Weight-Lifting and the Flu - next in a series of Palmer Fishman's Mixed Mental Health Metaphors

Weight-Lifting, Flu and Chemo 
more Mixed Mental Health Metaphors from Palmer Fishman
(now with illustrations!)


You have to try harder
Get out there and do it
Just make yourself get out of bed
Nobody else wants to get up early for work,
        but they do
You're lazy
You're making excuses
You're weak
You think you're special

Even people who love me
people who supposedly understand the nature of major depression
Say these things to me,
sometimes wrapped in prettier packages

This is what I tell them:
Go bench-press 500 pounds.  Now.
Too much?  How about 100?
OK, you could do that on a good day,
after being healthy and in training for awhile
with a spotter?
But this week you have the flu
and the weight falls on your chest.
Nobody blames you or
calls you a weakling
you have a fever and you're vomiting and
can barely walk
It's understandable.

But if I have no desire to be alive
which is a damn sight more serious than a fever and I
can't force myself to get out of bed
even to eat or go to the bathroom
Why do you think I should
'JUST'
be able to bench-press 100 pounds?
Or go to work?
Or make it to a meeting?
Or answer the phone, for that matter?

What if someone you know is fighting cancer
They're in chemo and
can't keep food down and
generally feel miserable and everyone's
worried they might not make it through
You don't call them lazy because they can't
maintain their usual hectic schedule

But say you have major recurrent depression and you're
always worried you won't make it, you're not even sure what 'making it'
means anymore.
You think you might feel better if you don't 'make it'.
You can't enjoy or desire
anything.
Even your favorite things.

Yet your coworkers call you a slacker or
your friends give you advice from another world, like
'when I feel a down I go to yoga and it really helps' or
'you just have to chill the fuck out'
Completely missing that this is not just
a little down
This is on the same scale of 'bad' as cancer treatment.

So please don't think I'm lazy
I'm trying as hard as I can
I need the equivalent of chemo, and if
I'm on serious drugs or had ECT, believe me that
the side effects also suck the life-force out of me and I am indeed
fighting for survival
so
I 'just' can't bench-press anything

today.  or maybe this whole month