Whenever I want to try to help someone understand what I call my “mental pain,” I search other kinds of pain that I’ve experienced that others might identify with. Then I explain how that translates to my mental pain. Of course, it’s different for each of us, and sometimes, it’s even different for me from time to time.

This morning I’m experiencing severe pain in my eyes. I don’t normally feel pain and then think, “Oh, I should use this to explain my mental pain!” But right now, the pain is clawing from the front of my eyeballs through my temples. It’s at an 8 on the pain scale.

I woke up Friday morning and couldn’t see. I closed my eyes, I thought that’s what I was doing, and the pain was, well, blinding. I tried to open them and there was no change. Were they open? Or closed?

I’d started using Restasis almost two months ago and was enjoying moister eyes. I hadn’t realized they had become so uncomfortable. In my panic, I thought that my might eyelids could be stuck to my eyeballs. Was I blind!?

I couldn’t be blind! I couldn’t stand it.

A small flash of reason reached through and I reached for my eyedrops. I’m supposed to use them every few hours throughout the day. I couldn’t find them. I couldn’t see them, and my hand couldn’t find them. Eventually, though I did reach them and squeezed the vial empty into my eyes. It was working! I could see now so I got another vial and did it again. It was getting better. I could see and the pain was lessening.

I can only describe the pain like having sandpaper on the inside of my eyelids. They scraped up and down, again and again. I called my eye doctor six minutes after they opened and was soon being seen. My dry eyes had gone from a .7 (like the California deserts) to a .2 in dryness (like the Atacama Desert, located in Chile, is the driest sandy desert in the world) in dryness.

It occurs to me, as I sit on my couch right now, and wait for the pain in my eyes to subside (this is also new), that this is very much like some of the mental pain I sometimes feel.

How can I explain to someone without a mental illness what the infusion of depression, anxiety, confusion, and panic cause as a sort of mental pain? It hurts. My heavens it hurts so hard. Sometimes I just want it all to stop. It has to stop.

Having this pain in my eyes has made me think about pain and making it stop. Would I be willing to give up my eyes in order to stop this pain if it was to be permanent and get worse and worse? My first response is “no.” But then I realize what I’ve just said. This feeling, this feeling of wanting it to stop no matter what, it’s an illusion that my brain creates when my emotions are desperate for relief.

An illusion? Not an illusion, but subjective. We feel our pain in diverse ways and respond differently too. Can you imagine the pain I’m feeling in my eyes? My pride says you cannot. My suffering is worse than what you can understand. Is this true? Of course it is. Only I understand my personal pain.

Then why should I bother trying to explain what my mental pain is like? Because even if I can’t help someone to fully realize what I’m going through, at the very least it’s a healthy thing for me to do… reach out. And, the person who’s willing to listen is being given the chance to be compassionate. They may not understand what I’m feeling, but maybe they will grow in their ability to be compassionate in the future to others… to me.

My eyes have course sandpaper lining the inside of my eyelids. Every blink feels as though it is ripping more and more of my eye away. I want it to stop.

Do you feel mental and emotional pain? What about physical pain that makes you feel suffering mentally? Do you keep your pain to yourself? Or do you reach out and try to connect with someone who may learn to be compassionate?

My daughter brought home an adorable kitten about 4 months old that was abandoned beside a road near a Walmart. This brings our total animal pet population that doesn’t live in a tank of any kind, to four cats and one dog whose nerves are slightly unraveled.

You know any baby needs to be watched closely or else they dive into the clothing displays and refuse to answer when called. Or they, if they are a kitten, climbs up and over and makes a mad, hopping break for freedom.

Today I had the kitten, who happens to be expert in the fine art of zooming over, under or through somehow the barricades that have evolved over this last week. She always finds a weakness and launches herself at it. She’s fearless. That doesn’t help me keep her contained.

I had the bedroom doors closed for an hour or so. My cat, Maks, was in my room alone. It was obvious, therefore, that it was him that took a goopy poop in the middle my bed. My heavens it stank like death! (The really good part is next.)

It used to be that every moment I could be aggravated, I was. It was ugly, that is, my behavior was super horrible. The first think I did, absolutely every time, I would begin to yell. My yelling could be heard out on the sidewalk. But this time – a calm voice asked for help getting something to get the area on my duvet there the mess had soaked through. Still, my voice was quiet and astonishingly calm.

“I expected you to be mad and yelling, but you’re not.”

Nope, no yelling. I wasn’t even trying to be calm. In fact, even I noticed how calm I was. It was kind of creepy.

There it is. Maybe not a super exciting story , but for me it was huge. And it reminded me, that even when I’m depressed, like I have been recently, I can still change for the better.

The things people I love have had to endure over the years is terrifying. I want them to see me change like Jessica did.

Today, a friend I just graduated from UWT with (Brit), posted the following on Facebook –

“I don’t look at people. I mean, I really don’t even see the people around me, and it reflects in my writing. I avoid eye contact most of the time and even though I’m friendly and even chatty with cashiers, or I help strangers at the train station, I avert my eyes to the point that I couldn’t tell you who I spoke with most of time. I can describe the place we were in, but am clueless about the person directly in front of me.”   (posted with permission)

I think that this is one of those things that probably everyone does in one way or another. When I’m manic, which is most of the time, I’m 180 degrees away from Brit. I not only look at them and talk to the people around me, but I also look them over. I feel like the whole person, including their physical appearance, tells me what I can expect when I talk to them. I guess it’s like general appearance profiling… whatever that means.

Brit said that she’s “clueless about the person directly in front of me.” It occurs to me that there is another person, in addition to the person we’re interacting with, that we rarely see. We talk to this person all the time. We talk, and we never see the truth of who they are. We judge them harshly and without mercy. Is it possible that we have learned not to see the person in the mirror anymore?

I don’t know about you, but I definitely look at myself from the inside out. I’m not sure this is the best way to look at myself. It invites me to instant self-criticism. I wonder how others see me? Hmm. I’m going to have to think about that for a bit.