Painful Delusions [5 min read]

I’ve always had frequent headaches.

.

As a fairly young child I remember my grandmother lathering my forehead with “Alcoholada Glacial”, it’s menthol coolness seeming like a magic trick against my skin. The slightly alien sight of a penguin floating on green glassy seas meant to transport me from the sweaty painful fog in my head to his Arctic Neverland of smelly ice.

I remember the syrupy pink taste of Liquid Panadol from the medicine cabinet at school and laying on a bed in the sick room, not sure whether the stuffy heat was making me feel worse or the chance to lie with my eyes shut made me feel better.

The inexactitude of headaches has always been infuriating.

I remember praying for headaches to stay away before big exams. And thanking God for answered prayers whenever they did.

But God never took the headaches away completely, even though I asked.

I asked.

Diligently. Mustering all the faith a little mind could, believing as hard as I could, picturing it, telling myself each episode was getting better before it really did. The substance of things hoped for, faith, even as small as a mustard seed is suppose to move mountains…

But still, they’d come as they do.

Sometimes more, sometimes less, but always around. Like a pet cat prone to roam for weeks then lounge for days, keeping his spot on the couch warm.

I remember when I realized this is what I deserved.

Obviously, God didn’t take away the headaches because I deserved the headaches.

I deserved the pain.

.

Pain and I have had a complicated relationship ever since.

• • • •

When we think of delusional people I think we tend to picture the stereotype of a schizophrenic. That guy in the mental hospital that claims to be the Queen of England and the nurses nod along “Yes, yes, your Majesty, we’ll fetch you the Prime Minister quite shortly but in the meantime here are your pills and that cup of tea you mentioned”.

We think of delusions as grand and obvious when far more frequently they’re insidiously small and simple.

A child convincing herself that God Almighty is punishing her with chronic headaches for just being. Sinfully, imperfectly being.

And so I told myself I deserved the pain. Chronic headaches were manifest proof.

• • • •

I think when people think of depression they mostly picture the way it sucks the life and energy out of you. The way that gravity multiplies and life devolves into an attempt to just stay afloat.

And so we picture people locked in rooms under bedspreads and know that the solution is just to open the blinds and take a walk outside. Push back against the weight. Shake off the inertia.

And that’s all real. I find the weight on my chest and the thickness of the air difficult to push back against when the fog of malaise decides to pass by. But the part that I find really really hard are the delusions.

Depression lies, as they say.

Depression told me I deserved the pain and so I believed it.

• • • •

The thing about delusions is how do you tell? If it’s what’s in your head and it seems real and true, how do you know what’s what?

The biggest lie depression ever told me was that I wasn’t depressed. Which is clearly not to say everyone who doesn’t think they’re depressed is just being deluded by their depression into a false sense of wellness.

However, if at your worse you find yourself thinking. “You’re not depressed. There’s absolutely nothing actually wrong with you. You’re just a miserable, lazy, ungrateful brat who can’t stop thinking about yourself. Self absorbed and attention seeking. The world would be better off without you. You deserve this.”

You might be deluded. You might actually be depressed.

I was.

Over the years I’ve gotten a bit better at recognizing the lies. But it’s difficult. So difficult in fact that I’ll rarely talk about any of them while I’m facing them head on, because they seem too real, too true to expose.

I like how Andrew Solomon once put it,

“You don’t think in depression that you’ve put on a gray veil and are seeing the world through the haze of a bad mood. You think that the veil has been taken away, the veil of happiness, and that now you’re seeing truly. It’s easier to help schizophrenics who perceive that there’s something foreign inside of them that needs to be exorcised, but it’s difficult with depressives, because we believe we are seeing the truth. But the truth lies.”

I’ve gotten better at recognizing that other voice in my head that twists reality into a crueler darker version of the truth. But I still feel the thoughts even while I file them under “this is a lie you need to stop telling yourself”.

Because I know I’m not actually a failure.

At life, at motherhood, at work.

And I know the economy is to blame when finances get tight, not an absolute dearth of talent and ability.

Every bad happenstance is not evidence of my ineptitude. Other people’s bad days are not contagion of my miasma.

I know I don’t drag down everyone around me, I’m not hopelessly broken. The world would not be better off without me, at least not the world that matters to me, my family, my friends.

I try to force myself to remember and embrace these facts whenever the sun shines through the clouds. To feel the sunlight and embrace every summer day and the truth that comes with them so I can carry them into the night when it eventually comes.

Because the only way to recognize delusion is to remember the truth.

And the truth is, headaches suck. No one deserves them. But sometimes they still happen and that’s ok. I don’t pray for them to go away anymore. Instead, I think I’ll just take some more medicine and try to sleep until tomorrow.

“Hold on to what you believe in the light, When the darkness has robbed you of all your sight.”