This week we read the lovely "The Yellow Wallpaper" which provides a fascinating insight into mental illness and its pre-modern treatment.

Until the civil war, doctors believed that sickness, disease, infection, was all caused by a imbalance of four fluids within the human body, and that balance could be reattained by purging the patient, often removing huge quantities of blood that would kill the patient. This "treatment" had been standard since the second century Anno Domini. With this in mind, it's not hard to understand that doctors, even today, have a weak understanding of mental illness and its proper treatment. Mental illness remains difficult for the patient to cope with and for the doctors to treat for various reasons.

Firstly, mental illness is not something you can see.
As humans, we prefer to deal with concrete, visible problems that we can simply evaluate, and treat accordingly with conventional medications, drugs, rehabilitation, etc. However, mental illness is the antithesis of a simple injury easily righted. Walking down the street, it's usually impossible to tell from a glance if someone is suffering, unless you see a cast, bandages, some overt physical marker that tells the world they're hurt. But mental illness, although not nearly as overt, can be just as debilitating if not more than a broken leg or concussion, as mental illness festers, multiplies in intensity. Once someone succumbs to mental illness, it's painful to pull oneself out of. It's not like one can wrap their skull in bandages and take some drug and everything is fine and dandy. It's rather the opposite.

Mental illness is a chronic condition that no doctor can "fix". The only cure from mental illness comes from within, from a mental shift. Albeit, drugs may aid some people (while causing viscous side effects, often worse than the original condition) to get over their humps, but mental illness is never really "cured". One might feel better mentally, or learn to cope with their conditions better, but the shell, the husk of the mental battle is always in the back of one's head, waiting to be indulged once again. The battle against mental illness is never over; it's a journey, to drag heavy, torn, demented feet through mud and sand, with nothing more than the hope for improvement, content. Not all make the journey. Some lay dead by their hand, the pain too severe to tolerate any longer. And some, some never start the journey. They permit the illness to fester, to grip every cell in their minds. And they die as they lived.

"So he struck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store."

It's always fascinating to read an older novel, such as Their Eyes Watching God, and notice how although the time and geography are vastly different, people experience the same events, same horrors, same triumphs. 

In this novel, Janie is a woman devoid of love. Emotionally, physically, her aging husband Joe cannot satisfy her on any level. Shower her with his wealth and possessions he did, but they matter not. She feels empty, void of any positive feelings.

And to put a cherry on the cake, Joe is becoming abusive.The moment that Janie removed his "immeasurable manliness" by cutting him with her tongue, his only defense are his fists. She hurt him, so he must hurt her. 

Although this novel was written over seventy-five years ago, the common scenario happens every day, across all oceans, down every alley and through each door. Men who beat their significant other, some perverse display. Many strike their wives out of self-loathing, out of misplaced desire to feel powerful, meaningful. Though, spousal abuse is not exclusive to women, it is what we hear of most frequently, lining the bottoms of newscasts and peering through the internet. Former NFL player Rick Rice (or something, I don't watch football) knocks his fiancee out cold in a public elevator, drags her dormant body out, and what is he slapped with? A fine and a suspension. Though if any other citizen committed such an act, ON FILM no less, they would be sentenced to years in penitentiary. What kind of message does this portray? Our athletes are treated as Golden Gods, standing upon marble pedestals, impervious to the punishment of us trite mortals. 

What's even more curious is why women return to their abusers. Some are simply scared of the retaliation that would be summoned if the topic of splitting up rose through their lips, a valid fear. Some have misplaced desires to fix their abuser, make them whole again. And for some, violence is all they know. The sins of the father passed to the children. Some believe that violence and abuse is a normal, typical, healthy part of any relationship. 

It's an important message to convey: abuse is not healthy, it is not normal. Abuse of any kind is unacceptable. If you are in an abusive relationship, get out. It doesn't get better. The cycle of abuse, reconciliation, and relapse is just as constant as the sun rise. 

As we progress deeper into "Their Eyes Watching God" portions of human behavior that lie within all of us are brought to light. 

Though in the southern culture, it is apparently a common occurrence to laze on one's rocking chair on wooden porches, gaping, gossiping, gasping, at anybody who thrives differently, it is a far less common and socially acceptable action in the culture which I have lived. People, at least those  I choose to consort with, do not tolerate meaningless gossip and garble. It is simply not acceptable, and one is looked down upon and shunned if they partake consistently in such a petty, selfish act. 

However little people will vocalize it, we all partake in similar thoughts, whether it be auditory our merely swimming in our head. The moment our eyes catch sight of the someone who is different, someone we don't understand, or most commonly someone who we find intimidating, our immediate defense is to draw faulty conclusion, rash speculations, childish insults. Does this occur because we are too foolish to be able to see people as they are, for what they are? Individuals, each dealing with unique battles, struggles, triumphs, virtues. Every moment in their lives, every breathe of air, every step, every word, every action amalgamated into one exclusive being, each prodigious in its own sense. How can one begin to skim the surface of the intense complexity of a human's spirit from a glance, from what they happen to be wearing that day, from the way they talk, from the isolated murmurs and crumpled notes circulating a concrete hallway? No matter how one skews it, what falsely omniscient perspective is achieved, no man is so transparent, so incredibly simple as to be summarized with a couple sentences or adjectives. Thus is the ignorance of man.

While one is reading Araby, a severe nausea may engulfs the stomach, and the oh so played out coming of age archetype is thrown in one's face blatantly, with little regard for covertness. 

Oh, a young boy has his first crush on a stunning, seemingly unattainable girl, and begins an unhealthy infatuation with her? That's a first. Realizing that your one's only chance with said female is to shower her with your affection, in the form of gifts, of course. It's impossible to even begin to court a female without a significant financial investment, right? The poor boy equates his love interest with a 401-K. 

Is this the type of message the author is trying to portray? Or is it simply a poor attempt at depicting the hot, red, awkward pain of a first, unsolicited infatuation?

As I sat in my over-sized bean bag, flipping page after page of Cold Mountain, I found Inman's trials and tribulations increasingly interesting. Despite the various physical challenges which Inman encounters, such as murderous rednecks and druggings, his true trials lie beneath the surface, in the confines of his mind.

Inman, for apparently the first time in his life, began to question the belief system which he was indoctrinated into unknowingly. As the world seemingly crumbled around him, as did his preconceived notions of God, heaven, and spirituality in general. He adopts a common atheistic argument: 'If God exists, how could He allow such horrors to engulf his people, his supposed children?'

Inman has done what a startling majority of people fail to even ponder in the entirety of their blind lives; question the believes one was brought up with, the beliefs one is intrinsically surrounded by. So many people believe the things they believe just because their parents believe it, or their church, or their comunity. Not for a second do they stop and try and formulate their own thoughts. Their belief system is validated, and pounded into their minds from a young age, from those that surround them. And whimsically, although people's behaviors, thoughts, and actions evolve with their age as they rightfully should, their belief system remain at the infantile stage of accepting whatever their legal guardians regurgitate, just as their guardians did before them. It creates a cycle of ignorance, whereas people believe what their community believes just because it's what everyone else believes.

I don't think that religion is all bad by any means. But when people base their belief systems on no more than what their parents, family, and community belief, it creates bigotry.