Meg identified this immediately. She even said, \u201cCay, you just have so much mental clutter right now that you can\u2019t even think straight.\u201d A few days later, we shared a bottle of wine and talked about how to overcome the clutter, or at least continue functioning within it, but right then, all she did was take over.<\/p>\n
You know, I\u2019m crying while I\u2019m typing, because I\u2019m so grateful that I have this friend. It\u2019s really easy, when most of your closest friends live really far away and you can only communicate via phone or facebook, to start changing your own internal narrative. It\u2019s easy to convince yourself that certain patterns of behavior are normal and acceptable, and that others mean you\u2019re basically the devil. Moreover, it\u2019s not easy for other people to identify that you\u2019re doing that, or why, and it\u2019s even more difficult for them to get you to see it. It takes total friendship, kind of analogous to total war, to be the kind of friend who can do that, especially in the span of a few days.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what Meg did. She called me out on something that was seriously messed up the first night she was here. She didn\u2019t do it in a nasty way, or in a condescending way, she was just like, \u201creally, Cay? You can\u2019t do that, and you know it, and I know you know it.\u201d And all my internal justifications collapsed, right then and there.<\/p>\n
But she was totally unfazed when I had a complete anxiety attack while we were all rushing to get to 10 a.m. Mass, and I ended up crying hysterically on the floor of my room, surrounded by clothes that didn\u2019t fit, furious with myself for everything I was doing but wholly incapable of getting a grip. She just came in, sat with me for a minute, and then said in her best friend-ey way, \u201cyou know, I think you have some social anxiety. You have a mental illness, and you have to learn to manage it.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time, I was like, I know! I know I have social anxiety! But hearing her say mental illness<\/em> the way she did, like it was just a thing I had that I would have to learn to manage, made me realize that I had been beating myself up for having a mental illness in the first place, kicking my own ass for being so pathetic, despising myself for not just getting over it, and thus exacerbating my anxiety until it became completely debilitating.<\/p>\n The day before she left, she told me that she was praying that I would find some kind of hope. I didn\u2019t even realize that hope was something I was in need of until then, but it made sense. I had been saying to the Ogre, and to myself, that I just couldn\u2019t see any way out, but when he asked what I was trying to find a way out of, I didn\u2019t have an answer.<\/p>\n The answer was actually just me. I spent months trying to find some way out of being myself, or at least the self I had become, trying to find a way to make everything \u2014 my breakdown, my anxiety, my depression, everything that was wrong about me, everything that was broken \u2014 just go away. I kept waiting for the day when I would wake up and things would be back to normal, or as normal as they had been, and I wouldn\u2019t feel like such freak show, such a mentally ill person<\/em>. They were almost dirty words, mental illness<\/em>. I didn\u2019t want them to be true about me, because they made me feel like a pariah.<\/p>\n But Meg didn\u2019t act like I was a pariah. She didn\u2019t berate me for my erratic behavior. Even though she hasn\u2019t seen me in five years, she still knows me well enough to tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear, but she loves me enough to limit it to what I can<\/em> hear. And I trust her enough to listen.<\/p>\n That last day, I was driving home with Lincoln and Liam in the car while Meg made dinner with the girls. I rounded the corner and saw a huge double rainbow, stretching right over Ave.<\/p>\n This is Florida, and it rains a lot here, and I guess I\u2019ve kind of gotten used to rainbows and forgotten why they\u2019re so spectacular. But when I saw that rainbow, I felt hopeful, for the first time in a long time. Not hopeful that I would find a way out of being me, or hopeful that somehow life would magically become sorted out and neat and all my mental issues would just disappear. I felt hopeful about my life, myself, right then and there, even with all my anxiety and tears and fear and mental illness. I felt like it was okay to be me, like I was okay, even all messed up, because I have a great husband and kids who love me, because I have a friend like Meaghan, and because even though it\u2019s an awful clich\u00e9, it\u2019s still true that there are rainbows after the rain.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/225\/2014\/05\/Meg-and-me.jpg\" "\\"Meg")
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