{"id":363568,"date":"2026-03-02T07:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T07:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/363568\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T07:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T07:26:08","slug":"ive-lived-with-mental-illness-long-enough-to-know-most-of-the-work-happens-quietly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/363568\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve lived with mental illness long enough to know most of the work happens quietly"},"content":{"rendered":"

First Person<\/a> is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca\/essayguide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Illustration by Alex Chen<\/p>\n

The waiting room is quiet in that way only waiting rooms manage. Not silent. Just muted. A television hums with a morning show no one is watching. A receptionist types with the confidence of someone who knows exactly where the printer jam is going to happen next.<\/p>\n

I am early. I am always early. When you\u2019ve spent most of your life managing appointments tied to your brain, punctuality stops being a personality trait and becomes a coping strategy. Early means prepared. Early means control. Early means you might get home before your thoughts decide to take the scenic route.<\/p>\n

The chairs are arranged in a semicircle that suggests conversation but discourages it. Everyone is together, but no one is connected. We all sit with our coats folded neatly on our laps, pretending not to measure each other. Pretending not to wonder who is here for what. Pretending not to wonder how visible our own reasons are.<\/p>\n

How Canada can bridge the divide between mental and physical health<\/a><\/p>\n

Mental illness has a strange relationship with public space. It\u2019s private, until it isn\u2019t. Invisible, until it leaks. I\u2019ve lived with serious mental illness long enough to know that most of the work happens quietly, between appointments, between conversations, between moments that never make it into policy discussions or funding announcements. This is the part that doesn\u2019t photograph well.<\/p>\n

After the waiting room comes the bus ride. Public transit is a masterclass in how society handles discomfort. There are rules, unspoken but firm. Don\u2019t make eye contact. Don\u2019t take up too much space. Don\u2019t be strange unless you\u2019re entertaining enough to justify it. Mental health exists here too, wedged between backpacks and coffee cups, but it has to behave itself.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve watched people decide, in a split second, whether someone\u2019s distress is acceptable. Whether it\u2019s medical. Whether it\u2019s inconvenient. Whether it\u2019s someone else\u2019s problem. These decisions are rarely malicious. They\u2019re practical. Reflexive. A city learning to keep moving.<\/p>\n

Once, a driver waited an extra minute while someone gathered themselves. Once, a stranger offered a seat without making a production of it. Once, someone looked at me like I was a person and not a potential delay. These moments don\u2019t trend. They don\u2019t scale. But they stay with you.<\/p>\n

How my little blue shovel taught me to carry what I couldn\u2019t<\/a><\/p>\n

Support, I\u2019ve learned, often arrives sideways.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent years advocating for clearer, more humane conversations around serious mental illness. But the moments that have changed me most were never on any type of soapbox. They were in places where no one is trying to be inspirational. Places where the work is simply to get through the day without disappearing. Places like a warming centre, which has its own rhythm. Coffee first. Then quiet. Then stories that circle the room without ever landing. People are careful with their pasts here. They offer them the way you\u2019d offer change. In small amounts. Just enough to get by.<\/p>\n

There is a version of mental health discourse that treats lived experience like a credential you flash to gain entry into a conversation. I understand the instinct. Proof matters. But I\u2019ve come to believe that lived experience is less about authority and more about attention. You notice different things. You listen differently. You understand how fragile dignity can be and how resilient.<\/p>\n

Smart rings promise better physical and mental health, but do they work? I tested three of them<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve started a podcast<\/a> to talk about coping with mental health issues. Mental health is often framed as a crisis and sometimes it is. But most days, it\u2019s quieter than that. It\u2019s procedural. It\u2019s logistical. It\u2019s deciding whether today is a day for eye contact or headphones. It\u2019s learning which doors open easily and which ones require explanation.<\/p>\n

What I wish we talked about more are the small choices. The receptionist who uses your name. The driver who waits. The stranger who doesn\u2019t stare. These are not solutions. They are gestures. But gestures accumulate.<\/p>\n

Communities are built from systems, but they are lived in moments. If we want to understand mental health, we might start there. Not with grand promises but with the ordinary care we extend when no one is watching.<\/p>\n

Sometimes support looks like red tape and a pile of forms. Sometimes it looks like a chair that faces the window while holding a hand.<\/p>\n

Brandon W. Hahn lives in Bowmanville, Ont.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[276],"tags":[18,27626,135,19,17,167,502,5494,27627],"class_list":["post-363568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-eire","tag-first-person","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-noastack","tag-nodelphi"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116158397299207785","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}