My Friend Had Mental Illness and that’s Perfectly OK. 

I lost someone today.

We weren’t close.  In fact, we only knew each other for about eight days three months ago.

I met Carrie in rehab.  I’m not on drugs and neither was she, but in the mental health world, it’s still referred to as such.  After all, people can rehab from lots of things.  Car accidents, alcohol, bad relationships.  Anyway.  Let me break it down for you a little more clearly.  We met in a psych ward.

You know, The Nuthouse. Camp Cuckoo?  Loony Bin? I have a little game with my therapist where I try to refer to my hospitalization with as many derogatory terms as I can think of, each one more creative than the next.   Gallows humor, I suppose.  Carrie had it too.

I’m not here to talk about my time on Thorazine Lane though; that’s for another post.  I’m here to talk about her.  When I finally splashed down into rehab with my entire box of crazy, she had been there for days.  She was a mess.  So was I.  Everyone is a damn mess in there.  You wouldn’t be in there if you weren’t.  Although she never said it outright, I gleaned from conversations we would have over the following days as our minds and emotions calmed, that she had made an attempt on her life.

Splash down.

Carrie had an easy smile, a generous spirit, and, for someone with so much inner turmoil, a sense of peace that emanated from her and soaked into anyone and anything in her presence.  She could mediate an argument or reach out to a complete stranger to help him find a place to live after discharge.  Carrie was the kind of person who would give you hair mousse because she couldn’t take it with her and didn’t want to throw it away.

We got to know each other pretty well over that time.  She told me about her dogs and her incredible career as a professional musician in the Memphis Orchestra.  If that wasn’t impressive enough, she had also been a professional body builder, and on the day she was discharged, she showed me pictures to prove it.

After I stabilized and was spat out into the real world once again, I friended Carrie on Facebook.  I watched her thrive, and, shockingly endure and then triumph over a horrifying car crash that nearly took her life.  She seemed to be on the mend. Things were good again.  Then, things were silent for awhile.

Carrie passed away last night, and no one will tell me why.  There is no mention of her cause of death, and when people ask, their questions go unanswered or they are redirected to information about her funeral.  I left a message on her Facebook wall, as people often do, and in that message I alluded to our time together.  I believe I said “we met when neither of us were at our best, but perhaps that is the perfect time to meet someone like you.”  I never mentioned anything else. Still, my post was curiously deleted.  My remembrance of Carrie did not fit in with everyone else’s, and I was not a known friend of the family.  I can imagine her family (who had her password, I suppose), put it together that this was someone Carrie met during “that time away” and felt my post was inappropriate.  I checked my activity log twice; I posted it.

So if grieving my friend was not enough, here I am left wondering if the disease that she worked so hard to defeat ended up conquering her.  With all the muted whispers and murmurings surrounding her death, I can’t help but wonder, did Carrie take her own life?

Even worse, is her family denying her mental illness ever existed?  And, if Carrie’s death was a suicide, why are they treating it with so much secrecy?

Shame, a little voice whispers from somewhere in the back of my mind (a hypothetical voice, heh). The mere thought of it turns my stomach.  If it’s true (and I am aware I am making assumptions here), it is only symptomatic of the firm and ignorant stigma that so many people with mental illness suffer under on a daily basis.  Stigma and secrecy makes those living with mental illness more susceptible to suicide, self-harm, and physical manifestations of their illnesses (Corrigan and Watson, 2002).

Carrie was a beautiful person.  She was a sister, a fur-mom to her precious pup, a beloved friend, a treasured daughter, and a mentor to many musicians and trainers over the years.  

Carrie was also clinically depressed.  She had thoughts of dying.  She suffered from an illness that is no different from high blood pressure or diabetes.  It requires treatment just like those illnesses.  Mental Illnesses are Physical Illnesses (I’ll say it one more time for those people in the back who still say stuff like nuthouse and loony bin and AREN’T joking).  Carrie’s mental illness was part of who she was.  It’s part of what made her unique and effervescent.  I hope her family and close friends know that and accepted that part of her, too.

I lost someone today.  An unconventional friend who touched me in a profound way at a vulnerable time in both our lives.  I didn’t know her long, but I knew her enough.

And I still have that mousse, Carrie.  I’ll pass it on before I throw it away.