Behind the Mask of Mental Illness

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

William Shakespeare said that all the world is a stage, and he was onto something.

When a beloved public figure leaves this life by their own hands, millions of people invariably express the shock of seeing a human being so outwardly radiant and clearly successful and universally loved succumbing to such internal sadness. They find it almost beyond comprehension.

Those of us who live with chronic depression are never surprised when anyone leaves prematurely. We know there is often zero correlation between a person's outward appearance and their internal condition.

I know this because I am but one in a large company of great and accomplished actors surrounding you right now.

Every single day we put on the most brilliant performances, and most people watching us have no idea that it's all elaborate theatre: a carefully scripted tragic comedy staged in real-time in their midst.

There are plenty of us out there practicing our stagecraft where you live and work and study, but you'll probably never realize it—that's how good we are. We don't do it for the acclaim or recognition, though. It's precisely because of what we so desperately want to hide that we've been forced to choose this vocation at all. Our gift is crafted out of necessity; a required skill honed in the crucible of awkward moments, buried emotions, and the perceived weight of expectation.

One of the things you learn when you live with a mental illness is that everyone has a capacity for compassion, and many people usually reach theirs well before you stop hurting. At some point, your pain eclipses their ability to carry it and you realize that your despair is a problem—for you and them.

This is where the performance begins.

Because you don't particularly enjoy being you, you begin to imagine others may grow weary of being around you. You learn to read people's body language, to look for signs of their ambivalence, to sense their perceived impatience, (or you tell yourself a similar story in your head) and you endeavor to play the part of someone else: someone who isn't depressed.

And when you do, you don't even need to be all that convincing to sell it. People are usually more than happy to suspend disbelief to keep you in character. They'll play along because that storyline is far preferable to the one where someone around them is afflicted with such sadness.

Often people will be willingly complicit in the charade; choosing not to look too hard, not to notice the cracks in your facade, not to catch you breaking character in the shadows. They will prefer the predictable performance to the unpredictable performer.

I'm asking you to not be one of those people.

I'm asking you to choose to really see us.

When you ask us how we are and we tell you we're fine—ask again.

Don't let us off the hook.

Don’t settle for the rehearsed lines.

Refuse to be fooled by our best, most believable efforts to fool you.

The word hypocrite originally meant "actor". It once denoted a person who played a part; someone who wore an actual mask upon a stage for the entertainment of others. It wasn't as derogatory a word as it is today, alluding now to some intentional moral duplicity; the act of showing one person and being another.

And though our deception is not sinister but survivalist in nature, it is heavy and hurtful and it is never far from our minds. We feel the crushing weight of our duplicity every day. It sits there on top of the already present discontent, compounding it all, adding to the depression we already carry—the guilt of trying to pretend we aren't depressed.

And here's the deal: we probably aren't going to call "cut" and let you see the real us at this point. We've long ago assured ourselves of the consequences of that kind of authenticity and so you're going to need to do it for us.

You're going to have to be the one who sees through the mask, who steps into our personal space, who looks us in the eyes and tells us we can stop pretending. You'll have to be the one to assure us that life doesn't have to be perfect, everything doesn't have to be wonderful, and we don't need to be effusively happy for us to be close to you or welcome in your presence.

But having said all this, know too, that sometimes all the kindness in the world may not be enough. Many who leave this life are often surrounded by people who love, respect, and fight for them every day, yet they ultimately lose their battles to stay. The performance is simply too exhausting. So yes, love us fiercely, be intrusive, step into the messiness that is our heads, and fight to plant something beautiful in there. It always matters, even if our words or our actions, or our storyline doesn’t show it.

Because, as tired as we are of our depression, we're equally as tired of pretending we're not depressed.

Many of us are ready to retire from acting for good.

So bring the house lights up and help us exit the stage.