I Would Like To Be A Mushroom, Please.

 TW: In this post I discuss topics of depression, anxiety, phobias, and make loose references to trauma. If you find yourself struggling, please reach out to someone in your life you can trust, or speak to your doctor about treatment options such as speaking to a counselor. If you are in Canada you can call 1-866-585-0445 or text "Wellness" to 686868 for youth and 741741 for adults. Youth can also call Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868 for confidential and anonymous support from responders trained in mental health support.

You are not alone.

I want to be a mushroom. 

That is to say, I want to walk into the woods, fall down face first into the moss, and sink. Sink under the spongy green of the forest floor, then allow a constellation of mushrooms to explode from my soul, a rainbow of all the emotions that I feel too much of. It’s always too much, isn’t it?

I am somehow always too much, and never enough. Ugh. 

People will walk by and hear the pop pop pop of my fungal explosion, and when they follow the sound, they will find a delightful array of colourful fungi in the vague shape of a woman who was, too often, barely a person. 

I wish I could cultivate the happiness this mental image conjures. Spread it over the world and people’s lives like a chaotic glitter bomb… except instead of glitter it is confetti in the shapes of toads, coffee cups, and tiny bowls of mashed potatoes. 

I cannot remember a time in my life when I didn’t feel too much, when it wasn’t something to reign in or change about myself. I was told on a weekly basis that I was too emotional, or too stubborn… while also being told I was being too cold, too stone-faced when I tried to hide the fact that it feels like there is a supernova in my chest that wants to explode whenever I am moved, or saddened, or happy. 

I feel. Deeply. And honestly, I don’t think that is a crime. I think it is one of the few good things about growing up with the constant weight of dread hanging over me like an umbrella made of midnight velvet that refuses to let the light through. I don’t want to cut myself off from those feelings, because with them comes the realization that the world is different for me, both more beautiful and more painful… though more often it is the latter.

The physical symptom of depression I hate the most is the pain in my muscles and joints. When I tell you that I know what it means to sob so desperately that I feel the weight of my sadness in my fingers, aching until my fingernails feel like they are going to fall off and that is why I haven’t been able to draw or cross stitch in weeks, I’m not effing around. It hurts. 

When the most successful part of my day is that I was able to get out of bed and somehow survive another day in a world where I am fairly certain everyone hates me. That might be the depression talking, it tells me that everyone hates me, but I’m actually fairly certain that no one  knows what to do with my neurodivergent ass. I can at least say with confidence, that as someone who genuinely feels inhuman because of a chronic illness, I don’t know what to do with them either… or how to process the vague hostility I often sense from people when I am actually trying to be kind. 

I don’t speak person very well, I guess. I’m only fluent in sarcasm. 

One day, I hope to be that weird old woman who lives on the edge of the woods, with a family of crows living in the trees around my house and a lawn dotted with the purple of creeping thyme so that every step on the grass is a symphony of herbaceous glee.  I will quietly donate my time to the community from a distance, leaving bundles of lavender and basil on doorsteps and making sure that children’s schools always had goodies to sell at their bake sales and fundraisers. Some kids will, of course, dare one another to touch my front door, and I will also have a Youtube channel where I post the videos from my ring doorbell wherein I scare the ever-living shit out of these kids by pranking them back first. The crows will laugh as they run for the hills, a Greek chorus of chaotic bird chatter echoing into the night and memory.  Eventually a rumor would be started that I was a beldam and that so long as I am treated with kindness and respect, I shall give it in return three-fold. 

Plot twist: I started the rumors myself.

It’s strange how the only way I can picture myself being accepted by a community is by being a kind, but overtly creepy local legend. It’s likely my imagination talking, or just my desire to become a cryptid. Otherwise, I will most likely spend my life like Frankenstein’s creature, living on the fringes of society and only being able to catch narrow glimpses of what real human acceptance can look like, before I am ultimately chased away with only the moon and books as my friends. 

But alas, I am not a mushroom. Beyond the figurative language used here, I will say with clarity that recently, I have not been well. But I am still here. Still trying to navigate my way through a labyrinth of complicated feelings and an illness that lies to me, and I will come out the other side bruised and beaten, but ready once again to create. 

I am fortunate enough to have undergone years of therapy to manage my illness as best as I can during this period of my life where I am unable to visit doctors in person due to agoraphobia, and where mental health is not covered or considered ‘health’ as part of the Canadian healthcare system. Because of that I’ve learned to express what I am going through in figurative language and descriptions that help others understand. This is something that I count myself lucky for every day, because where I am able to express I know there are countless others who do not know how to, and feel they have no choice but to carry the weight on their own. 

To those out there who also live with this illness: You don’t, by the way, have to carry it on your own. 

Sorry this post wasn’t funny or weird, sometimes it’s hard to let that part of myself out when the most I am able to accomplish on a bad day is showering. I’m currently putting the finishing touches on an all-spoilers book review that should be more aligned to my usual self, or at least I hope it is. With any luck I hope to post that in the next few days! 

Be kind to yourselves and those around you.  

-R

P.S. Check out the lovely art my dear Marcy created for my blog! She is absolutely wonderful and I highly encourage you all to follow her art page on Instagram and support her! Marcy is one of the sweetest and most genuine souls I have ever met, so please support this art darling!