Let’s roll with life’s punches
Who. Hoo. Level 1. I, again, like William Wallace Mel Gibson-style shout: Freedom! My black eyes are maybe just not Gibson’s blue make-up (too soon, too soon).
But we all have black eyes, I realise after I talk to my psychiatrist friend.
He’s high up; the highest you want: head of an antidepressant countrywide lifeline; “renowned” on the international stage – but for me? Just Frans.
And Frans tells me plenty about black eyes.
“This woman sits across my desk: ‘Doctor, I lost my job; I have no family; please?’ What do I tell her, Carine? How do I give her hope? There is none.”
If he doesn’t have the answer, I can’t even pretend to.
And here’s my niggly worry: high-up doctor of psychiatry is not only fallible, he folds. He is human. And he is down. Like all of us. But a psychiatrist dares not admit. Ever.
As much as he deals with the “abnormal” in normal times, this is the new normal that is but so abnormally normal.
I want him to read all the normals in the abnormal sentence above – but I know he couldn’t care about “normal”. His normal is the abnormal; that’s what he deals with. There’s no new normal.
Dare I confide in you? The good doctor is trying to deal with whatever comes his way the best he can. But his mind …
How do you handle hopelessness? You do. But you know you are lying, methinks – and life gives you a black eye.
Life’s black eyes never lie. It’s just hard to recognise. Look past the sunglasses or the smudge of Mel Gibson’s blue make-up and you’ll see: the people waiting to help us have black eyes too.
They feel the punches too; those unseen ones in the soft tissue. Those that make you curl up because you just can’t help.
They have the tools; the training to roll with life’s punches – but they just can’t roll the way they normally do.
Frans, I know, doesn’t have the answer. But you know what goes a long way? One kind word, one loving acknowledgment: “I’m here.”
Kindness. What a simple way to tell another struggling soul that there is love to be found out there.