An anonymous poem reminding us that mental health is just as important as physical health.
Watching TV programme about physically terminally ill people in a hospice.
One of the patients giving a rather good rendition of the song:
“Everybody Hurts Sometimes.”
Tears streaming down face,
huge emotional response was the case.
Is mental suffering and hurt not as great,
no, it doesn’t appear to so highly rate.
Some people become mentally terminally ill,
and won’t be saved by chemotherapy or a pill.
So much mental hurt and harm,
that they will not mend,
and their lives will end.
Hurting beyond repair,
do the perpetrators really care?
Do they feel any shame?
Take the blame?
No, all they consider is personal gain.
The programme producing such emotional feeling:
Maybe reflecting a personal fear of death,
of taking one’s own final breath.
Suffering, whether physical or mental, can be equally distressing,
there should be no belittling of mental pain, which can be equally arresting,
and should not have its importance lessened.
The effects of both physical and mental suffering are equally reverberating,
both devastating lives, bringing to many despair and strife.
Regardless of the cause of suffering,
people can be fighting equally hard,
to try to stay alive.
And some will break,
while others make it.
Digging deeply to access their inner reserves,
in a fight to life preserve.
In both physical and mental suffering it can be an equal struggle,
to rise from the rubble of their troubles.
For some people the struggle is too great,
and death is their fate.
Some have strength to “go for the kill”,
others lose the will.
Some end up with no hope,
no longer able to cope.
Strength of character can be a barrier –
We are all made differently:
Unique — some strong, some weak.
And although we all try,
sometimes the outcome is to say “Goodbye.”
Physical and mental suffering comes in all forms,
and with the human condition,
incidences of these are unfortunately the norm.
Both forms vary in severity:
Some life-threatening,
some less affecting and testing.
Some human afflictions are visibly evident to others,
but some suffering is not seen visibly,
so for those there is little pitying.
But it is there, although not obvious and laid bare.
So physical and mental suffering must be equally measured,
and discrimination and trivialisation of mental hurting fettered.
