I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

That thought runs through my head more than I’d like to admit these days.

As someone who has navigated the past three decades with a mental illness, I’ve gotten used to the crushing despair that visits from time to time, sometimes staying for a few bleak moments before departing as quickly as it came, other times moving in for weeks or even months, derailing recent progress and swallowing up my tenuous joy.

I have endured the darkest nights of the soul, and I’ve passed through protracted seasons of utter hopelessness.

Yet, as difficult as those times have been, they were always the exception; brief or extended detours from an otherwise manageable and often even enjoyable existence. I could usually be certain that, despite their ferocity, these internal storms would eventually pass and a gentler, more stable state would settle in.

I’m not sure I can say that anymore.

In fact, if I set aside the weight of others’ personal and professional expectations of me, the facades of competence I work incredibly hard to maintain, and the worries of judgement, disappointment (or worse, pity) that may or may not come, I gotta say there’s a 24/7 sh*t show going on inside my head.

A pervasive, insidious, and increasingly loud sense of dread is pretty much ubiquitous now.

It sits alongside me in traffic as I think about my neighbors abducted from their workplaces and children lying under rubble half a world away.

It hovers over my shoulder as I am hit again and again by an unrelenting flood of suffering flickering wildly through the screen in the palm of my hand that I can’t seem to put down.

It sits like a massive stone upon my chest at night, as I inventory the nightmares of the day, and wait for sleep to come, knowing it will likely not be restful.

It greets me in the morning with a sudden jolt of panic, the second I happen upon the horrors du jour curated by powerful people who seemingly cannot be stopped.

I do my best to beat those stubborn black thoughts into submission or at least soften their jagged edges with the well-worn stockpile of coping strategies I’ve used and endlessly recommend to others: meditation, therapy, prayer, volunteering, exercise, nature, travel, fasting, medication, journaling, community, touching grass.

Yet, if I’m honest, these have become an exercise in diminishing returns, rarely offering more than a short respite from the feeling that things in my head are not improving anytime soon.

And far from some nebulous, undefined source, I can precisely pinpoint the disparate authors of my despair:

It’s the unthinkable cruelty that appears to be contagious.
It’s the seemingly inexhaustible capacity some have for hurting fellow humans.
It’s the apparent apathy of so many others.
It’s the brokenness of systems that seem beyond repair.
It’s what feels like the irreparable relational fractures that have been revealed.
It’s the burning of the planet, the disregard for the vulnerable, and the mockery of empathy.
It’s the realization that no one is coming to save us and we may not even be willing to save ourselves.

These are quantifiable, tangible realities; or at least they point to those things. This isn’t some negative mindset that positive thinking will magically remedy. I can’t manifest my way out of it or speak it out of existence. This is terrifyingly real, and knowing that actually helps a bit. It’s a comfort to realize this is not all in my head.

Look, there are things I know to be true about the hell we are all living through right now:

I know that I am not responsible for carrying all of it.
I know I can only stay in the small space of my agency.
I know that there are tens of millions of people working tirelessly to push back against the same darkness I am.
I know that all evil empires fall, that every malevolent regime is temporary, that things are never as black-and-white as they might feel.

I can know all of these things with great certainty, and still feel like the sky is falling.

I’m still functioning, still doing my work, still making plans, still finding moments of joy, still stepping into the trenches of the fight, still creating, still endeavoring to “live well as the greatest resistance”, but there remains the lingering grief over how much has been lost and the sad realization that we didn’t have to be here.

I think feeling that is less a sickness and more a sign of humanity.

Please hear me: this is not a cry for help, an invitation of sympathy, or a solicitation for solutions; maybe more a plea for solidarity.

It’s the difficult admission of a far-from-ideal mental state that I wish I didn’t find myself in, in the hope that I’m not the only one whose head is a scary and disorienting place right now.

You don’t have to have a diagnosed mental illness to feel this. These days are making otherwise mentally healthy people emotionally sick, and making ill people much worse. We’re all playing hurt, which I guess is the point.

Maybe you might encounter these words and suddenly recognize the symptoms of a lingering sorrow that you haven’t been able to shake, a fear that does not relent, and a rest that does not come.

Maybe if we all admit how not well we are, that will be the healing we need to keep going for one more day.

Is your head a mess these days, friends… or is it just me?