No Joke

Last night, Monty and I watched “Joker,” starring Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix’s portrayal of Arthur Fleck, the mentally ill man who becomes the Joker, is brilliant. Arthur has tried his whole life to fit in and be like everyone else. His mother always told him that his purpose in life was to make people laugh, so he makes his living as a clown, dreaming of being a stand-up comedian. But people laugh at him, not with him. He’s ridiculed, beaten, and called a freak and a loser. He tells his therapist that he just wants to be seen and heard, saying, “You don’t listen, do you? I don’t think you ever really listened to me. You just ask the same questions every week. ‘How’s your job? Are you having any negative thoughts?’ All I have are negative thoughts. But you don’t listen.” Arthur finally forces people to listen–to notice him. He becomes the Joker.

At one point, Arthur says, “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you deserve.” Arthur’s response to how society treats him is extreme, to say the least. Yet I felt tremendous empathy for him. Because I’ve been Arthur. I still am, minus the need to punish society. I’ve been overlooked, ridiculed, and called a freak. I’ve struggled with mental illness my whole life. My earliest memories are of watching my sisters and brother and wondering why life seemed so easy for them. They spent their days happily, then went to sleep easily. I didn’t. I spent my days in emotional turmoil and my nights trying to stay awake to keep the nightmares away. I knew I was different from my siblings and from the kids at school. Every morning when I put my backpack on and left the house for school, I felt dread. I knew what was coming. I was ridiculed for the way I looked, for the way I acted, and because I had severe asthma—I was so medicated with inhalers and steroids that my voice shook when I spoke, and my hands shook so badly that it was hard for me to write even one word. This was fodder for the bullies at school, who called me names that even now bring tears to my eyes as I think of them. I would sit in class, holding my hands in tight fists, trying my hardest to keep from shaking.

I wanted more than anything to be seen, not as an object of ridicule, but as myself. I wanted to be heard. I wanted to matter. Instead, as I grew older, the pain of being different increased, as did my symptoms of mental illness. I vacillated between anxiety and depression–I never knew from one minute to the next what I’d be feeling, but I knew it would hurt. So I braced myself for the darkness that pulled me under again and again–when I went to college. When I got married. When I saw so many psychiatrists that I lost track of them all. My husband, Monty, knew how much I struggled. And he watched helplessly as I began to abuse any substance I could to keep myself from feeling both physical pain and the psychic pain that years of ridicule and cruelty had caused.

After ten years of living in the hell of addiction, I got sober. I found a medication that keeps me off the ledge. I stopped railing at God for His mistake in making me so sensitive and started to channel my sensitivity into writing as a way of coping with a world I so often find cruel and unwelcoming. But I’m still easily and deeply hurt. I still want desperately to be seen—to be noticed and cared about just for being me, not for anything I do or don’t do.

If you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t suffer from the pain of mental illness: please be gentle with those of us who do—the ones you think of as freaks, misfits, and loners. The words you speak to us might be brushed off easily by someone else. They might sting for a minute. But they break people like us. Again and again, words push us to a breaking point. We might laugh with you, but if you really took the time to see us, to look into our eyes, you’d see the tears behind the laughter. You’d know the pain that your words cause. Even when you’re “just joking.” Even when you apologize later.

Someone once told me that I was too fragile for this world. Arthur Fleck, the Joker, was. And like him, I will always have to deal with mental illness. Words will always wound me deeply. And I will always be hyper sensitive. But too fragile? Destined for an unhappy ending? No. I reject that. And so should you. You belong in this world as much as anybody else, even if you, too, have always felt like a freak or a misfit. I see you. I hear you. And you’re not alone.