Fighting the Mist

I generally avoid horror movies because my imagination tends to run away with itself and sometimes posit even worse things than the film presented. One movie I haven’t seen, The Mist, I know about from various listicles on the internet. In this one, at the end a parent decides that the monsters lying in the titular mist outside the grocery store pose a fate worse than death, so he kills his kids (at least, that’s how I understand it). After this has been done, through the mist come rescuers – so it turns out he didn’t have to make this horrible choice.

Mental illness, particularly depression, can be a lot like the mist, shrouding what is true and what help is available. If only the person knew the truth or knew that there were people who could help, they would not do anything under the guise of feeling hopeless, but the mist may prevent them from seeing this.

The mist in this case is not usually visible to anyone else – it is in the mind of the sufferer. So not everyone knows or understands that they can help.

The mist in the brain filters out positive thoughts and magnifies negative ones. Sure, people tell that person they are loved and they matter, but the mist tells them they do not matter, that no one cares, that the world would be better off without them, that life is useless. Every compliment is diluted or waved off; every insult is etched in stone.

Sometimes, it’s possible to act as though the mist isn’t affecting every aspect of life. That you can be positive or even self-confident. That you can know you matter and it doesn’t actually matter what other people think (although more people than you know care very deeply about you). But sometimes the mist just gets in the way and makes life hard.

Because this mist is completely internal, you cannot tell whether someone is under its influence. You may not realize that you are the ray of sunshine they needed to realize that there is something going on to defeat the mist. Keep being kind to people.