Got your attention, didn’t I? These are weird times, aren’t they? Covid 19 has made a mess of our society, and world. Who would have thought that we would see a time when we would have to stay 6 feet part and practice other social distancing measures?
I was just at the grocery store this morning. I wanted to get a box of cereal. When I tried to go into the cereal aisle, I was presented with a large red cone and a very rude sign that said; “One way only, do not enter”.
I don’t go downtown for this very reason. I hate one-way streets. One time when I was downtown, I did not see the sign and turned into, what was very soon, cars coming right at me. I could even see the faces of the drivers. They looked angry and like they would run me gladly over if I did not quickly find a way to get turned around.
It was terrifying!
Now I was facing this one-way sign at a super market of all places. As weird as this is, things like this have become the new normal. One of these “new normals” these days is that we have to wear Face Masks. We all hate wearing these, but in the light of Covid 19, its necessary. Facemasks make it hard to breathe and even harder to talk through.
For a normal person, these are inconveniences. But for someone that is suffering from a mental health issue, putting on a face mask can be very traumatic event.
As a normal person (A Normal is someone that does not suffer from a mental health issue), it can be very difficult to put yourself in the shoes of someone that is like this. I am not sure that I can help you imagine this, but I will try. Being severely depressed is like being trapped behind very thick glass. Not ordinary glass mind you, but that weird glass that you find in some bathrooms that you can see through, but everything is very distorted so the best you can see are fuzzy shapes and shadowy misshapen figures.
If you suffer from depression, you can see clearly enough to make out friends, family, and loved ones, but no matter how hard you try, or want to try, you can never reach them. No matter how hard you want these people to hear your cries, your pain, or know anything about you, they cant.
Nothing you, or they can do will ever matter. The glass is impenetrable. You can pound on it until your firsts are a mass of blood, and there is nothing left but bloody bone, but no matter how hard you try, you can never ever ever ever feel the loving embrace of your mom, your dad, or your daughter.
Nothing can get through. You are trapped behind this glass forever watching the world go by. Even your very own spouse, or significant other, if you fortunate enough to have one, is on the other side of this glass wall.
You can only watch as your relationship with that person crumbles because the person you are supposed to love cannot feel anything from you, they can’t get to know you, or even talk to you on any meaningful level. You want desperately to reach out to that person that you love, but you cannot get through the glass.
To make matters even worse, the people on the other side of this glass only see a person that is stoic, having no emotion at all, and seems to be completely uncaring. To them, you seem uncaring, stuck up, not wanting friends, or relationships. Your loved ones, your friends, and the world only see someone that is always mad, wants nothing at all to do with anyone and cares for no one.
This is what the severely depressed deal with every day of their lives. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and on and on with no end and no hope of ever escaping.
It is like Mr Cellophane from the movie Chicago. Mr Cellophane feels like no one can even see him. Life goes on all around him, but does not affect him in any way because he is invisible to everyone. To the Severely Depressed though, this is a safe place. “If no one sees me, they can’t hurt me.”
Hopefully you now have an image in your mind of what its like for the severely depressed. Take that image and add to it a face mask.
When a person that is already suffering from this intense nothingness puts on a face mask, it is like the old adage of rubbing salt into a wound. Even before they had to put on this mask, they felt like no one loved them, no one could see them, or even cared anything about them. Now add to this insult the extra injury of a face mask.
Before they were “nothing”, but now they are “extra nothing”. Without the mask, there was a possibility, even though a very remote one that someone, anyone, might glance their way. Even though they have given up hope a long long time ago that someone might stop and say Hi, now with the mask, even that remote hope is gone.
With the face mask, they are marked. Before they were just depressed. They could hide depression, they could choke back the tears, they could disappear just like Mr Cellophane and blend into the crowd.
Now, they have to wear a face mask and die all over again.
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