Diagnosis: Crazy

How do you tell someone that they need psychiatric help?

Really, how do you open the subject of recommending professional help to someone. I must have missed that day in school, because I cannot remember how.

I remember there being instructions on how to break bad news to a person gently so that they don't kill themselves soonafter, or how to counsel someone without influencing them with your personal advice, but not a how-to on how you tell someone that they're nuts.

Maybe it's because this is a job done on the other side of the fence (duh) and not a "psychologist" thing to do.

A friend of mine from way back high school is falling apart. Again.

In the ten years that I've known her, i've never known her to have a year off from the histrionics. She's that kind of gal.

Today, I spent close to 20 minutes telling her that she is a wonderful person and that she didn't need to go to enter the convent again just because she couldn't get it one with her boyfriend.

She was sobbing and drinking and breaking into a million pieces, and I was here Manila trying my best to will some sort of mental support all the way to Davao.

If only sanity could be grafted.

Half-way through the conversation, she sniffingly asked me why this was happening to her, since she wasn't a melodramatic person...

I wanted to swallow my cellphone and just laugh. Now wasn't the time to be blunt. She was in another episode and I didn't want to do anything to provoke her.

Once, a friend called me when he was placed on academic probation. He was drinking gin and going on and on about life and how it screwed it. And right in the middle of a narration, he suddenly said "I'm going to kill myself." then hung up.

Something inside me knew that he wasn't going to do it, but given his state of mind and me being just a kid, I went nuts anyway. He wasn't answering when I called back and I didn't know his address. I wanted to throw up with worry.

He told me the following day that he'd passed out right after he hung up. I smacked him for making me worry.

My friend was at her wits end, so even though the statement amused me, I shut up.

It's sad that I have to recommend she see someone, but she wasn't listening to me anymore.

She's got a 10% chance of having kids, she's probably frigid, and has a great fear of commitment. Which is expected since she came from several generations of broken famillies.

...

Just in case you're wondering, I do have friends with normal famillies, just not normal friends.

Our lives are exciting. I don't think i've ever been friends with anyone who was...normal, or never had anything extraordinary happen to them before they were 16.

It's sad that I should make it an example, because it was a very serious event, but when my cousin was whining about her nearly dying when she gave birth...it was pedestrian for me.

It was a grave situation, but to have seen my friends go through worse, to know my life and theirs...it was hard, but it was no longer different. I wouldn't say it was easy, or that I'm dismissing it as nothing, but...it's nothing new for me.

At least she had her kid, my friend won't even believe me when I tell her that she is still a woman even if she can't have any children. That she will not die of cancer before she reaches 30.

I'm sure the shrink will tell her the same thing, but having an office and diplomas on the wall should make her more convincing.

Again, it's not my job to put her back together, she has to do that on her own. But i've seen her press that self-destruct button so many times since we were fourteen, that I wonder if her life will ever get better when she keeps predicting that it can only get worse.

It's like an oraboros, a snake eating it's tail. She does it over and over again. I can hope that one day she'll finally find that someone that will convince her to stop, because that someone sure ain't me.