Does anyone really know who they are? I certainly don’t. I am forever a woman. I am forever an attorney. I am forever a wife. I am forever an artist. I am forever a writer.
I never get to be all those things at once. It’s as if my life were pieces of a broken mirror. Each piece is both the whole and a part of the whole.
All of those pieces. None ever changes. None ever leaves.
Floating above all the broken bits of mirror is bipolar disorder. I am forever mentally ill. I can medicate my illness, but I will never be free of moods that have a mind of their own.
That’s the difference between me and the people who think they know what being mentally ill is like. I live with mental illness that will never go away. I will die being bipolar. I may die because of being bipolar. People who have bipolar disorder have a suicide rate 20 times that of the rest of the population.
I wonder. What precipitates the deepening depression that takes me down and down until I must fight the thought that were I dead, I’d never again have to deal with bipolar disorder crap. Sometimes, I’m lucky. The depression takes me down below suicidal. It’s safe there. I’d have to feel better to kill myself.
But what precipitates the depression? Is it a brain chemical composition that bypasses the need to survive and sends me soaring into mania or plunging into depression? Or is it the crap I endure at the mouths of those who both fear mental illness and have no clue what living with a mental illness is like. The subtle pulling away when I disclose being bipolar. The not at all subtle backing away when I disclose being bipolar. The people who exert a tremendous amount of energy in a futile attempt to shove me back into the mental illness closet. Don’t talk. Don’t disclose. Don’t upset my world with your brain. The jackass who told me he admires how I accept no shame for being bipolar.
Damn fucking straight I don’t accept shame.
The only difference between a mental illness and a broken leg is the location of the pain.
The jackass’s stupidity belongs to the jackass. Fear belongs to the ignorant. Shame belongs to the jackass. Shame belongs to everyone who doesn’t fight to kill the stigma of mental illness.
Shame doesn’t belong to me. Shame has never belonged to me. Shame will never belong to me.
You can be part of the problem. You can be part of the solution.
To be part of the solution, listen to me. See me. Accept me when I’m in med hell with a med that no longer works for me. Accept me when I’m going through the three-month long withdrawal that always comes after discontinuing an antidepressant that no longer works for me. Accept me when I’m going through the three-month long adjustment to a new med. Accept me when I’m soaring. Accept me when I’m plunging.
Being part of the problem is easy. Being part of the solution is hard.
You have a choice.
I don’t.
Deb's Art 