Happy Birthday, Papa: What My Father Taught Me About Mental Health

Today, for the 72nd time, it's my fathers birthday. 12 of them, he wasn't alive to celebrate. All the other 59, he wasn't happy enough to celebrate. My father always said he didn't want any presents, he had everything he needed; one of his biggest lies. My father did not close his eyes at 59 to die because he was fulfilled and happy with what he did in his 59 years of life. Quite the contrary: although I was only 17 when he died, I got to know my father as an adult. He was a thoroughly unhappy man, stricken by the mistakes he made early and later in life and he had absolutely no emotional capabilities to ensure these feelings were not going to kill him at a young age. I know all that could have been prevented. It is time the world acknowledges that, too.

This week it was World Mental Health Day and a lot of my friends reached out to an invisible somebody on their news feeds to express support for whatever is going on "inside of them". Companies underlined their support for employees struggling with something. While all these efforts are a great step in the right direction, making people, like my father, hear over and over again that "being strong" should not be the number one priority in life does little in practice. I am not going to talk about stigmas because we will never see anyone consciously admitting that they perceive mental health issues as a proper weakness; talking about it, therefore, does nothing. You cannot change a person's mind, thoughts or attitude on someone else's mind, thoughts and attitude without them acknowledging they have subconscious bias first.

I am not one of these people. I have, in my time on this Earth, met a lot of people struggling with depression and other issues, mostly men. At the same time, I feel that support usually comes from those who have been affected themselves. While I do not consider myself depressed, I do know depression. I watched my father, my mother, numerous friends and loved ones struggle to extents hardly imaginable; some of them lost the fight, culminating their experience in suicide. This all sounds very sad but it really is not sad; it's unnecessary, entirely pointless and unfair. It should not be an issue for someone to speak their mind, keeping up a front and pretending they do not want presents because they have everything they need. Of course, that is a trivial example. But the question remains: Why is it so hard to admit we are not feeling so great?

The answer is: Because of us. The world, all its people, everything is completely different from what a mind can see. People with a mental health issue are, like every other person, only used to their own thoughts and feelings. Their individual brains cannot differentiate between what is their personality, what is their feeling, what will change one day and what won't. If the brain was capable of regulating love, care, appreciation and gratitude, wouldn't we just all be the same, with no feelings? When you put a device in someone's head that can make people happy, that device will inevitably also enable unhappiness. And devices sometimes work in different ways. The problem arises when a specific brand of brain is labeled the Samsung brand, while its owner feels like everyone else has a new Apple-brand brain and only theirs isn't working. But everyone knows, the new Samsung phone can do exactly the same as the iPhone. People still pay double for the iPhone.

This lame analogy is truth though. There is nothing wrong with any brain, it is just a brain. I can't work an iPhone, nevermind my own brain. When my father and I were alive at the same time, I didn't know his brain was different from what he let me see. He was not well, and yet it was harder for him to show that than it was to express his love for us although both emotions have the same origin. Nothing was wrong with him, he just - had a brain. And that brain generated things he did not welcome. Why do we judge one emotion but celebrate the other? It all sounds like nature to me. Without knowing, my father taught me to accept the brain: my own, those of others, "healthy" or "nuts". Feelings are feelings, only concealing them makes them worse because you are not supposed to do that. I will forever be an advocate for people being exactly who they want to be to me, even if they think it is wrong. If my father had done that, we would maybe be celebrating today.