On April 5th 1945 combat medic Desmond Doss was ordered to leave Okinawa after fighting had intensified. Desmond didn’t, some men were too wounded to retreat, and Desmond refused to leave them behind. By staying Desmond saved an estimated of 75 lives. Unfortunately, Desmond’s heroism came at price. At Hacksaw ridge, whilst Desmond was lowering soldiers down an escarpment, a grenade exploded and pierced Desmond’s leg.
Desmond cared for his wound and waited for hours until people assigned to carry him of the battlefield arrived. A solider nearby was suffering from worse injuries, so Desmond insisted that they carried away the soldier first. When Desmond’s turn was carried to safety, he was shot in the arm. Desmond used a rifle stock as a splint and applied it to his arm himself. After returning to the US, Desmond Doss was rewarded a Medal of Honour.
The act of a war-medic attending to his own wounds has something in common with the act of a person having a bath with a glass of wine. Both acts are acts of selfcare. Words are weird that way.
At university, I did some selfcare to deal with emotional issues. Surprisingly, my selfcare worked.
When I first came to university, I would occasionally have plunges in my mental health that would last up to two days. I called these plunges in mental health “episodes”.
Typically, during episodes I wouldn’t see friends, I would eat more and feel hungrier, struggle to focus, and be filled with nervous, disruptive energy. My previously semi-tidy room would morph into a pigsty. Ketchup-stained plates, semi-stinky clothes, and empty containers of cottage cheese would decorate my room. There would be no point in playing the floor is lava because there would be no floor left to play the part of lava. After a couple of episodes I concluded that the breakdowns had to stop.
The episodes were initiated by crying. I thought that if I’d able to eliminate the bouts of crying, I could prevent my mood from spiralling. I figured that the probability that I would start crying in public was much less than the probability that I would start crying if I were alone in my room. To heal my mental health I was going to spend as much time as possible in public.
I worked on assignments in the library , brought lunch to campus, and spent hours playing pool at the bar. I managed to spend most hours of my day on campus. Overtime, I went from having episodes every couple of weeks, to once a month, to once every couple of months. My episodes became shorter and less intense. Now I barely have them.
Spending a lot of time on campus had knock-on effects that were good for my well-being that went beyond preventing me from crying. With each game of pool, my friendships grew stronger and the hours I clocked in at the library paid off in the form of good grades.
However, the next year proved that my assumption that I wouldn’t cry in public was false. This spring, I cried in the library.
Still, I’ll continue leveraging the “I’m less likely to cry if I’m in public principle”. I’ll stick to it as long as public spaces continue to deter me from crying. Only If I’ll start crying in public frequently and often, I’ll consider switching my policy from “staying on campus” to “staying at a mental health institution”.
