It’s 1pm I just finished making breakfast. My apartment is dirty and clothing piles stare me down like I am a sucker. I sacrificed self care all week, showers, changing, and bills, in order to be able to clear my belongings from my old apartment, one which I was asked to leave from by my partner of 7 years do to my disorder. I am sad and exhausted. It just took me two hours to get up and make breakfast and now I have to clean it up so the bugs don’t take over.
What I also did during this week of sacrifice and self care is engage with the world of mental health charities. For 2 years I have been engaging in my own self respect preservation by calling up helplines, state and city agencies, and yes mental health charities. With the exception of one wonderful person who runs his own hotline none of these other places claiming to support mental health sufferers gave me a hand and in the case of NAMI, maybe the biggest mental health agency it has wasted my time and created stress for me.
This agency acts like it’s an advocate for mental health services. I proposed working with them to get the ball rolling on how anxiety sufferers are treated. I was asked to attend a group and was told I could talk to the director afterwards. I went and participated and the director left before the meeting ended. I called to follow up three times and he never returned my call so I stopped engaging with NAMI for a while.
I am in a bad spot. I am in debt and looking at being homeless I will have no where to live except my car in a two months and it’s cold out. I decided to contact another NAMI for help hoping it would be different. I was given the number of the President there called and her mailbox was full. Argh! Ok be patient I thought, try calling the main office again. I did and was rebuked as to why I did not text her, I told them that I did not think it was a possibility, I assumed it was an office number or just did not have the mental wherewithal to solve the issue, but I kept my composure and asked if I could speak to her now. “Are you coming to the meeting today?” I was asked, I drew a blank...what meeting I responded, “I told you about it last time...” well I told her my main concern was talking to the president and when her mail box was full I did not think much about the mental health group meeting I was told about, especially considering past experiences.
It turned out the meeting was in a half hour. I asked if I attended the meeting, was late could I speak to the president after about my pressing personal issues. I was told yes and I asked the secretary to please make sure she tells the President that I am coming on the premis of meeting with her for ten minutes so she knows. She said that she would let her know, great I thought now I just need to get there.
I drove an hour and ten minutes to the group meeting and luckily the president was in attendance. She was crass but informative she bounced in and out of the meeting and made announcements each time as to what we should do. She was critical and I spoke she interrupted or spoke over me. I treated her with kid gloves not to spoil my opportunity to speak with her. As I was speaking to the group she said that “I don’t have my haircut for a job interview” when that was not even the topic at hand. It really made me upset. Yet I swallowed it to get the meeting. For the record I have long hair and had long hair in an office for years in a position as high as hers probably making the same amount of money, what an ignorant person she is.
She left abruptly again and soon our group ended and I approached the secretary to get my ten minutes of talk in with the President. Just as luck would have it she came out of her office at that time. I said to her, “ Can I meet with you now to talk in private for ten minutes about some issues I am having?” And she said no and that she was busy. I told her that I drove 70 minutes to get there on the assurance I could speak with her. She said no again and that one of the group volunteers could help me. I said I wanted to talk to her and was told I could do so feeling so upset and lied to I walked out the office before getting into an argument.
This is NAMI. As I look to get by today and the next day I wish I could get back the time they wasted and use it to catch up on self care. I realize that most of these charities are places that are run by checked out deeply bureaucratic yes people who have lost site of their causes. mentally disabled people make sacrifices to trust what these agencies advertise. I wrote this to inform the mental health community the dangers NAMI posed by being disingenuous when it comes to mental health advocacy.
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