Mental Illness Can Be An Impenetrable Wall

Five years ago, I went on disability for mental illness.  At the time, I was already a recipient of Medicaid (free health insurance in the United States) and SNAP benefits (”food stamps,” or a monthly allowance for food purchases) due to my zilch income.  Repeated efforts on my part to return to school and hold down jobs were thwarted by my illness.  And so I applied for disability, and was approved.  The monthly checks then started coming.

A part of me always felt ashamed that I was receiving a check for doing “positively nothing.”  I felt as if the label of my being “disabled” pigeonholed me into a category of people, which society generally perceives as “lazy freeloaders.”  And while my dastardly illness enfeebled my mind, I wanted nothing more than to work. To run in that rat race. To be a cog in that machine.

Yet I couldn’t.  Whenever I tried to apply my mind to any task requiring focus, a terrible thing would happen...

My mind would stop thinking.  As if I had been traipsing gaily along the road, only to encounter an impenetrable wall.  Too high to climb, too wide to walk around, and too fortified to dig under.  And since the wall was “merely” a unique construct within my inner mind, there was not a soul who could help me surmount it.  How could a person understand it, simply by looking at me from the outside? 

I’ll make this abstract idea more tangible by telling my mere story.  After leaving grad school in 2008, due to my having a psychotic breakdown, I found solace and comfort in listening to songs by Queen, the band.  I was then inspired to pick up the guitar and write my own tunes, and I quickly found that I was good at it, given my extensive background as a classical violist.  And yet songwriting was a laborious effort.   For even though I was decent, and could write songs very quickly, I found myself avoiding the task.  For there was something getting in my way…

The wall. 

I’d heard of “writer’s block” before, the demon that challenges even the best of creative people.  And for a long time, I figured that my own “wall” was the same.  All I had to do was push through it, as people generally recommend doing with writer’s block... and then I would be rewarded with creative ideas in the end.  But for me, this was not so.  No matter how hard I tried to push against my “wall,” it would never go away.  In fact, it only got stronger, the harder I pushed.  It even started talking back to me...

You suck.  Stop trying.

I confided in no one.  Shame silenced me.  On the outside, all that people saw was that I “gave up” on projects, never seeing them through.  This went beyond songwriting too.  Whenever there was some sort of task to be done, whether it was grocery shopping or cleaning the house, I had a very “low tolerance for stress.”  My mother would make me vacuum, and I’d do so, completely pissed off the whole time.  And then I’d hit “the wall,” and my patience would leave me.  I’d drop the vacuum in the middle of the floor and walk away.

I’m sure I looked lazy to others.  Yet thankfully, I am lucky to have an accepting and loving mother.  She has never harried me in any way over these years, and not once has she made demands that I “leave her house” and get out “on my own.”  Indeed, her approach to family living is different from the standards of Caucasian culture.  She lived in Japan for several years, and absorbed well their principle that children do not move out until they get married.

Some of my other relatives were less kind regarding my circumstances.  An older cousin repeatedly harasses my mother, telling her that “Neesa got mental illness because she studied music.  It’s your fault that you made her play.  She could have become a lawyer or a doctor, she’s smart enough.  But you let her study music in college.  You threw her life away.”  Another relative, formerly keen on me getting married, told me, “Neesa… You do not need to do that.  You don’t need children.  Just take care of yourself.”

I suppose I was a shameful disappointment.

Several years ago, in 2009, I went back to college to become a public school music teacher.  During the second year of the program, I took on a near-full-time job as a classroom music teacher at a private school in Brooklyn.  Due to the stress of both working and attending classes full-time, I neglected to complete a couple of assignments by the end of the semester.  Over the winter break, these assignments loomed over my head like sepulchral scythes.

My mother, kind woman, repeatedly encouraged me to do my homework.

“Just do it.”  She quoted Nike.

I finally hunkered down in front of the computer on some January evening to attempt the assignment.  To get started, I pulled up the Wikipedia page of Ludwig Van Beethoven, turned on a recording of his Eroica Symphony...

And I hit the famed wall.  Mental blankness as always.  As sinister as a black hole in outer space, sucking my mind dry of all thoughts and cognitions.

Yet I had to finish this assignment!  So I fought the wall this time.  It seemed easy enough... just keep doing the assignment, right?  My mind kept wandering... daydreaming... seemingly average, right?  As I read the Beethoven’s Wikipedia entry, I pictured the events of his life in my head, as one would recall past memories with a vague sense of imagery. 

But then, I found myself identifying with the man... a bit too well.

Suddenly, I believed my mind had opened up to a cosmic deity.  It was an awesome presence that shook my frame…  and it revealed to me the profound news that I myself was the reincarnation of Beethoven.  This implied that I was to be an important person in mankind’s history.  And besides being Beethoven, I also was told that the world was going to end in five days.  How funny.

As I got lost in these thoughts, I lost the capacity to do my homework.  Being Beethoven was much more interesting.  And yet the wall still stood.  I lost the battle.  I call it a battle, because it almost feels as if the wall had attacked me.  As if it had thrown those delusions at me as distraction.  Grenades, to make me change my course.

I was so confident that I was Beethoven, that I even confided in a few people.  I called a couple of musician friends of mine, and told them “who I was.”  I even claimed that each of them was a reincarnated person who knew Beethoven (me)  during that lifetime.  As for my mother, she took my news with a grain of salt, even as I told her that my brother was Mozart. 

Who could expect what was to come? 

The next Monday, I had an emotional meltdown at work.  My boss drove me to the Emergency Room, and thereafter I was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit for two weeks.  When discharged, I lost my job, and my music teaching aspirations were dashed.  Mind you, no one ever called me and told me I was fired or kicked out of school.  I simply stopped showing up.  My notice of termination? Mere silence.

Psychiatric disability is a devastating experience that can severely impair a person’s quality of life.  I’m glad to be free now.  I am recovered, due to excellent medications and loving friends and family.  For all my medical and mental health needs, I have even amassed a battalion of encouraging, highly-qualified professionals.  This includes not only my psychiatrist and my primary care physician, but even my chiropractor, physical therapist and podiatrist.

Yet always, I know that the wall is just around the corner, ready to stand in my way again if I miss a dose of medication.  I’ve learned this the hard way.  Sitting at the computer, an essay at hand… and *poof!*  My thoughts are gone again, with the electric sweat of withdrawal upon my brow.

Sometimes, I wonder if I make sense with my analogies.  I wonder if my description of my “wall” would convey to you what it feels like to me.  Perhaps it won’t.  But as I write this article, I believe that the point is not to make you feel what I do.  It is to initiate a conversation.  To impart an idea unto you, that  before you would not have before considered.

I hope I have been successful in this endeavor.  For this is how stigma is fought.

Neesa Suncheuri works as a mental health peer specialist at a housing agency in Queens, New York.  She is the founder of a Facebook discussion group for peer specialists and other recovery enthusiasts, entitled “What is Wellness?  A Mental Health Discussion Group.”   Much of her creative inspiration is rooted in her now-tamed schizophrenia.  She writes poetry and fiction, and maintains a blog called Unlearning Schizophrenia .  She is also a singer/songwriter, a violinist/violist and an enthusiast for the German language and culture.  Follow her on Twitter at @neesasuncheuri.