By Megan Glasscock
Imagine a world where you are the only perfectly sane person to walk the planet. Sounds like a joke, right? This is no joke. Imagine a world where every single person including your own relatives speak only Romanian and you only speak Spanish. Imagine a place where everyone’s going right but you know the proper way to go is left! Up is down, black is white, and every single science-fiction theory says you are an anomaly in the very fabric of reality. This is what it’s like to live with a mental illness.
The constant feelings of isolation, the moments of feeling invincible, the crushing weight of feeling worthless, the social awkwardness that may seem completely logical to you but causes everyone to point and laugh. The, and pardon the term, “destiny” that overtakes you to seek out a path of greatness and the terrifying feeling of failure that lurks at just around every bend in the road of life.
It may seem like you are the perpetual odd duck, the awkward teen that never grew out of the awkward teen phase, but there’s far more to it than that. The petrifying illogical fears you can’t explain, the night terrors that plague your dreamscapes every time you close your eyes, the impulses to hurt yourself through substances or tools, and even the feeling like if you didn’t exist everything would be better. It’s like carrying around a giant neon sign on your back saying “Hey everyone! Come stare at the crazy person!”
Let me tell you right now you don’t have to live like that. And there are other little aliens out there just like you looking for others to connect with. The media seems fond of casting the mentally ill in clichéd supporting roles, often as characters that are the twisted villains of crime dramas. World History itself has it’s own rouges gallery of, pardon the crass term ‘lunatics’, from Pharoh Ahknaton to Emperor Nero to Adolf Hitler to, in our current day and age, Osama Bin Laden. But the mentally ill is not only limited to cheesy TV villains and the vilest creatures of history, we’ve also been given pure greatness and splendor of Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Einstein, and what about the classic rapier wit of Robin Williams?
You may know someone in your life, either a figure of authority or even someone as close as your own parent, they will try to convince you that mental illness only happens to one type of social grouping or another. They may toss in a crude epithet for good measure. Let me tell you, mental illness knows no race, creed, religious standing, marital status, sexual orientation or credit line. In fact, besides getting your father’s eyes and your mother’s nose you may as well thank them for the misfiring brain chemistry. Indeed mental illness is purely genetic, and if it’s you with the ‘problem’ then it stands to reason your folks are on a long term cruise on the River Denial.
Many try to force you in this neat little box of just “learning to deal with it.” There are millions of people that make such a horrible misconception of just “dealing”. Mental illnesses are biologically based brain disorders. They cannot be overcome through “will power” and are not related to a person’s “character” or intelligence.
There is no shame in seeking a therapist or taking medication. This is not the 1970s anymore where you were labeled a pariah and a freak. This is 2008, where some form of mental illness affects one in five families and that number is growing.
In short, I would have quoted your fellow students that struggle to overcome, but in truth they were too scared to be identified as social outcasts. Well then allow me to throw my hat in the ring, as living with Bipolar Disorder, just know that you are not alone and there are people out there just like you. You are not crazy, a lunatic, or broken.
You’re just an alien looking to make your way.
