I’m tired of doing this, folks.
I’m tired of Bell Let’s Talk Day. It’s worn itself out. It’s not useful any more – I mean, it kind of is, in the sense that at least it generates some money, but mostly it’s not.
The last couple of years have involved me getting good and angry on Bell Let’s Talk Day. Just well and truly mad, and passionate, and wordy. And I mean, in a way, I can still feel that today – I’m frustrated, but in an abstract way. Because mostly I’m just tired.
I’m tired of everything about this. Literally every single thing. Do you want me to break it down, word by word? I can do that.
I’m tired of Bell.
Because this whole thing isn’t really just about mental health. Normally I try really hard to see the nuance in corporate activism. I try to consider that while yes, it’s always a business decision at its root, maybe a business decides to concentrate on a social issue because somebody high up does actually care. Maybe there are people at Bell who genuinely want to see change when it comes to mental illness and health. But I’m out of patience for that, this time. I’m tired of all this capitalist corporate garbage. Bell, as a company, does not care about me. It doesn’t care about you, either. Bell isn’t prioritizing our psychological well-being. If they were, they wouldn’t make us work for the donations.
Because that’s the system, isn’t it? For every hashtag, every view on their little video, they’ll donate five cents. Sure, it adds up. But listen… Bell had a net revenue of $23.47 billion CAD in 2018. The same year, Bell Let’s Talk generated less than $7 million in donations. That sounds like a lot, but it’s… less than 0.0003% of the year’s revenue, if I remember how to do math? Sure, it’s an amount that would change my life permanently, but it’s not that much when you spread it out amongst mental health initiatives nationwide. And for every five cents of it, someone had to prove, publicly, that they cared. That’s not something Bell doing out of the goodness of its company heart – if they were donating because they cared, they’d just donate, a lump sum.
This is advertising.
The hashtag has to have Bell in it. It’s all over your feed today, right? You’ll be thinking about them all day. Engaging with them all day. Your tweets and posts don’t count if you miss that vital part. And consider, too, that Bell picked a cause they could easily tie their services to. They’re a telecommunications company – so encouraging people to talk makes sense. They provide you with a means to do that. How were they gonna do this if they picked a different cause? ‘Bell Email All Your Gay Friends Day’? ‘Bell Research Cancer on the Internet Day?’ ‘Talking’ is already a subject that comes up a lot where mental health is involved, so it was an easy match.
I’m tired of ‘let’s.’
To make the impact we want to make when we post about mental health, we have to get personal. It sounds trite if you don’t, doesn’t it? ‘If you’re hurting, reach out and talk to someone.’ Yeah, sure. But instead, it falls to those of us who have personal experience with mental illness to bare our hearts to the world, publicly. Y’know, I’m pretty fucking good when it comes to talking about my mental health – I’m an open book, and I know most of my experiences are palatable to strangers, and I’m well-spoken. But even I have days I don’t feel like advertising my dumpster fire of a psychological state for anyone and everyone to know about. And there are a lot of folks who are in positions where, for one reason or another, it’s a lot harder to talk openly about this stuff.
But like everything else about this crappy campaign, it’s all performance. You can tear your bleeding heart out and leave it on the sidewalk for everybody to see, or you can sound like you don’t really know or care that much about what’s going on. It’s one or the other.
‘Let’s’ implies we’re all gonna talk, but we’re not. The nature of the sentiment puts the onus on the people struggling to talk, and to talk first.
I’m tired of ‘talk,’ too.
This is kind of an extension of what I was just saying: talking isn’t that easy. There are people for whom talking is painful. People who aren’t sure how to express themselves. People who don’t want to talk to just anyone, and that’s their right. A lot of the time people aren’t gonna want to talk and quite frankly, a lot of the time, they don’t have to. They don’t need to disclose everything they feel to anyone who asks. Talking is not, in itself, a solution to anything.
A lot of mental health-related campaigns put an emphasis on talking. If you’re struggling, talk to someone. If you’re not, talk to those around you and make sure they’re all right, too. But we don’t ever really seem to acknowledge how much we have to do beyond talking. Talking is not how we cure ourselves or make pain go away. At its best, talking – in the form of regular, professional help, like counseling or therapy – is going to help us understand ourselves better and learn how to approach our mental illnesses.
After we talk, we have to work. We have to medicate. We have to change our diets or our habits or our activities. We have to practice new habits. We have to shift our thinking. We have to let go of memories or ideas that are hurting us. We have to hold onto the things that keep us going. All of this is so much more work than just talking, and it’s often impossible to tell what combination of those things will actually help, and sometimes we can’t do it alone. But if all you signed up for was ‘talking,’ where are we gonna find support for the rest of it? Who’s gonna remind an absent-minded skin-picker to leave her scabs alone, or check to make sure their depressed friend has eaten today, or be the gym buddy who helps an anxious kid stick to his new exercise routine?
Why are we acting like ‘talking’ is enough to accomplish anything?
I know there are still places and times that there’s stigma against ever talking about your mental illness, but that’s really only the first step in anything, and we need to stop pretending it’s the hardest part. For most of us, it isn’t.
(And a sidebar? Stop making it uncomfortable for people to actually talk when they do want to. You may say you’re open to talk to anytime someone needs it, but let your everyday behaviour reflect that. Show compassion and consideration so people know you won’t be judging them or dismissing them if they do want to speak to you. And also, don’t act like it’s a huge thing every time we bring it up. Match tone. You know how sometimes you gripe and half-joke about your bad hip because it’s bothering you but you know you’ll get through the day anyway? Let me do that. I want to joke about dissociation or invasive thoughts sometimes, because that makes them easier to deal with, but I’m not gonna do it if the other person is gonna sit me down with an intense look and ask me if I need help. I’m joking. Relax.)
And I’m tired of ‘day.’
This stupid goddamn one-day event every year, where everyone talks about how much they care. This one day where I have a pass to tell everyone everything about my shitty brain and it’s not a sob story – it’s brave. It’s strong. Fuck that. See if next week I can get away with the same thing.
It’s hard to talk without feeling dismissed or patronised. Don’t tell me you admire me for fighting this for twenty years. 90% of the time it feels like I’m being lionised against my will. I’m not a hero for surviving this far. I’m a regular idiot like you, muddling my way through one day at a time. I don’t want you to think I’m a soldier.
I just want you to let me vent when I need to, instead of only one day a year. I want you to keep caring after midnight. I want you to practice what you preach.
Stop fuckin’ making fun of people. Stop making ‘triggered’ jokes (it’s 2020, for god’s sake). Stop assuming people are lazy or rude or stupid when you barely know them. Just… go about your life with compassion, and patience, and kindness, wherever you can. Think before you speak. Prove that you’re actually trustworthy, and I’ll talk to you all the time. It really doesn’t take that much.
I’m tired. I’m so tired of this that as soon as I got through the points above – the ones I was thinking about before I sat down to write – I didn’t know how to wrap this up. I’m tired enough that I’m not really gonna bother editing all this before I post it, even though I’m neurotic about editing and can’t even remember the last time I posted something longer than two sentences on the internet without several rereads.
I’m so goddamn tired of #BellLetsTalk.
