Don't You Use A Knife To Cut A Cake?

What do you use to cut a cake? I use a knife. I’ll eat it with a fork and sometimes maybe a spoon, sure, but I never attempt to cut a big or average sized cake into slices or squares using anything other than a knife. Why would I? It would spoil the cake. You’d be left with dollops, broken bits, something that resembles a cake, which was sadly smushed or dropped or worst of all - deliberately destroyed. Why do that to a cake? Why not just use a knife? Clean cuts. Straight lines, triangles, rectangles, precisely severed from the entirety and placed gently on plates with forks so the sweetness can be shared and enjoyed by all. In portions of their choosing. The rest can be saved for later. More cuts, more pieces, more dessert. The knife makes all of this possible. It’s one of humanity’s oldest and most universal tools - older than agriculture, language, and the wheel.

So it starts like perfect eggs being perfectly split into a clear bowl where you can see their clear outer donut rim with the warm, bright, almost orange yolk centers. Then suddenly an egg falls and cracks and splatters across the floor. Another one falls. Then another. And you're left with that contrast, of the perfect splits and the erratic splatters. I suppose the right thing to do is realize the splatters are a mistake and of course one’s intentions ought to be to split an egg perfectly into a bowl because of what use is a broken egg splattered across the floor? Yet, if you’re like me, and you begin to think that whilst the eggs in the bowl could be used to make a cake, which you can then cut with a knife and share with others - as wonderfully sweet as that may be - the truth is that those splattered eggs on the floor, though they have no merit, somehow seem to show you something more true. That's what we are. Whatever we are. As much as we would like to split the eggs perfectly, whisk them with flour, butter, sugar, and baking powder - bake it - cool it - frost it with vanilla icing - well, that’s not reality. The broken eggs are.

The truth is though that life only really works if someone is splitting the eggs perfectly. So whilst you sit there enamored by the fact that these broken eggs feel so real - that their reality is more powerful than life itself - you’re left with the knowledge that if it were just you and your broken eggs, eventually you would cease to exist. No, we all need someone to split the eggs perfectly. Even if it’s a lie. And before that someone dies we better learn how to do it ourselves. And at some point within that echoing, raw, cold-grey light and vast hollowness, you come to the bitter realization that whilst not everyone ends up in an acute psychiatric ward, with one-to-one monitoring for suicide prevention - everyone has broken, splattered eggs. And they are trying or have had to figure out some way to split them perfectly. Scramble them. Make omelettes. Poach them or don’t split them at all and get a nice hard boiled version. Clean. Splatter-resistant, for the most part. Predictable.

Mental illness is an unpredictable tragedy. Sure, if you smoke cigarettes and get lung cancer people might say, well - two plus two does equal four. But mental illness isn’t like that. There is no answer. There is pain and agony and treatment if you're lucky and then a desperate desire to explain over and over again to people why you are the way you are. And no one realizes how acute their response is. When we are made aware that someone is blind we will probably acknowledge it, modify our behavior around this person, and then find some way to be around them and then go back to our human relations with people who can see, like us. A mentally ill person isn’t always blind, or deaf, or physically impaired. Most of the time they are someone just like you or I, sitting at a café, drinking a cup of coffee and realizing that no one knows, as long as they can keep up the appearance of normalcy, no one will ever know that they were once sectioned off from society due to a debilitating mental illness, which left them without the ability to function, or do anything else, which is why now that’s all they can talk about, over and over again, because it’s the brain. If it doesn’t work, then life doesn’t work.

If you’re extremely fortunate, like me, then you receive support from people who understand, have your basic needs met, receive specialist care and attention, and above all, a degree of compassion and understanding. When I realized that I have become this person incapable of talking about anything else because of a routine illness this is the one fact that I have clinged on to: the fact that no matter how boring, exhausting, or uninteresting even - I will write this down and I will share it because that is my duty. If only one other person reads it, then that’s fine. Because I can imagine a vast audience of functioning people thinking, yes we’ve heard about how you have had mental health issues for years now, and we have seen the time you put in to make this information public, you plastered it all over your social media, and we are aware that you are not the only one, and we have seen some organizations or foundations you have mentioned, which we could potentially support so they can help people like you. What else is it that you want? And the truth is. I don’t want anything. I have to take the medication myself, even if someone else pays for it, I have to show up to therapy myself, even if someone else pays for that. I must do the work myself. I must heal myself, and whilst those around me can have a degree of understanding or empathy, it is really up to me and my effort after that support. Rebuilding, repairing, reconnection - these things don’t happen magically. The void is removed from everything else in life, and having no answer, leaves you talking about this. Every opening statement. Even getting a job - previous experience: psychiatric hospital. How would you deal with that? Would you hire me? Probably only if you gave me the opportunity to show you that I can be lucid, and that I went through something, go through something, which is not of my choosing. Us, the mentally ill, we don't expect them to understand and we hide these facts to keep up social appearances. It's easier to write this here than to have a face-to-face conversation about it, which is probably why I write about it all the time so those who I can't tell - everyone - so that they'll read this.

They might read this. My only hope is that they will read this. They will read this and make some considerations regarding how to best assess whether or not to cast me aside or think of me despite my disability. For a job. For life. But why would you if you didn’t have to? No one wants someone mentally unstable to be a pilot, or a surgeon, or the President, or anything really. I’m saying I’m not of sound mind. That I need psychiatric support to function as a human being. Where does that leave me? I have not been able to keep a job permanently (not that that's how the art world works, where unemployment is an inevitability, but you know what I mean - I had to leave jobs when I didn't want to). I haven't maintained friendships and relationships, nor have I been able to respond normally to other people - it is terrifying. I’ve isolated myself but chosen long-term ambitions, which require me to be radically different, almost the opposite, of what I am today but like someone I used to be so easily: outgoing, life of the party, vibrant, able to join all social groups, a leader, admired and popular. When these people who knew me like that now ask, which they will and should ask since everyone else has to go through the same screen test - for the most part - hey, what happened to you? This is what happened. That’s why I’m writing it down. That’s why I’m hoping you’ll read it. And give me a chance or another chance depending on who you are because I just need that now. I need to be understood for who I am and what I am now trying to do and this is the only way I know how to articulate this. To the people who I pushed away. To all the relationships I destroyed.

I’ll tell you it wasn’t me but what good would that do? You're probably thinking you've read enough of this now, and I don't blame you.

But I’ll tell you it’s my illness - what good would that do? People make space for those who understand them and that is not a crime. The fact that I don’t understand, and the fact that I have not let people understand me, places me outside society. Outside looking in, perhaps even being looked at, but everyone else is speaking a different language. I almost forget, briefly, that most people don’t understand anything they are saying or doing anyway, but when you’re ill like this - you know that. Hence the line of questioning: who is really sane or insane? And what do we do with those that aren’t sane? I want to show up as myself to try to do the best I can and if my mind fails me I want someone there who knows that I am not doing it on purpose. But of what value is a person like that really to a world that demands exceptional skill or productivity? A mind that refuses to understand that, which could be understood - be part of a general consensus. In agreement with a social contract. Don’t see the tragedy in life, do not try to point out what is missing, or broken, or unclear, and definitely do not try and make sense of those who do not care about the same things - be effectively self-interested. Split the eggs perfectly.

I’ve come to realize the solution: if you are going to live with paralyzing mental illness, instability, and acute sensitivity then any hope you have of survival is by finding people who speak the same emotional, spiritual, and whatever else, language and just hoping for the best that you can speak it back to them. That you’ll connect and communicate. That’s why all of this. I don’t know how to begin. Try this:

Hi, how are you?

Hi, it’s been ages! I’m well, just busy. Work. Kids. The usual. How about you? How have you been?

Well, I just came out of the acute psychiatric ward where I was sectioned for a severe, manic, suicidal episode and now after being discharged, I’m in intensive therapy for a few months until I hopefully stabilize again, because I’ve basically just fallen out of touch with society yet again, which is kind of completely the opposite of what I should be doing for the line of work I’ve chosen, and I really have nothing else to share. Nothing about work, no family aside from my parents and sister, and some friends at a distance. And I know what you’re thinking and you’re right this has been going on for a very long time. Very, very long time. It’s happened before. This time I finally surrendered completely as they say. Full compliance to the treatment. Medication, therapy, the works. I’m hopeful. Things are going to get better again. I just need to make friends and be social again. Live again. It’s funny I feel like I say this every year now but life is kind of like that isn’t it? Well, at least for the mentally ill. Anyway. Are you busy this coming weekend? I would love to get some coffee or maybe go to a museum. Can I give you my number?

Now pause. Stop. Breathe. I want you to think very carefully now about how you would respond. Be brutally honest. That’s all I ask. Reflect on your response. Maybe imagine what I would want you to say, and what you decide you’re going to say.

Then imagine what happens next.

Because that is where I am right now. I’m trying so hard to push past all of this so I can imagine what comes next. The amount of effort it takes, and the fact that I have been doing this for longer than it took for me to get my undergraduate degree - that’s alarming, distressing, and piercing. Cutting. Like a blade slashing through my mind and heart. Year after year. Month after month. Week after week. Day after day. Hour after hour. Minute after minute. Second after second. Because if I open my heart again, no one can promise me that it won’t break. And by not opening it, I’m breaking it anyway.

Like a nurse in the psych ward said to me: it’s your soul that needs to heal.

I got down on my knees in patch of sunlight next to my bed that had come through the window in the morning and I asked myself if I would let myself do that, after trying so many times, if now I can allow - momentarily - the Divine to come in - and bring light to the darkness.

And for that sometimes you have to be heard but to be heard you have to be seen. Really seen. I remember hearing once upon a time that intelligence is only attractive in women to an extent and it made me sad not because I thought that I was particularly intelligent - I had really good grades - but actually because by that time I had already experienced gender based violence in many forms, emotional and physical, and so it made me feel tragic. As if this was some inevitable truth, like death, that as a girl turning into a woman I must accept as a reality of life. But no one told me before. Maybe I was supposed to have figured it out the day I got my period, but, it didn’t exactly happen that way. Like so many other things in life since then, it caught me by surprise, and broke my heart a little. I didn’t fully understand why.

Now I do, and the truth is, it doesn’t really matter because there’s nothing wrong with beauty. It’s just that being told you’re pretty or attractive or beautiful only means something when someone wants to see something more than that. And never in my life have I met anybody who has ever asked me how it feels to be looked at but not seen.

That’s why I got so angry when people tried to frame me as some sort of women-hating feminist for suggesting that we should be pro-choice and allow women greater sexual autonomy, as if I had just insulted everybody who ever had a child or decided to be intimate with a man. It’s absurd.

When you’ve been violated more than once throughout your life - that’s when being admired on the surface no longer suffices. I stopped caring whether or not anyone really found me desirable. I mean it’s good to know that certain people do, but for the most part, I just want to sit down across from someone who genuinely cares, I want to close my eyes, and I want them to close theirs, and I want to just sit in silence and mutual care and appreciation, maybe embracing, maybe just near one another. But that’s it.

All the rest of it. That doesn’t mean much to me anymore. I don’t know how to find the energy to flirt or get all dressed up. I’ve become a creature of comfort. Of course I still love beauty, I am not beyond that; however, if I were to have it all it would mean nothing without someone who saw me for who I truly am. Because the surface matters just as much to me as anyone else, but beyond a certain point, it doesn't mean anything.

I love grey. And I love the truth.

And the truth is: I always use a knife to cut a cake.