Being Somebody's Brittany

I have worked from the inside out with mental health. I was once a juvenile patient four different times between the ages of fourteen to seventeen years old. All for suicidal thoughts and attempts. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty years old, I had three more visits to psychiatric hospitals before it seemed like my brain snapped itself into place and I could magically handle life without being psychiatrically inpatient at a mental health facility.

In the later part of my twentieth year, I started working for the company that I credited with saving my life as a Certified Peer Specialist. I worked my way from the inside of the system out. I am someone with lived experience in the mental health system who has “recovered” enough from their mental illness that they can help other people try to get better. That doesn’t mean that I don’t forget all the crappy parts of being hospitalized or that I sometimes don’t miss the safe feeling of being in a hospital setting and getting around the clock care from nurses and doctors and staff who just want the best for you. Now, I am the staff who works around the clock.

It became my mission in life to work this job after my best friend died of a drug overdose. And I won’t lie, some days it is nearly impossible to live with myself knowing how awful my best friend’s life was and that the way that it ended was unfair. Sometimes I wonder if I am doing my client’s the same justice that she did for me. I wonder if I could ever live up to her example.

I was the only person that didn’t demonize her for using drugs. It wasn’t in my nature to challenge her choices. She already felt ashamed and hated herself, we openly shared those thoughts and feelings with each other. What would it have done if I had made her feel worse about herself for using? She told me that she would have done it regardless. That didn’t mean that I was okay with it. I told her that I wouldn’t give her money and that I wouldn’t take her from place to place to get anything but pot. She understood and respected my boundaries. She didn’t use when we were together, and she never took any pills or money from me or my family.

When it comes to my work with my clients, I could never imagine some of their awful stories happening to someone. Some stories, it’s like I lived it with them. I have even lived some awful experiences with my clients. It’s hard not to take it home with you. It’s hard not to shed those layers around your clients when you have the answer and can only lead by example. They’re people and seeing them suffer or struggle is hard. Sometimes it’s hard because they have all the resources and skills and strengths, but they don’t want to do it for themselves. It’s hard to live by example.

I knew she felt ashamed of herself. She used to write poetry and send it to me. We would FaceTime and she would read it out loud to me. She was so talented and so introspective for a twenty-one-year-old. In all my life, no one understood me like she did. She and I had nearly the same lives, but somehow her life was just a smidge darker. We made suicide pacts and tried to spend as much time together as we could. Somehow, we both knew that we were living on borrowed time with one another. I couldn’t imagine my life without her, despite only knowing her from my sophomore year of high school what would have been my sophomore year of college.

Over the years, I’ve had several clients who are deemed that they will not get better and that they are stagnant in their progress. I have had clients who have been in for years and others who have been in for weeks before they discharged from the program. I’ve had clients who hurt themselves and I have had clients who needed me to help them stop hurting the people around them. Each day, you take it little bits at a time. Some clients are easy, they just want to talk about their favorite shows and practice social exposure. Some clients cry and talk and need hours to recap all of the problems they’ve had. One day at a time.

The day she died; I was in shock from my world collapsing under the earthquake that her death had left. That was four years ago, and I still shake from my grief. I still spend therapy sessions trying to process her death and our friendship when I should be focusing on the wounds my mother’s recent death have left on me, but I can’t. I can’t because I have so much work to do.

I try to make sure that my clients have someone willing to listen without judgement. That’s hard. It’s hard to cope with some stories and it’s sometimes too much to handle. Every story opens a conversation, and every conversation can make a difference. It’s about offering peace, love and empathy. It’s about sharing time and experiences with people who never had someone care about them. It’s not giving them money or taking them to do stuff, it’s about living through whatever they’re going through with them to make sure they make it to the other side.

It’s like I have this impulsive urge to do more for people than they have had done for them before. It’s like a sick obsession with taking care of the menial needs of others is my way to remember her. More than anything, I want to share her story with other people. She touched my life and gave me peace. She taught me how to help the people who hurt like I do. Her death taught me how to remember someone through actions.

Since she died, I took up writing mediocre poetry. Since she died, I seek out the same kind of people with the light she saw in me, and I try to help them. Since she died, I perfected the art of breaking hard truths to people in the most sensitive way without sugarcoating it. Since she died, I want to teach the people I work with how to be good people, despite feeling powerless in their own situations. Since she died, I want to help people (and myself) reflect on the good things in life even when there’s seemingly only bad things happening. Since she died, I try to remember and honor her every single day by being somebody’s Brittany.

Everyday in the field or at home, I try to be someone’s Brittany in hopes that one day, they’ll want to be somebody’s Lizzie, so then maybe the world can slowly become a better place.