Ok, So You Want to Talk?

For two weeks of 2012, I fell out of this world and into another one. This was no fantasy novel, though. My new world wasn’t conducive to adventure; instead it was a perpetual waiting room, quarantined from time, like being in an existential play but hey, it was real life.

This was my life in the psych ward of a major city hospital.

We weren’t barred from interacting with the outside world. There were 24 hour cable news channels on the TV, and a desktop computer. They gave me my phone back eventually. But why bother to try and contact anyone? The outside world didn’t offer much for me. Our breakfast, lunch, and dinners would have come at the same time, on the same plastic dishes. My world would have still been circumscribed to a building floor. I told my job I was sick and the hospital wouldn’t let me leave, I told my family the rest of the truth, but otherwise I was checked out of the real world for two weeks.

I have kept very little from that time. Even the memories are beginning to go. I can’t remember the name of the form that the hospital kept me on, or the colours of the wristbands and how they related to privileges on the ward. Until I started writing this, I had forgotten the minor-key crush I had developed on someone there, out of what I can only assume was a combination of desperation and boredom. The memories I do have seem mostly funny now: trying to spear a slice of pork tenderloin with my fork because they wouldn’t let me have a knife; completing puzzle after puzzle in the break room; covering for someone I knew was smoking in the “reflection room” out of loyalty.

The physical evidence is even slighter. I threw out the paperwork, so now it’s just my hospital card and a mask. That mask isn’t metaphorical. It was just one of the many activities offered by the hospital so we could, I suppose, busy ourselves into sanity. I made something vaguely inspired by Cthulhu. It seemed appropriate, inside of a modern-day madhouse, to make a mask of a being who causes madness.

With a collection of memories and objects like this to remind me, it’s easy to forget it all. And yet, here comes #BellLetsTalk Day, to remind me every year that I’m more than just a headcase; I’m also a marketing tool!

So, let’s talk about #BellLetsTalk. I’ll start: I hate it. I hate that it dominates our national conversation for one day, causing my newsfeed to become bloated with endless retweets of trite sayings and quotes photoshopped onto Instagrammed photos. I hate that Bell wasted four letters of the official hashtag pushing its brand forward. And I hate that I have to justify my hatred. This year, I noticed more tweets than ever criticizing those who would criticize this day, often along these lines:

I'm sure that for each cynical tweet criticizing #BellLetsTalk, the tweeters are donating generously out of their own pockets. Right?
— Peter Moorhouse (@PeterMoorhouse) January 28, 2015

I dislike this kind of argument. In seeking to derail criticism, it turns what is just one type of support (in this case, financial) into the standard of engagement. Instead of responding to what someone is saying, it questions their commitment to even say it. So, in the interests of confounding these critics (and to regain the moral high ground of this piece) I donated $15.00 today. That’s not a lot, but I would have had to tweet #BellLetsTalk 300 times before Bell would pay out a similar sum.

Still, there are those I can’t ignore, or undercut with a donation; they are the people like me. The ones whose experiences were just like mine, or even worse, and who still like #BellLetsTalk. Many of them have powerful stories of how this day has helped them, that seeing all of those tweets and shares made them realize that they were not alone. I can’t criticize that, but I-the personal, highly subjective I- I still hate #BellLetsTalk.

I hate it for more than the corporate cynicism of Bell, a stronger cynicism than even the harshest anti-hashtag sentiment could contain. #BellLetsTalk reminds me of how angry I was, and remain, over this time. First: I did talk. Hours before I walked into an ER, I tried to talk with a friend about what I was going through. Instead of hearing that I was suffering from too little happiness, she seemed to hear that I had too much desire, that I wanted too much.

She wasn’t the only one I talked to either. Reactions differed. Sometimes people would change the subject and deflect it to something more manageable. My family, my lovely and supportive family, would just become exhausted by the obsessive mantras of my depression. I’m an ugly, stupid failure, I would say, disgusting, repulsive, unlovable. Uglystupiddisgusting. Unlovablerepulsivefailure. And on and on, until I could hear how tired they were on their end of the phone. Remembering all of this sometimes makes me angry; but sometimes it makes me feel grateful, for whatever these people tried to give me before I exhausted their energy and sympathy. A more honest version of #BellLetsTalk would also talk about how difficult these conversations can be for all parties.

And, finally: I am angriest at #BellLetsTalk for reminding me, with every hashtagged tweet in my timeline, of who I am now. That I don’t feel solidarity with the person muttering on the bus, but guilt and shame that I'll back away from them like everyone else.  #BellLetsTalk reminds me that I’m not a person who can find strength or creativity in this experience. Mad Pride marches will pass me by, because my madness almost killed me. And it probes into that place where I keep all the rage for what I lost. Going to the hospital probably saved me, but it changed me. I was tempered into something stronger, but at the cost of the ambitions and the spark belonging to the girl who checked herself in. I don't miss her misery. But I sometimes miss her.

So. Who wants to talk about that?