All the battles

I have had so many conversations with people who are fighting invisible battles lately. A cute little cousin of mine, just a kid, lost his life to his battle yesterday. As surely as cancer threatens our child's life, a less visible mental illness took his, and that is a double tragedy as his loved ones must mourn not only the loss of all he could have been in the future, but all he could have been during his time on earth, as well, and must do so while feeling awkward undercurrents coming from those who do not understand that while their child and sibling fought to live, then in the end, chose to die, the tragedy is the same as if he had fought physical injury or a terminal physical disease. They must struggle with very few people understanding what the true enemy is. There will be those who will blame him for choosing to die, instead of blaming a disease that made that choice seem, to him, like the only one available to him. 

I hear from those fighting invisible illnesses, illnesses of the mind instead of the body, caring for loved ones who fight daily battles against their own minds, that they feel guilty even voicing their struggles to me as I raise a toddler diagnosed with cancer. I always immediately correct them. "Don't you see?" I say. "That is part of the unfair burden you carry. If I fall apart, people blame cancer. If you fall apart, people blame the person you love instead of the illness they have. Nobody judges me for staying with my child who has cancer, like they would you, if they knew how your spouse's or child's mental illness makes you miserable, isolated, afraid for their safety or even your own. I have support available all around me simply for the asking, from practically everybody. You hide your pain because it will only be acknowledged and understood by those who have experienced it. There are no hugs, casseroles, or offers of babysitting, there is only secrecy out of respect for your struggling loved one. This is why you should never say I have it worse than you, because nobody (well, almost nobody) blames me or my child, or judges our family, suggesting we are somehow responsible for the cancer. Cancer is our only enemy, and it is okay to hate cancer without exception. Nobody gets my son's personality or worth confused with the cancer he carries in his body."

If a wife stays with her husband through cancer, people call her an amazing, strong woman. If she stays with a depressed, manic, bipolar, addicted husband, people call her battered. As she very often is. She carries bruises, visible and invisible, and cannot ask anyone for help because help only means one thing to those around her: leaving the situation. She cannot explain to people, without sounding as though she is justifying her own abuse, that she blames the illness, not the person who carries it. That she still loves the person behind it, in spite of the things the illness makes him do. 

And the sad truth is, she probably, usually, should leave, if the illness proves stronger than the treatments for it. She can't love away the mental illness any more than we can love away Daniel's cancer. She can only remove herself and her children so they are not destroyed by the disease as well, because unlike cancer, which is limited to it's victim's own body, mental illness metastasizes to the whole family. And this is where nobody, nobody who cares for someone with mental illness has any right to minimize their own pain in relation to mine. Because I get to give of myself without worrying about enabling. I get to accept my child's whole personality unconditionally without the confusion of separating what is him from what is his disease. (Mostly. I fear for his future mental health after three and a half years of chemo breaching his blood/brain barrier, but that's a bridge we can't cross until we come to it.) I get to feel the love and support radiating from my village, instead of fearing losing my village the moment I admit how bad it is. The worse it gets for me, the more support I have. The worse it gets for them, the less support they have. 

We owe it to those around us struggling with invisible illness to show them the utmost respect. Their worth as humans is not lessened by the disease they carry. Their disease kills just as cancer does. We are all just humans struggling to live amid elements trying to kill us, and sometimes we lose the battle. 

Love to all the fighters fighting all the battles. So much love.