Tag Archives: MentalHealthAwareness

Fear

I’ve always learned to live with fear and how to paradoxically not be afraid of it.

Growing up in the Kingdom, it was a constant state of terror from the mutawa, the Islamic religious police who ran the city of Riyadh with unflinching hands, always on the lookout for women inappropriately wearing their abaya, reminders of prayer times, and looking for any inappropriate contact between males and females, which was totally fine by me, as I flew under the radar, spreading my rainbows.

But I learned early that fear could be useful, if treated with the right mindset. It kept me safe, as long as I didn’t live under its tyranny.

Today, the man in the mirror gives me fear. I’m afraid of who he has become, this man I don’t recognize. I don’t know when he will fracture again. Since the hospitalization in November, he has been very imbalanced, causing pain to people around him. I should stop talking about him in the third person lest you confuse me for Sybil (although there may just be an 8-year old inside me just yet.)

I was very imbalanced. I displayed extremely unusual behavior that still troubles me to this day. I caused pain and confusion to the people I love. I put a gargantuan strain on my husband’s patience. I have unknowingly hurt myself and people around me. I don’t have the words to apologize to everyone.

I am afraid to forgive myself.

Kintsugi

I was recently discharged from the hospital from an infection that caused my brain to swell. It was pressing so hard against my skull that it was causing breaks in my mental faculties.

I’ve never had that before. My logic has always been sound. My eccentricities have always been within reason. My sense of self has always been complete.

Not anymore.

I’ll start writing about my battle for mental health. Kintsugi is fitting, the Japanese art form of mending broken pottery with gold. My mind is still broken, I do not still recognize the man in the mirror. I am scared of him. But together, we mend.