A Fragile Thing

 

     It’s quite a stress browsing through Facebook these days, especially when you see people posting and commenting how fragile their mental health have become after the elections. There’s this young woman (a volunteer for a losing presidential candidate) who thinks she’d lose her sanity before the month ends and is asking for help.  The election results also distressed me but I believe I have quite a strong mental health; somebody with a weaker mind would have long been sent to a psychiatric ward with the few not-so-positive things I went through in this vicious thing called life, although I wouldn’t be too confident.  After many months, I had a bout of sleep paralysis last night, a strange nocturnal occurrence that I believe is caused by a tired and distressed mind.

     Mentally unstable people behave differently. One will act like a helpless, hapless baby; others will be quite malicious. I’ve been with some people who have suffered mental breakdown. My mother, for one, died of dementia.  She lost her mind and died a year after. Then there’s this friend of mine (who I had lost contact with now) who also went a bit off the rails after a nasty and embarrassing incident which was his own doing. We had somehow drifted apart before he broke down mentally, but his wife would text or call me, asking me to talk to him and drink with him after he got out of a mental institution—and I would gladly oblige. Apparently, all his other friends were avoiding him. We’d go to our favorite watering hole (cheap restaurants that serve beer, actually) and it was obvious that he wasn’t fully recovered at the time, and there’d be scary moments while I was out with him because he’d be so suspicious with the people around him and would act like he’d be aggressive to them. But I didn’t cut off my communication with him, we’d always talk over the phone, I'd encourage him, and when I thought he had fully recovered, as no one would trust him with a job, I gave him some things to get him busy and productive. Soon after, his friends started flocking back to him, and I went back living under a rock.

     My point is, when the time comes that I’d also lose my mind, I hope there’d be someone like me who would somehow stay by my side, aside from my family, of course, drink some beer with me, calm and encourage me, and help me retrieve my sanity.

      Doo-doo-doo-doo
      Here comes the sun and I say
      It's all right...