The Gap

You know, the “disconnect”, the spot in the brain that seems to just be wired wrong either temporarily or permanently, hopefully just temporarily. That is how I’m feeling right now, like I’m in the gap. I’ve fallen in the gap. I’m stuck in the gap. I missed my step- and now am smudged in the wedge. But, perhaps not as wedged as I have been before.

Anyways, you get it.

I remember being in Europe and riding the subway system. There would always be some sort of a sign or a warning about THE GAP. Careful….it’s coming…. careful raise your step higher…make it wider. How many times as a kid did I trip falling inside the train? MANY. Mostly because I was too much in a hurry. I was focused on getting from one place to another or caught up in my Nintendo game or CD player (yes, I am from that generation). It was because of those things that I took the plunge, but always popped back up.

For today, I’m talking about the gap of depression, social anxiety, panic, mind twirling, and negative thought patterns- these are my gaps right now. It appears as though I was going through life, it was looking up, I was caught up in other things and then boom- missed my step.

I really don’t mean for this to be a sad blog post, because it isn’t- I have a positive twist at the end. Maybe I should just get to the point?

There was a time that I witnessed a man’s whole leg fall in the gap and he couldn’t get up, the trains’ doors began to close, and he had a portion of himself in it, but perhaps not enough to ensure the train didn’t go. The crowd jumped to it and pulled the man out of the gap, the wedge, the opening. I can see the image now; it seems heroic of the sorts.

See, this is what we need when we find ourselves in THE GAP of life, especially those who are suffering from some sort of mental illness. We have to lift our hand up (heroic) and allow people to help lift us up (heroic), along with doing the work as well (heroic). See, the man still had to stand up, grab his bags, etc.- but he couldn’t have done it without the crowd. We all need help to get out of the GAP- perhaps this is GOD, family, friends, support groups, therapists, psychiatrists or just a nice stranger at times. And, we aren’t the only ones, literally everyone needs assistance either minding the gap or being pulled out of the gap- we aren’t alone in this battle.

I didn’t intend on ending this blog with the phrase heroism. But here it is. I see the act of reaching out of the Gap heroic, I see people reaching in the gap heroic, and I see doing the necessary action to completely get out of the gap heroic as well. There are really no words to describe living in the gap with mental illness, but I see it as everyday one is alive, one is heroic.