lessons in losing your mind
from your favorite loony tune
Something I've always known about myself, and yet constantly forget, is the degree to which I can intellectually understand something and still fail to grasp it in a real, lived way. I can read a menu, choose a dish, see the ingredients listed clear as day, and still be shocked when it “tastes like that.”
Now, on the other side of what has been the most trying year of my life—a year that has included an MS diagnosis, a breakup, two countries, and five different houses—there are some things I’ve learned. I want to share a brief list for anyone out there struggling with perfectionism or just trying to hold on through chaos. These are things I wish I could go back and tell the Jamila of the past, hoping to offer them some comfort and solace.
1. You are going to lose your mind.
You’re going to forget appointments. You’re going to drop the ball. You won’t manage your email. You will lose your phone—four times. You will be so overwhelmed by executive dysfunction that you won’t set up iMessages for seven months, and then you’ll just abandon the task entirely. You’ll switch phone numbers twice and never get around to repurchasing your SIM card.
And somehow, you’ll keep writing through it all. you will be different. You will be erratic, inconsistent, stranger, darker. And you will write.
2. You are going to lose friends—and realize how many you truly have.
You’ll feel like you’re falling off the face of the Earth. You’ll wake up every morning drafting messages in your head to the people you haven’t responded to in months—the ones you love dearly. Guilt and shame will come in waves as you face the reality that you simply can’t right now.
That “right now” will stretch further than you imagined, the horizon of it receding beyond where you can predict or map an end.
And yet, you’ll also see love spring forth unconditionally in ways you didn’t think possible. You’ll feel lonelier than you’ve ever felt and, simultaneously, more held than you knew was possible.
3. You’re going to confront your internalized ableism—and you won’t get to choose when.
For someone who talks about rejecting urgency, perfectionism, and productivity culture, you’ll still have to face the white-supremacist productivity cop in your head—and fight them every step of the way.
Your capacity will change: for work, for socializing, even for being “yourself.” Your personality will shift in ways you didn’t consent to. You’ll have no choice but to learn to value yourself differently, to invite rest in, and to make peace with being disappointing to others. You will be angry, sad, mean, and hurtful. You will have to learn self compassion and forgiveness.
4. There will be no perfect way to heal.
You’ll catch yourself waiting for the “right” conditions to start getting better: the right house, the right income, the right relationship. Healing will feel like a moving target, always a little out of reach, but you’ll eventually learn that it’s not a destination—it’s a series of quiet decisions.
Sometimes healing will look like getting out of bed, other times like staying in it for days. You’ll learn that trying counts, even if all you’re trying to do is stop crying long enough to drink a glass of water. You will keep doing things you “shouldn’t”, pushing lines and breaking rules, and failing to be a perfect sick person, 31 on year old, “proper adult”, et al. That’s who you are. You will continue to be you as you heal. This is a gift, and a curse.
5. Your softness will save you.
Even when you’re convinced you’ve broken into irreparable pieces, you’ll find something tender and resilient within yourself. It won’t roar or push; it will simply whisper, “This isn’t the end.” It isn’t even always comforting. There is an unrelenting nature to the exhaustion and the joy.
You’ll discover that your most powerful moments aren’t the ones where you fight the hardest but the ones where you allow yourself to rest, to cry, to fall to pieces, to fuck up MASSIVELY, and to hope again. Your softness, your capacity to yield instead of shatter, will carry you further than you ever imagined.
I don’t have a bow to tie all this up with—a neat little lesson or conclusion—but I will say this: losing your mind isn’t the end of the world. Sometimes it’s where your real life begins. Trust me I know. My heart keeps breaking over and over, as I lose different parts of myself, my independence, my intellect — all the while, I reap the reward of the newness and the magic that comes with allowing it and allowing it again. There’s a very radical kind of unconditional love that arrives when you allow things to hurt while realizing it doesn’t get “better” per se. The hurt gets different, and we get different until we are able to live into that transformation and see how far we’ve come.
I love y’all.
in kinship,
Jamila