So can you say you are high functioning?
Yes.
And do you sometimes have suicidal thoughts?
No.
So why did you actually come here today?
Because I do not want to be so sad all the time.
This answer seemed to run the psychiatrist sitting across from me, and she took out a notebook from the drawer and prescribed me Lustral 50 mg.
It was at the beginning of the second wave of the corona, when I asked myself how I was going to get myself out of bed in the morning and had no answer.
If in the first wave I still held my head above the water, without a job and with a little girl at home - when the second wave started there was no longer any reason to think that here, another moment and it's behind us.
This is our life from now on, and I have no way of dealing with it.
But I'm running ahead, and maybe we should start over.
My family does not talk.
And I do not mean "do not talk because we are angry."
I mean do not speak as a matter of routine.
In my family, no one has ever been offended, or angry, or sad.
Our only mental states are "normal" and "need to relax."
The only answer to the difficulty is "life is not a picnic" and in really extreme cases - "it will pass".
The only thing that should prevent you from getting up in the morning and working out, is a real loss of limbs.
Also, people are divided into three types: "successful" (i.e. - like us), "screwed" (i.e. - not as successful as us) and "self-seeking" - a kind of intermediate state that allows to give a discount to "successful" people who are "in a difficult time".
A few years into our relationship, my dear partner tried to persuade me to go to psychotherapy.
I told him I had no reason to go to psychotherapy, and continued to cut myself the ponytail into the sink.
The concept of paying someone money to tell them how you are, sounds fundamentally corrupt to me, something reserved for spoiled Tel Aviv narcissists, or, alternatively, for people with whom something is really wrong.
It took me a very long time to realize that everyone was fine.
Or alternatively, that no one is wrong.
As part of the "Territories for Peace" deal, my partner undertook to start a diet and I undertook to report once a week for psychological treatment.
My psychologist will testify (not really, we are not in the "wedding") that I was not treated particularly lightly or comfortably, but over time the objections softened, the walls went down, and I am a very different and mostly happier woman.
Eight years later, the upheaval was complete and I became a missionary of psychological therapy that is only cut by the book.
Just as no one will think twice whether to go to physiotherapy after an accident, even when it comes to psychotherapy, one has to learn to get up and walk again.
It hurts and frustrates until it does not.
When the corona arrived and forfeited the cards, I discovered I needed more help, asked for and received it.
The mental health reform that passed in 2015 is certainly not without its flaws, but its goal is to make mental health care accessible to every man and woman in the State of Israel.
True, the queues are long, the wait can be daunting, there are not enough standards, but the bottom line is that the State of Israel also agrees with me - mental health is a basic product.
Meanwhile, in the news, the Olmert-Netanyahu trial has reached a stage where we viewers, like children in a horror film, cover our faces with our palms, and then still move a finger to continue watching.
I admit that I also clicked to catch up on some of the filth that changed hands there.
I exhausted relatively quickly.
It was clear that the discussion could not (and was not interested) remain relevant.
No one got there to talk about mental health or its absence.
If the publications in the media are correct and Sarah Netanyahu's mental state is in doubt, there is a great failure of her immediate environment, which did not help her receive proper treatment.
If her mental state is normal, I wonder, why sue for libel?
She and her family have been called much worse names.
Either way, I would have been happy if psychiatric treatment and psychiatric medications had come up on the agenda in more flattering and less judgmental circumstances.
They may help each and every one of us live a healthier and better life, and do not need an excuse like corona or libel to admit it, to please it, and most importantly - not to be ashamed of it.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
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