Doing the "Right" Thing

You know, you talk about doing the right thing, but have you ever really done it?  It's a lot harder than you think it's going to be, isn't it?

Last week, I had a friend who basically fell apart on us. 

Friday morning, I asked her if she, by any chance, wanted to go to lunch.

That's when things took an ugly turn, and she mentioned how she was a total loser as a friend, a hideous human being who didn't deserve to exist, and how everything she touched fell to dust.

She sent several of us good bye messages, and to remember the person that she used to be.

How do you react to that?  What do you say?

And then, she said she was going to just sit in her garage, turn the engine on, and end it all.

Okay, so if there were any questions after the first part, the second part summed it up, and we saw it as a call to action.

The question became, how to find her and get her the help she needed?

Friday was not a good day.  Nobody could find her.  We sent the police department over to her house, but they couldn't find her either.  She turned off her cell phone and left it at home, so no, nobody could use her GPS to track her down.

We finally found her on Saturday morning.  She claimed nothing was wrong.  I had to pull out her text messages and show them to the mental health professional who was with us.  Yeah, I really didn't want to do that, but I also didn't want to get a phone call at some later date from some unknown person - or worse, see it on the news - that she had killed herself.

More than likely, she's going to hate me for the rest of her life.  A friendship of 30 years, gone in a heart beat.

I had to do it, you know.  I had to.  I love her dearly, and she deserves to be mentally healthy.

While she was busy yelling at all of us Saturday, she did tell us that she's been "off the Paxil for 6 months", and that she was "managing the symptoms just fine."

Problem is, mental illness needs to be redefined.  It's not an illness.  Illness implies a condition that can be cured.  This is a chemical imbalance.  It's not a sign of weakness, and nobody should have to "manage" symptoms that are caused by your own body chemistry working against you. 

It's not a chronic health condition.  It's a chemical imbalance.  Problem is, these imbalances can have some pretty serious consequences for people - and those that they love - if they are not treated.

In the meantime, I'm living with the harsh words that only someone who's known you for 30 years can fling at you.  They hurt.  They hurt more than I wanted to let her know at the time.

You know, doing the "right" thing is sometimes one of the hardest things. 

It can really suck.