A COAT
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.
~ William Butler Yeats ~

In the last few days I have had a profound sense of clarity about my work and my purpose. I was born to walk naked, as Yeats wrote in one of my favorite poems. I was born to talk about the things people aren’t always comfortable talking about, because I want to bring these things out into the light of day, to reach out to those who may be suffering and have nowhere else to turn. I want to yank the stigma off of things and throw it onto the pyre to be burned away from things that cause shame where none should exist, and I want to stand up and say, “Look, this is who I am. I am flawed, in fact I can be one red hot mess! But I am also very gentle and very loving, I have dedicated my life to helping others because I have survived, in my lifetime, a whole heap of things that cripple others and have led far too many to suicide. I live with a handful of mental health diagnoses but I have carved out a life for myself that works for me and from which I am able to live and survive and even thrive and I want others to see that it is possible for them too. I am an outsider by society’s definition but a lot more comfortable and at peace with myself than a great many so called “insiders,” and by God I am going to stand up in the middle of this unusual life I live and reach out to others and say, “Do not give up, never give up, hold on, sit with me awhile, you are perfect, just as you are, craziness and all. Take a deep breath. It’s going to be alright.”

This is the work I have been creating. I have been finding my way into it in a kind of seesaw fashion, bobbing and weaving, afraid, and unsure how I could go about it and if I could go about it and then a movie changed it all. The movie, Silver Linings Playbook.

This has been something beyond any experience I have ever had with a movie, above and beyond the movie itself,  because of a discussion about the movie that took place spread over a few weeks on my three different Facebook pages both before and after I saw the movie. Let me begin at the beginning.

As you know if you have followed my blog for some time I am bi polar. I also have a daughter that is a psychologist. She said to me, after seeing Silver Linings Playbook that I really should see it, that she thought I would love it. I am also borderline agoraphobic and have a very hard time leaving the house at all so I had to wait until it was released on DVD. Time passed, I heard a lot of good reviews and from people who loved the movie and a whole lot of people said that I should see it. The movie finally came out on DVD and after a fashion I thought it was time I rented it.

I casually mentioned, on one of my Facebook pages, that I was planning to see this movie soon, and asked if anyone had seen it, and what did they think? The responses that I got shocked me.

Some people said they loved it, I expected that, and it’s not just that some people didn’t like it, that will always be the case, anything is a matter of taste, and preference, and I have certainly not liked things that were popular or that others that I knew loved, no, it wasn’t that some people didn’t care for it, it’s that quite a number of people said they hated it, one said it was the worst movie she had ever seen, another that it had upset her so badly she hadn’t been able to get over it for days, and still another that it was so awful she wished she’d never seen it at all. In other words it was one of those things that people seemed to love or hate with no middle ground. I was baffled. I was confused. And I couldn’t wait to see it.

A few weeks went by and last Saturday night I saw the movie. I-LOVED-IT.

Now, the actors were superb. Bradley Cooper was over-the-top fantastic. I fell in love with Jennifer Lawrence in her role and could see why she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Robert De Niro was, well, has Robert De Niro ever been anything but outstanding? But this was absolutely my favorite role of his ever. He just stole my heart. The whole cast was wonderful, the director did a fabulous job. Good job all around, but it wasn’t even about that.

What was it about (both the movie and the topic of this post)? The movie was about a man with bi polar disorder who has just come out of 8 months in a mental institution and the girl he meets who has a whole boatload of issues herself and their all-over-the map crazy, charming, unwieldy, confusing, delightful relationship. More I will not say because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. As to why I am writing about it, well, it’s because there are precious few movies that deal with bi polar disorder and living with mental illness in general that are done so beautifully, and realistically, showing not only the very real scary, painful issues around living with this disorder but also the fact that in spite of it all families can come together, people can love one another, bumpy roads can be traversed, and in the end the diagnosis is not a death sentence as in the death of all things about life that are wonderful if you happen to have bi polar disorder or any one of a number of other mental health disorders that millions of people around the globe are living with at this very moment.

It was, then, a movie for us, when there are precious few. And I thank the man who wrote the book, which I just ordered today, and the director, producer, and anyone who had anything to do with the making of this movie. There are far too few of them and none that I’ve seen to date that are this well done and give one, well, hope. It gave me hope. I have tears in my eyes now thinking of how that movie made me feel. But let me continue.

After I watched the movie, Saturday night, with my friend Noni, who had seen it before, loved it, and wanted to see it again, I asked her a question. I said that now that I had seen the movie I was even more baffled. What in the world was in that movie that upset so many people? I mean no movie is a perfect movie, and again, there is certainly the matter of taste, and we all have our own likes and dislikes, but the vehemence with which those who said they really hated the movie expressed their opinion felt all out of proportion in the face of the story of this movie and how it was presented. There was no bloodshed, violence, killing, sexual content, or any of the number of things that people usually find upsetting. Some people didn’t like the language, others thought the ending, in the face of the subject matter, was a little too tie-it-up neatly Hollywood ending, but those were just opinions, not people who said they hated the movie, and, well folks, it is a Hollywood movie. No, there was something more there. Noni hit it on the head.

She said that the movie was still the same movie no matter who saw it, and the different opinions were simply reflections of the people viewing it. Okay, we all have our stuff, and some people had some pretty strong stuff come up when they saw this movie, but again, the reaction felt wildly out of proportion for some of the comments. So I put it up on my Facebook pages again. I have over 50,000 followers on the three pages so I thought it would have a wide and varied audience who might read the post I put out and who could respond if they chose to and the responses were overwhelming. I wrote everything I have written here, essentially, in a shorter version, and this time I just nearly cried when I read the responses. And I understood.

Out of a great many responses only one said she didn’t like it because of the language, but we got a lot closer to the core issues. A lot of people loved it, but quite a number of people — and I thank them from the bottom of my heart — took time to write very long responses. For some it was painful because it hit too close to home, either because they have bi polar disorder or have a loved one who does and for some it has been a very painful and sometimes destructive element for those who loved the person and had to deal with all of the ramifications throughout their family. Many people wrote to say thank you, that it meant so much to them to be able to talk about it, that they were so relieved, and they shared touching and sometimes heartbreaking stories. Still others said that while bi polar wasn’t an issue other related things were and we talked about those. Inotherwords, Silver Linings Playbook became a catalyst that opened up a whole universe of discussion and feelings that had had nowhere else to go. The conversations are still going on as I write this.

And so I come back to the people who really hated the movie, were deeply upset, wish they hadn’t seen it, and my heart softens and I feel so sad. What is it that is hurting these people so badly? What are they holding back, what inside themselves is causing them fear or shame or a vehement casting out of the subject altogether? This is what I am getting at. Despite the fact that we think we are very enlightened and there are all kinds of drugs and fancy words bandied about in the mental health arena, it is still taboo, something to be embarrassed about. There are still far too many people walking around undiagnosed because they are afraid to deal with it, because they are afraid of what their families, friends, bosses, coworkers, or others will think of them. Will a spouse leave them, will they lose a job, and on and on. Unfortunately our brains are not seen like a broken leg in a cast. Everyone understands that. No, our brains are still, with all of the research and knowledge and libraries of books on the subject, still uncharted territory, a guessing game. I always wonder if the medication I am taking, that I must take to have any semblance of a peaceful productive life, will harm me in the end. Centuries from now will the treatment that we have today seem barbaric? I don’t know. After decades of therapy I was finally diagnosed as bi polar in my early fifties. I had been in therapy since I was 18. We have lost many people who could not bear to live with the pain of this illness. It is no wonder this movie caused a tidal wave of emotion in some people.

I am not here to ramble on about the mental health profession. I am grateful for what treatment and medication I have now that makes my life bearable and livable. My point is that whether or not you are bi polar there are a whole lot of people walking around feeling like outsiders and they are in pain. Maybe you feel like an outsider not because you have an illness but because you live with someone who does. I am writing this because of all the people who hurt so much that a movie was unbearable and caused them terrible pain. I am writing this because I want to share openly what it is like to live as a woman with bi polar disorder and further lives with it but has still been able to find a way to carve out a life that matters very dearly to me.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this is the answer to what I have been trying to come to terms with. What, in the face of all of this, can I do to help? How can I make a living to take care of myself, and help others at the same time? What exactly can I do, and how, and what form should it take? That is what I am wondering tonight as I write this.

Saturday night after Noni left as I settled in with the pugs and started to go to sleep I had to turn the light back on and grab my journal and pen. I wrote down one sentence, closed the book, and went to sleep. What I wrote was this…

“Henceforth there will be two kind of people for me, those who loved Silver Linings Playbook, and those who hated it.”

I looked at my journal the next morning unsettled by that blanket statement but I knew what I had meant. There would be people who got it, or weren’t bothered by it, and those who didn’t get it. (I am not referring to the people for whom it just wasn’t their cup of tea as a movie.) I think for me it was very personal because I have suffered a lot in my life because of people who couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more or different or better or whatever it was they needed me to be. And I understand. It is not an easy thing. I chose to create a life for myself that works for me, and it has been nearly fifteen years getting to this place, and it is a beautiful place, this life here at Dragonfly Cottage. My task, then, is to see what I can make of all of this, and I hope that the answer will come soon. It is time for me to begin this work, in whatever form it takes.

I too made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.

Thank you Mr. Yeats. Here, take my coat. I don’t need it anymore.