Some background: My fiance and I (and our dog) are currently staying with my parents while our condo is under kitchen and bathroom renovation (complete tear down and rebuild). Over the past few weeks, we've noticed that something other than ourselves and our dog has been munching on the food in their pantry. Now if you know anything about me, you know I'm a strict vegetarian that literally can't hurt a fly. But I also understand that my parents don't want mice traipsing, among other things, around in their food.
My parents, being the good people they are and knowing that I can't stand to see a creature harmed, put out sticky paper so that they don't have to kill the mouse, but can manage to relocate it outside. This morning, a mouse, being unknowingly obliging, got his or her foot stuck on the sticky paper. My parents shielded me from it by telling me to stay downstairs, so that I didn't see the mouse struggling at all, while they brought it outside, extricated it's foot from the paper, and set it free in what seemed as safe a spot as they could. And I love my parents for doing the most humane thing possible outside of just letting a mouse wander through and poop in their food, potentially spreading any disease that goes along with this. But still, I broke down.
It wasn't really about the mouse. Yes, I was sad for it. Being the highly sensitive person and empath that I am, I hated the idea of a living creature experiencing any pain or discomfort. But more than that, I empathized. I pictured that poor mouse stuck, having no idea why, with no clue of what to do, trying in vain to move and run but being trapped - not in an actual trap, but by its inability to go anywhere, struggling for the little movement it had managed to obtain, all the time confused about what had happened to it. And in that moment, I felt just like that mouse.
Lately, that's exactly how I feel. Depression, anxiety, and mood cycling can stop you in your tracks. There are days, weeks, months where you can try as hard as humanly possible and you can't break out of it. No matter how much wonderful you have in your life, no matter how grateful you are for the support you have and the good things that come your way, it doesn't matter. The sadness takes over, the anxiety sets in, the cycles continue despite every attempt to stop them. Your life seems to halt, even though the world goes on without your feeling able to participate in it, at least not as you wish you could. You feel that you're going nowhere, that you have no hope, that you aren't able or capable. It feels as if everyone else is, and somehow you just fail - like someone else could do exactly what you do and they'd be successful and moving forward, but when you do, there's nothing. Some days, you just don't feel like you have the energy to even try to fight it. Like you're that mouse, and you eventually realize that all your struggling to move just takes precious energy that you're already lacking.
And on top of all of this, unlike the mouse, you often must try to pretend it's not happening. It's not acceptable to spend your days curled in the corner of your office crying, unable to interact with coworkers or clients. Or maybe there are those who don't understand, and when around them you feel it's easier to just put on the mask. Or perhaps you're simply tired of everyone thinking of you as "that person who's so depressed and anxious that they can't handle anything." Do you know how frustrating it is when people assume you're anxious even when you're joking and happy? But they're so used to you being worried about everything that even what sounds like a joke to you comes off to them as seriously upset. Even in your happy moments, when they come, you have to deal with the results of depression and anxiety. And so you just smile and nod and say you're OK, until those days when you can't. Then, you do those things you absolutely feel you must, and then quietly retreat, cocooning in yourself in an attempt to heal through isolation.
I realize that this is a lot to get from a mouse with it's foot on some sticky paper. And there may be some ever-optimistic people who say "But look, the mouse got out free! Your parents made sure it was safe!" And that did make me happy. It managed to bring a bright spot into an otherwise incredibly tough morning. But the difference between me and the mouse is, there's nobody who can ensure I will be Ok. They can help me along the way. They can support me. They can be there for me on the days that I'm not, and they can try to lift me back up. And perhaps nobody can ensure that the mouse is OK either - nobody knows what happens to it after it ends up in the field, and that's life for all of us. But in that moment, we could. We could take care of that little mouse and set him or her free, and hopefully he or she felt like it had a new chance at life. I'm sure there are people ready with platitudes to say things like "Every day you wake up is a new day and a new chance at life". But that's not true, not really. Because I still wake up as depressed or as anxious, or I'm still cycling badly. There's nothing new about it, and that's the trouble. I'm stuck in that trap. Nobody can magically set me free and say "Go, run, live! You're saved!" And while a week from now that mouse may have no memory of the sticky paper on which it struggled, there's not a day that goes by that I can forget the illnesses I battle, even if they're just kind of sitting there quietly on the periphery. And so many days I wish someone could just say "You are too precious to hurt, even though you don't really belong here. So we're going to save you. And once again you'll be where you belong, running free."
