I just finished I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg. It was a true story about a young girl who tries to find her way in life while battling schizophrenia. In the darker days of her mental war - she believed what was inside her mind (a place much like another world all-together, filled with it's own rulers and authorities, friends and demons) was reality and the world outside her "Yr" was a prison in which she was trapped in, and was forced to interact with and pretend to be a part of.
This book uncovered for me the depths and real perceptions people may have to deal with when suffering a mental illness. Drugs only numb their perceptions, and doctors merely try to convince them of their own opinions. It provided me a new-found respect for someone dealing with a mental illness, but the knowledge of how real their perceptions appear to them also greatly frightened me.
Our minds are so powerful, that it can create a whole new reality in which we have no choice but to fall prey to. One passage that truly stuck out to me was when the young girl was beginning to fully understand the world's realities and her made-up "Yr," and when she was attempting with all her might to live "normally" within the world and not fall back on her insanity, she watched the people around her and envied their abilities to make friends, to deal with life's high and low emotions, to find love. She wondered if they truly understood how lucky they were to have those "simple" abilities, something that was so unnatural and difficult to her. She watched as they sang praises and prayed to God - and wondered if they ever thanked Him for providing them with sane minds.
It made me think about my own life and the simple ease I find in making a new friend or catching my husband's eye. How often do I stop and thank the Lord that I have been blessed with a sound mind that is able to function normally in any given situation without causing me to loose sight and hearing and go into convulsions? I think until you read or hear about the life of someone who has truly lived several different lifes in their stay on earth, it's impossible to fully understand how well you have it - how much there is to be thankful for.
