Speaking of correspondence (the most difficult of the most difficult)

I just hit send on the hardest email I ever had to write. I wanted to tell all you depressed academics about it, all the hope I have for it. But underneath the hope there is fear. There is loss. And as always, the depression.......

Yesterday, I saw a man who use to be a friend at a house I lived at. He verbally harassed me on a particular night. There were sexual implications as well as my own perceived physical threat. He was with a friend yesterday. I could not contain myself. I had to say something. For her, for me. I walked over and said what I had to say.

I know I am leaving you at critical points in my narrative. But sometimes it's too hard to hold up. I feel like Atlas, holding up my own celestial sphere of complication. And I want to let go of it. Or I want to throw it up in the air and watch it's sad beauty float far away. But I am finally holding on, with grippers and all. And just seeing what comes from it.

The thing about yesterday's chance meeting was that I could be assertive with myself and others. He tried to hug me. He also claimed he did not remember anything about what happened. His friend-- who was not there-- also chimed in that she could never see him doing such a thing. I was assertive until I gave up. I wanted him to feel sorry. He could not feel that.

The email was straightforward. The pain I feel is hidden in my own body and not the body of the message. These are two very different things. The email for my future. The chance meeting and the confrontation for closing the past. Additionally, there is openings for the future as well. I gained my assertiveness, boundaries and impeccable alignment with my body and mind.

What does this have to do with mental illness? It has everything to do with it. In my experience mental illness correlates to low-self esteem, poor decision making and sometimes neglect or harassment from others. Now the beauty of the manic depressive (and others on the mood disorder spectrum) is that we are not fighters, but healers. We create, we build, we try. We also sometimes hold up spheres of emotions, thoughts, experiences that feel like a punishment.

I am breathing evenly again. I could wrap this up nicely. But like I said, I am holding on. The grippers I have learned to use are coming in handy. And that is all for now.