A poetic cultural critique.

Mental health is not a diagnosis. Mental health is health of the mind.

Meet Tayler.

Tayler is a person who is living life. Life and the people in it sometimes cause Tayler to feel things that are uncomfortable for Tayler.

Tayler might bottle up those uncomfortable feelings, or put them away somewhere and accidentally forget about them, or really hold onto them and think a lot about them, or let them all out suddenly in a single explosion, or numb them out in someway.

Mental health is not straightjackets. Mental health is rain jackets on a weekday.

It is worrying about the perceptions of other people. It is trouble falling asleep while having thoughts about situations that did not go well. It is dreading the alarm clock in the mornings. It is having thoughts that argue with someone close.

Mental health is not padded rooms. It is bedrooms and living rooms.

It is having worst case scenario thoughts about what would happen often. It is having thoughts that other people do what they do because of you often. It is do it this way or not at all. It is can not, should not, do not. It is hushed voices in other rooms and stillness and silence.

Mental health is not a burden. Mental health is liberation.

It is having thoughts that more than what someone said exists exists. It is having curiosity for what things exist. It is feeling joy in who you are, who other people are, what reality is. It is having feelings that you have never felt before. It is getting techniques to live with life and the people in it comfortably.

Mental health is not dirty. Mental health is crystal.

It is eyes that recognize self as valuable, other as valuable, each as life, as will, as multi-dimensional. It is street psychology. It is throwing a red flag to gaslighting, name smearing, strong arming, shaming, controlling, invalidation, boundary violation, humiliation, at home, at church, in the workplace, in friendship circles, each day, every way, until the day, mental health day.

It is having feeling for the light of the sun, the mountains, the light in each person, the darkness of night, the waters, the darkness in each person. It is focus. It is choice. It is us.

Mental health is not the disease. Mental health is the cure.