I thought it was just me who hated RUOK? day. I have spent a lifetime torn between wanting to tell people the truth and being ignored or dismissed, and hiding my mental illness because it’s just too much effort to go to when the question is only a platitude. At least now I know that other people hate this concept too. We feel exposed and outed, not supported and cared for. Where does the conversation go after you tell someone you are so sad that every muscle hurts, that you’d take a thousand tablets to make the pain go away? Most people just aren’t equipped for this conversation.
My husband expressed this perfectly:
“RUOK?”
“No, not really”
“Oh, shit…”
*crickets*
I have a lot of followers on Tumblr and Twitter, and I know lots of people care about me even though it’s hard for me to completely understand why. So I get that people ask “RUOK?” out of concern and care, but the question scares me on such a public platform.
When I admitted I was struggling with depression on my blog, a few people went against my wishes and started reeling off advice to me, as if my situation (or anyone’s) could so easily fit into a mould for depression. Some people even emailed me. It hurt. It was like people weren’t reading me comprehensively. This kind of dismissal is what I seek to avoid by being quiet. When I do decide to talk, I will be in a safe environment and I will speak when I am ready. This kind of campaign fails to take the sufferer’s volition and personal experiences into consideration, and that’s where it fails me.
If you are going to ask me if I am OK, I will not have a neat little answer for you. It will be silence for 10 minutes and then perhaps a torrent of incomprehensible emotions that will take a number of hours to talk through or it will be silence forever. If you don’t have experience with mental illness or counseling, I’m not sure if you completely understand that my response to “RUOK?” will never be as nice and polite and abbreviated as the name of this “cause”, and if I am silent please do not dismiss me as ungracious. It’s just that this platitude has burned me out.