Georgina Paez 

Personal Narrative Essay

“Just being there for someone can sometimes bring hope when all seems hopeless”- Dave G. Llewelyn Shirley. I love this beautiful quote. It reminds me of Jackson’s short story “Colloquy” where the ending of the story could’ve been so much more different for the main character, if someone would’ve simply been there for her. “Colloquy” tells the story of a woman, Mrs. Arnold, who visits a doctor for the sole purpose of discussing her husband’s mental health. Out of concern for her husband’s sake, she questions “how do people tell if they’re going crazy. ?” (Pg. 1) She expresses confusion in the understanding of mental illnesses, as she asks the doctor about medical terms, like psychosomatic medicine. Mrs. Arnold who’s already panicking and feeling lost, simply wants clarification so that she can better understand her husband’s situation. The doctor, who also sees this, chooses to respond back in a dismissive and ignorant way. He completely ignores Mrs. Arnold’s situation and tries diagnosing her, as if she were crazy. This leads poor Mrs.Arnold to quickly exit the doctor’s office feeling more hysterical and perplexed than before. The doctor’s inability to be there for Mrs. Arnold made her lose her mind. This story does a really good job at depicting the theme of how environmental factors, in this case how others treat us, play a significant role within mental health. It also highlights the theme of neglect when it comes to others’ feelings. I feel personally connected to the themes in this story because of how much it reminds me of a movie I watched, an article I read and my own life experiences.

Last year, in 2019, I watched a movie called “The joker”, which was about the becoming of the joker (a very well known comic villain in the D.C. Universe). In the movie, the Joker’s real name is Arthur Fleck, a 32 year old man with a condition that causes him to uncontrollably laugh, also known as Pseudobulbar Affect. The movie portrays how the struggles of Arthur’s everyday lifestyle slowly begin to change his mental state. He struggles with terrible living conditions, and on top of that everyone he comes across treats him miserably. People outside give him weird looks and stay away from him, due to his laughing condition. His co workers constantly make fun of him, as they ridicule his dreams and goals of becoming a stand up comedian. In a specific scene, Arthur takes the train late at night after getting fired from his job. The train is empty except for Arthur and three drunk men. Arthur’s condition gets triggered in this moment causing him to start laughing out of control. The three men begin picking on him and as Arthur tries to pull out a card explaining his condition, they start jumping him. This causes Arthur to panic, pull out a gun and shoot all three men. Here is when we begin to see Arthur’s mental health decline. As his life continues to worsen he continues doing worse things, until he develops and accepts his evil persona of the joker. 

In an article written by experts of The National Counselling Society, titled “How your environment affects your mental health”, societal factors are listed as causes for mental illnesses. It states, “Experiencing stigma such as racism, sexism, homophobia, or other, perhaps more insidious forms of prejudice is known to majorly increase a person’s risk of mental illness…Abuse, physical, sexual, or emotional can encompass anything from domestic violence to bullying within the community to catcalling. Experiencing it regularly within your environment can be very bad for you…Humans are social animals, designed to rely on one another. Feeling ostracised, or alone, or otherwise unsupported within your community has a major impact upon mental health.” This relates back to the Joker where in one scene, Arthur converses with a famous host of a late night talk show and reveals how he killed the three men on the train. The host asks why and the joker responds with, “I killed those guys because they were awful. Everybody’s awful these days. It’s enough to make anyone crazy… Why is everybody so upset about these guys? If it was me dying on the sidewalk you’d walk right over me, I’d pass you everyday and you don’t notice me…Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody’s civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it’s like to be the other guy.” I truly love this scene because of how applicable it is to the real world. The “awful” way many people behave and simply abandon others makes it understandable why so many develop mental illnesses. After all, even the article written by professionals explains this to be true. The Joker is a perfect movie when analyzing madness caused by societal factors.      

Moreover, Both Arthur’s and Mrs. Arnold’s stories made me realize how much of an impact a toxic environment can truly have on us. I can relate their stories to my experiences going to school. As a child I was always cheerful and excited about everything. I was never insecure or felt anxious when it came to being myself. It was like this up until middle school and high school. I was verbally bullied and teased by a variety of people for no specific reason. I was told many cruel things, things you should never tell someone. This took a toll on my mental state for a very long time. Being bullied made me grow heavily depressed. I didn’t feel like going to school, or eating, or living, and developed social anxiety where I feared that everyone was always judging me. This experience gave me a lot of trauma. It took me a long time to find self love and happiness within myself. Today, I still have social anxiety because of this, even though I do a pretty good job at concealing it. I still find myself remembering that experience like it happened yesterday and I don’t think I will ever forget those terrible moments I experienced in school. I thank the people around me for being there for me throughout those tough times, if it wasn’t for them I don’t think I would’ve pushed through. I can honestly say, those who bullied me were at fault for my horrible mental state. The truth is that society as a whole is filled with toxicity and because of this it tends to be the cause of mental illnesses in many cases, like mine. We live in a society full of people who lack kindness, are quick to judge and only care about themselves. I believe that if people were to be nicer and more welcoming towards one another, more people would open up and have healthier mindsets.

The “Joker” film and Jackson’s “Colloquy” have had a great impact on who I am and who I want to be. Ever since I first watched the “Joker” I couldn’t stop thinking about how many people, such as myself, can relate to Arthur’s life and what he went through. For so long I felt guilty and sometimes blamed myself for the cruel way I was treated by others. I felt like it was my fault and that I was the mistake. Watching the Joker made me realize how many, like myself, aren’t at fault for what others put us through. Arthur only transformed into the Joker after being walked on so many times to the point that he couldn’t take it anymore. I thank God I never changed regardless of what I went through. I always treated everyone kindly, even those who wronged me. However, many people like Arthur do end up changing into the worst version of themselves due to their terrible conditions. While we can’t control many factors in eachothers’ lives, we can always control how we are as people. We all go through so many struggles that are out of our control, why add to it by being hateful towards one another ?. If people learned to be more uplifting, we could truly change so many lives. For example, Arthur and Mrs. Arnold had problems out of everyone’s control but perhaps if the people they’d encountered throughout their stories had been more kinder and supportive of them, they wouldn’t have had such a sad ending. The truth is that the world is full of more evil people than good ones. This realization made me think of who I want to be. I want to be part of the good in the world, I don’t want to add to the bad. Learning of other’s stories like Arthur’s or Mrs. Arnold’s reminds me everyday why I wake up in the morning with a smile in hope of brightening someone’s day. I know that I can’t be there for everyone in the world, however I know God can count on me to be there for anyone I come across. As long as I live, I pray I get to make an amazing impact in the lives of those around me and that I can be there to remind anyone who feels lost, that they’re loved.

In conclusion, I think we all play a bigger role in each others’ mental health than we are aware of. All it takes is one person to either be kind enough to spark faith in someone, or cruel enough to push someone off the edge. People should start being nicer, as we never know what others are going through in their own lives. Both the Joker and Mrs. Arnold made me more aware of how truly important it is to take a step back from society and our environments sometimes. In a society that is so complicated and corrupt, it is very easy to become so involved that you end up corrupting yourself, as well as your own state of mind.