10.a Hidden Costs of Mental Illness

This is a phrase that is thrown around a lot, but I don't think a lot of people actually understand what people may mean by "cost."

A "cost" is different from a "price;" you pay prices, often willingly, to gain something. A cost is something that happens to you; it is something you incur. Prices are active subtractions, whereas costs are passive removals.

The cost of being mentally ill is high. It's increasingly visible in our young people lately, and there are many different names and descriptions of its various features: loneliness epidemic, brainrot, long covid, climate apathy, all of these are various forms of psychological and emotional malady. The feelings aren't new, but the pressures are. Our minds haven't yet caught up to the requirements of 24 hour news and instagram livestreaming, we're lagging behind by a few thousand years.

In other words, "mental illness" is not a mark or brand, it isn't a scarlet letter that you receive from a doctor. One can be mentally ill the way one has diabetes; chronically, and often invisibly. But one can also be mentally ill the way one has the flu; all at once and very strongly, due to some foreign agent triggering your body to feel like it's shutting down.

My mental illness has cost me a lot over the years, and I don't just mean in the abstract "quality of life" way that health professionals and financiers talk about. I mean that I can recall specific instances of my mental illness making my life more difficult than it has to be.

It has cost me money, by way of me forgetting to pay bills on time, or not following up on work projects.

It has cost me opportunity, by way of me not managing my time well, or choosing to spend time pursuing other things as a way of coping.

It has cost me relationships, by way of me not knowing how to handle situations or feelings that arise when things get hard, or allowing some valuable ones to wither away.

And these costs are hidden; they are private. They are locked inside of me. I can feel them in there, gnawing away. On my bad days, it causes me to feel like I'm barely able to tread against the current, and sometimes I get a lungful of brackish water. On my good days, I'm sharing a room with a sleeping predator; I have it in a cage, but I don't have the keys.

Part of why I feel this way is probably because 9. Masculinity is a constraining force. It's also true that 11. It's easy to underrate your trauma and that part of my mental illness runs rampant because 11.a I am traumatized.

Crossings