Not too sure what this blog is supposed to touch upon so I guess I will just quickly sum up the presentation I gave in class. Basically I talked about how mental illness affects one's ability to parent as we are shown in The Glass Castle. More importantly, though, I showed how incredibly close drug use and violence is with people with mental health issues and depression. The reasons for this are obvious, I think, anyway. Violence and drugs are both escapes, quick momentary answers to the illness and darkness. A way to self-medicate but also self-destruct and hurt those around you, even if one does not mean to.
In the memoir The Glass Castle, it shows depression and the violence that ensues in town as a vicious cycle, "it put all the miners in bad moods and they came home and took it out on their wives, who took it out on their kids, who took it out on other kids". This, through the eyes of young Jeanette, represents the cycle she thinks is taking place. Frustrating work pumps out depressed, angered dads who in turn frustrate their wives who throw their problems at their kids who become violent to one another. It seems never-ending and a hard cycle to escape, especially in Welch. Yet I think that is why people should be taught better coping skills. I am no exception from this because when I am angry at something else, it has the capability to carry with me into conversations and actions dealing with other people. We just need to focus on the problem and take care of it so that it does not overwhelm our ability to interact with innocent bystanders.
The mother in this memoir is one of the worst sufferers of the family of a mental illness. While Rex "suffers" from alcoholism, the mother is stunted by some internal unhappiness resulting from either bipolar disorder or simply depression. Most likely bipolar. On page 207, Jeanette admits of her mother "At times she'd be happy for days on end.... But the positive thoughts would give way to negative thoughts, and the negative thoughts seemed to swoop into her mind the way a big flock of black crows takes over the landscape." I thought this was the best way to describe a mental illness and leads me right into the stance I take on this issue.
People are so quick to dismiss someone suffering from a mental illness as either lazy or just plain "sad". They have a lack of knowledge about mental instabilities so I find that people can easily dismiss these problems as real conflicts in someone's life. Even Jeanette in the story says she barely feels bad for her mom, if she does at all. Clearly in life people do not realize how incredibly enveloping depression and other mentally illnesses can be on people. We think (and I have thought it too) that we all have issues, traumas, and, in the big picture, life to deal with. We fail to realize it is ten times harder for the person with too little serotonin or dopemine in their brain to be able to cope with hard times. Or even just with life. It is easy for a depressed person to put into perspective how insignificant and pointless their life is or even other peoples lives are. Once in this mindset, these people can't make it out of bed in the morning rather than making it through a work or school day. I think more people need to be educated on the matter of mental illness rather than just tossing it aside.
One issue that arose in class was how people failed to sympathize for the mother in the memoir but would sympathize for an alcoholic dad. I have issue with this but also at the same time realize I have done it through my life too. Having an alcoholic dad when I was younger and a mom who just disappeared one day when I was about seven, I grew up in hatred of them. I had loved my mom to pieces until the day I realized she wanted nothing to do with me. As time went on and my father passed away, I found myself hating myself for not ever coming to terms with him. For as much as I hated him, I was angry at myself for not attempting to understand him. For a while before he died and definitely when he passed, hate turned into feeling bad for him. He did to my family what his family did to him and I should have gave him more of a shot when he tried to come back into my life but I was young and naive and being told that he was neglectful so often that I believed. He was neglectful but maybe he didn't mean to be. Anyway I do not hate my dad now but I pity him and feel bad and a bit angry at myself. As for my mom, though, I still have this extreme hate for her and misunderstanding. No matter what I do or what I am told about her I can not get past the hatred. I do not feel sorry for her even though my foster mom thinks I should. She says she must have had problems if she so easily gave up four beautiful children and I guess I can see that yet still I harbor these emotions of just how could she do that. Just like I guess the people in class have thought about Jeanette's mother. But we can not do that, we can not think like that. People with mental illness are trapped by those "crows and negative thoughts" that occupy their minds we have to be more open-minded about the issue and realize it is an illness: you can not just get over it.
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3 comments:
I definitely agree with you when you said "I think that is why people should be taught better coping skills." But how can this happen? Who is going to teach people like Rex Walls to cope better with their lives?
I also agree with you when you said that being angry with one person can carry into another conversation with another person. I know I have taken my anger out on other people even when I'm not mad at them at all. Usually I take out my frustration on my family because they know me the best. Sometimes I will vent to my friends, but not always.
You make very good points about people dealing with mental illness and you seem to take a good stance. I really enjoyed reading your post.
Thank you, Harmony, for being so honest in your blog and bringing in your own personal experiences. It takes a really strong person to open up about the issues you shared with us. We see how difficult it is in The Glass Castle when Jeannette sees her mother looking through the dumpster and quickly drives away in case her mother sees her sitting in the limo.
Anyway back to the post…I think it would be difficult to teach everyone "better coping skills" because everyone deals with life differently. That is why some people turn to alcohol. They hide their problems in drinking. No matter how much you tell someone about the negative effects of alcoholism, they still see alcohol as a way out.
As for Jeannette and her mother, I think Jeannette has a right to be angry. Yes, Mary Rose could have a chemical imbalance or maybe a dramatic event triggered the depression. I feel for these people. I truly do. But I feel more for Jeannette whose mother spent most of her time caring and worrying about herself than she did for her own children. Depression affects the whole family; sometimes it affects the family members more than it affects the depressed person him or herself. But I agree…awareness must be spread on mental illnesses.
I'm going to take a stance in this comment that many people might not agree with, but this is a result from my own personal experiences as well. There is NO excuse for bad parenting, NONE. I don't care if you're an alcoholic, you have a history of mental illness, whatever your issue is. If you make the decision to have a child (and because abortion is currently legal in some states, it is still a choice), you forfeit your right to self-destruct. You are now responsible for the life of another human being, a human being that is unable to function on its own for many years. It is up to you to take this human being and raise it to be a successful, confident individual. I would like to think that most people care if their children love them or not, but this may not always be the case. In any case, the mistakes of any parent can negatively influence their children. The child is the true victim in this scenario. They do not deserve any of the backlash from alcoholism, depression, drug addiction, etc. I find it impossible to feel any kind of sympathy toward anyone who has negatively influenced their children through their own destructive behavior. I know this is a very close-minded viewpoint, but I can't change how I feel because I was one of those kids, and I wish my parents would have realized or acted on what they were doing that negatively impacted me. Unfortunately, they did not. The only true victim in cases like these are the children. They are not the cause of any problems, and yet they suffer the most pain. I know life isn't fair, but I doubt I will ever be able to understand parents who damage their kids and are unable to help themselves in the process.
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