since sliced bread but it turned out to be that he wasn’t even as good as ‘Agege bread’. I basically told him about the mood swings and emotional deregulation associated with borderline personality disorder and the suicidal thoughts that come from depression. In response, homie spouted some things about how he doesn’t like the ‘idea’ of people around him having bad moods at any given time or of me being suicidal so he wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to change me. Ladies and gentlemen, he really said that he would need to change me. I was genuinely confused because you don’t “change” a person you want to be with, you find a way to support them and love them and maybe love was a long shot at
the stage we were in but support? Support is pretty basic. Needless to say, I was deflated and that relationship surely didn’t happen.
I’m not saying that you should lie to people or not be upfront about every area of your life if you want to be. I’m just saying that you should think about it every time you intend to open up to someone in that way. The person you want to tell about your mental health, do they need to know that information? When you do tell that person, would they become a part of your community, your tribe, your support system or would they make you feel worse about yourself, an illness that you did not shop for and all the struggle that comes with it? Stop telling people that you met 10 seconds ago about your mental health because you are desperate for love or attention or empathy or even just a listening ear; I know those feelings and understand those needs intimately but sometimes it does more harm than good. In extremely rare cases, you could meet a person in one day, connect deeply to them whether romantically or in a platonic way and be immediately sure that this person would become a huge and stable part of your life going forward, and you just want to pour out all your life to them; don’t. Let people prove themselves. With mental health, talking is central to staying grounded and leading a healthy life but building a support system is delicate and hard. I didn’t say impossible, just hard. Take your time with that.
Obviously you cannot build a support system if no one knows that you need a support system; talk to the people you trust and the people who you know would always be there for you. Just pick and choose wisely who you open this area of your life to. Take as much time as you need.
