In order to get through the day smoothly, most people have a daily routine. Mine, is wake, drive, work, repeat. No matter what our routine may be, we all will deviate from that routine from time to time. Sometimes things out of our control will require us to change our plans, other times those changes may be planned. Whatever the case may be, we must be forever aware that we are living in an ever-changing world.
From the rapidly increasing food, clothing and gas prices to the daily crime in our city streets, everything around us is changing. If we want to be able to stay afloat, we must be able to adapt to change, and quickly. The change that we are seeing today, in my opinion, comes from the need to survive. We are all literally fighting to survive. This fight takes place from the time that we wake up, until the time that we go to sleep and repeat the cycle all over again.
On this Thursday, Day 26 of MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH, we are still reeling from the many lives that were thrown off routine in Texas when a gunman took the lives of twenty-one others by entering a school and shooting them. Children, not yet able to experience the real joys of life, and adults, whose lives were abruptly cut short, began their day like any normal Tuesday, yet their routines will never be the same. The routines of their loved ones forever changed. It was only one week prior that a similar incident took place in New York, killing ten. Here in Baltimore, approximately two lives are lost due to violence daily.
Are these incidents a result of mental illness? That is debatable. Some say yes, some say no. I say that there has to be something not quite right mentally with someone who could purposely take the life of another without reason. That is my personal, not professional, opinion. I realize that some people are simply evil, however, wanting to be that way would require some type of mental instability as well, right? For me, it is plain difficult to fathom that anyone would or could be completely sane yet want to be unhappy and mean. If someone comes from love and kindness, then they would naturally show love and kindness. If they were mistreated or neglected as a child, then that is going to negatively affect them mentally. The suspect in Tuesday’s incident had no mental illness (so they say). That simply means there is no record of a diagnosed mental illness. If the suspect was never taken to be seen for his issues, then there wouldn’t be any record.
I believe that as humans, we sometimes want to see the worst in people because we fear that seeing the truth for what it is will give the individual an out or make an excuse for their behavior. Because of the debate of whether mental illness is truly an illness, and whether or not the acts committed are controllable or not, many people refuse to believe that it exists. There is also a number of people who believe that mental illness exists but can be controlled. Finally, others believe that people fake it.
Like anything, all of the things mentioned are possible; however, in my PERSONAL OPINION, it goes back to the drawing board for me, and that is this: Anyone who simply seeks to do intentional harm to another, for whatever reason, whether they are evil and unhappy, just mean, etc. has something mentally unstable going on with them. If, as a normal human being with no physical or birth deficiencies and loved and nurtured in a typical family upbringing we are taught the basic tenet of love, morality, and respect and we still choose to hate and kill simply because we have the free will to do so, somewhere our mind is not functioning properly, in my opinion.
Society Today says that even medical professionals don’t even fully understand mental illness. Psychiatrists believe that there are contributing factors surrounding mental illness. Mental illness is even talked about in the Bible as a punishment by God. As far as I’m concerned, if the professionals don’t even have it down to a science, who are we to say if someone is or isn’t/was or wasn’t mentally ill when they committed a heinous act? I believe that as a whole, we would rather believe that if the suspect in the Texas school incident doesn’t have a mental illness, he would be less likely to receive a lighter sentence. Again, all of this goes back to the stigma that mental illness is a bad thing and only bad people have problems with their mental health. Some even believe that mental illness is not real.
I know that things are ever changing. We have never known what would happen from day to day, but since 2020, our daily routines have been interrupted like never before. Wake, work, sleep, repeat might be what the majority of us do daily, but there is a percentage who has a routine that we may never understand. That routine goes something like WAKE, KILL, SLEEP, REPEAT. I pray for those who perpetrate this routine and those affected by it. Most of all, I pray that by the grace of God, we break this generational cycle of mental illness, take care of our mental health and do all we can to defy the stigma so that we limit the number of us who become victims of this ever-growing routine.
MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS!!! Defy the Stigma!!!
Dying to be Perfect 