Many of my posts have humorous undertones. It is not lost on me that I write with funny antidotes There is a reason I do that. I write that way because laughter tends to make others more comfortable. I am more likely to get my point across and gain more understanding about what the mentally ill go through, if I make the person I am trying to explain it to more comfortable and less afraid. It is common for those that do not understand mental illness to be afraid because they have been conditioned to react that way. They have been taught to fear us. It is our job to teach them how not to be afraid of us. It is our job to enlighten them to the truth. So when I am being funny, it is not because I am not experiencing great pain or sadness. It is just to present myself in a way that shows my good humor and hopefully make others comfortable enough around me to ask questions that I will gladly answer. Questions that can teach them how to understand mental illness and how to break the stigma of mental illness.
Mental Illness is like......
Feeling foggy and confused. Hollowed out like an empty melon. Tired body and over active thought process. Exhaustion and the loss of concentration. Gut wrenching unbearable pain in the center of your soul. Shame bestowed on us that is not ours to carry. Perception alterations and overwhelming fear of judgement.
Mental Illness is like.....
Wearing clothes three sizes too small. We feel constricted in our movements and are unable to concentrate on anything else. We feel ugly, broken and out of place. We know that something isn't right and that there is something different about us and we are unlike other people around us. We are afraid that we stick out from the crowd and for all the wrong reasons.We are terrified that not only will others notice but that they will judge us because of it.
Mental Illness is like....
Having a chronic flu, but in your mind. It's a illness, people. It is not something that just clears up on it's own. It is not something that can be cured with a shot or some good ol' antibiotics. You would not say that someone who develops something like M.S. is their fault, don't treat our mental illness as something we have done to ourselves. We didn't choose this and we don't want it. It is what it is, and it is a chronic life long disorder.
Mental Illness is like....
A broken computer. Your brain is basically an electrical pulse powered computer. As all computers there is risk of things misfiring and getting stuck in a boot loop, your mind can too. Neurons are misfiring and looping in a mental illness sufferer's brain. Our computers hard drive has become flawed. We have no way to run a defrag program or a Norton's virus scan. It is just something that we have to live with. Because everyone is different, much like different operating systems on computers, we do not all have the same symptoms and the same treatments. A Mac can't run the same exact programs as a Windows. You have to treat them differently and what works for one may not work for the other.
Mental Illness is like.....
Loosing your favorite item, only what you have lost is a part of yourself. You are not sure where to look for it or if you will ever truly find that part of you again. Even if you are able to find the old part of you, how will it fit in to the new you. The new person we have to learn to become to overcome the obstacles that mental illness has placed in our path. We feel lost. We feel broken. We grieve our old lives and the people we were before. We have lost something greater than a cell phone or car keys. We have lost friends, dreams, self esteem, and the perceptions of who we thought we would become before our mental illness. We have to relearn our worth in society and sometimes society is very cruel. We have to relearn new dreams and make new friends. We have to reorganize our new lives. The old path is no longer a path we can tread. We now, have to find a new path.
Mental illness is a hard thing to understand for some people. It's a hard thing to live with. Not only do we live the issues that arise from our suffering, we are then subjected to other people's judgments and lack of insight. We are subjected to rude comments and shifty looks in our direction. Soft mumbling of negative connotations that are preconceived and just plain wrong. Discrimination is ugly, whether is is discrimination against race, gender, religion, sexual preference, or mental illness. It has no place and it does no good. It promotes hurtful and hateful depictions. There have been a great many sufferers of mental illness that have become inspiring defining people in our societies. We are everywhere. We are presidents, scientists, composers, musicians, comedians, actors, actresses, authors, writers, kings and queens, philosophers, inventors, politicians, activists, and teachers. People like us have changed the world. They have stood up and created greatness, not just in spite of their mental illness but because of it. What would this world be like if they had believed that they were stupid, ugly, unlovable, incapable, and broken? What would this world be like if they had been told they could not achieve simply because their minds were altered from the norm? Would we have all that we have today if their minds were not altered? Didn't they see things differently because they were? What if Beethoven had not suffered from mental illness? Could he have composed music with such deep emotional feeling without knowing what it was like to be depressed? Would Winston Churchill have been the great prime minster that he was if he did not have the insight he gained from living with mental illness that not only affected his family members but him as well? Would Van Gogh have been able to paint such hauntingly beautiful paintings? Would Shakespear's stories had been so prolific if many of his characters did not suffer from madness, visions, or melancholy? Would Edgar Allen Poe's works had been so dark and disturbingly addictive? Would Abraham Lincoln been so hell bent on ending slavery if he had not known from his own episodes of depression of how devastating oppression and mistreatment of human beings can be, of how sadness and despair can devastate your soul? I don't know the answers to that, what I do know is that had these great people been ostracized and locked away we would have never had the amazing creativity and direction that these people left as their legacies. These people changed and shaped the world we have today so that we can change and shape the world we leave to our children. We have to stop discriminating and stigmatizing those that suffer from mental illness. It's is not fair and it is certainly not right. As such, we that suffer have to stop allowing ourselves to be discriminated against and stigmatized. We have to stop buying in to the propaganda that we are incapable of amazing feats or not important enough to be heard. We have to stop telling ourselves that we are too broken to be great, too damaged to be functional, and too screwed up to create and inspire. We are capable of anything we want to be and anything that we want to achieve. [tweet this]. After all, so many great people of our past did not allow their mental illness to prevent them from creating the legacies we have today. We can create our own legacies of greatness and we can start by believing in ourselves first.
Neurotic Nelly
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