Last night I finished watching The Mentalist. I am completely heartbroken. No one can understand this pain. I sound like a thirteen-year-old me, writing that, but it is true. How can I explain that what I feel right now is a genuine sense of loss?
It has been a hard past six years.
I have struggled with my mind, my heart, my faith, and my principles. Each day has passed like a waking nightmare, in which I am the villain whom I have to run from. Everything came crumbling down in January. You can only run from yourself for so long until you catch up to everything that sent you rushing away into hiding. I spent a month in the hospital for an eating disorder, and have been home, continuing recovery since late March.
This year does not even seem to be happening inside of time.
When I first began watching The Mentalist, I had only been home for about a month. I was navigating recovery and rehabilitation in an environment that I had known all my life, but my circumstances were entirely new to me. The two lead characters, Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon, immediately spoke to everything that I felt. Lisbon came from a broken family, loss, and rebuilt a life for herself where she no longer had to be afraid. Jane came from a tragedy of his own creation, a guilt-streaked past which became his centerpiece, his altar at which he laid himself.
My year has not involved the deep-seated trauma with which these characters have been walking, but it has transformed me, shamed me, and broken me entirely. The characters in The Mentalist understand that kind of brokenness.
When I came across the show, I was searching for something with which to connect. I connected to the characters in a way that almost frightens me, because they are not real, and the show ended a decade ago. Now that it is over, and I do not find rewatching shows to be an enjoyable pastime, what will I do with myself? How will I make it to tomorrow? I cannot imagine recovery without these make-believe figures who held my hand through this process. Without them, I feel as though I am starting all over again.
But I know that stopping is not an option.
It is up to me now to find the strength within myself that I relied on in these characters. They tell you that you have to recover for yourself, or it won’t stick. Now that the show has ended, maybe I have to finally begin recovery for real.
Featured image via JESHOOTS.com on Pexels
Wow!