I stare at her—rudely, I'm sure—but can't look away from her mad, mad blinking. I don't know enough about the host of mental illnesses from which she suffers to know if this is a symptom of one or more, but that fits. It's not normal blinking: She's a robot girl with a glitch—her eyelids move so quickly it's clearly uncontrollable, and I sense they might fly off her face with just a bit more effort.
My mentee—the girl I mentor—has mental illnesses. Quite a few. And though I've known her for awhile, I don't know much about her diseases: Depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia seem to be The Big Three, though she's talked quite a bit about dissociative disorder, which sounds uncomfortable and possibly dangerous, and a few others. Oh, there's mania—that one I've actually gotten quite good at IDing. It's pretty clear when Stephanie is in a manic state...my mind inevitably wanders to what Lindsay Lohan must be like when she gets high, but Steph doesn't use (nothing without a prescription, anyway).
I'm quite sure my inability to know more, after seven years as this girl's mentor, about her mental illnesses makes me a very bad mentor. I clearly don't listen, and one could certainly argue I don't care enough, since I've done little research about what's affecting her, how I could help, what behaviors I should be watching for, and so on.
And now, yay, Christmas approaches, and I get to think about what to buy a girl who's on and off her meds, thinks she's a great artist but is actually quite terrible, comes from a dirt-poor family, shaves her head, and listens to country music while claiming to be a Goth.
It really is just easier to think about things like that instead of what her life will be like in the coming months and years.
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