Camaraderie

I went public about my diagnoses and treatment plans for my mental illness earlier this fall, a phrase here that means "posted about it on Facebook." It wasn't difficult for me to do: my particular neuropsychological lottery prizes affect pretty much all that I think and do, and because of that many people in my life knew that something was wrong with me. And I knew that they knew. Talking about it in the open was my way of putting us all on the same page.

What surprised me, though, was the way so many other people approached me afterwards. I am a very distrustful person -- part of my symptoms include paranoid thinking, the sort of thinking that tricks my heart into being convinced that not only are you all possible philosophical zombies, but you're possible philosophical zombies who will make fun of my problems behind my back. So I really do mean that this surprised me, was even a soothing and supportive experience in a way I hadn't been prepared for at all. A classmate from Wellesley told me that I had inspired her to share her own diagnosis. Several blog users from tumblr sent me kindly worded messages of support. Members of the Pagan community opened up about their experiences. Others approached me with similar stories to tell.

"It's horrifying," a member of the Pagan community said once over dinner, "what neurotypical people will say when they don't think that mentally ill people are around."

She was absolutely right. I've been in psychology classrooms where the professors themselves crack jokes about people with mental illnesses, and it just gets worse from there. If you have a mental illness yourself, I'm sure you've heard this all before. Mentally ill people are inhuman. Dangerous. Freaks. Weak people who should just will their illnesses away. And so on. And so on. No wonder that so many of us seek each other out the way we do.

My husband-to-be and a good friend of mine both have life-altering mental illnesses similar to my own. We've been talking about moving in together soon, dividing rent between the three of us. "With all three of us," my husband-to-be joked, "we make up one whole functioning person."

It's the sort of humor that keeps us going.

My frequent fevers this pastweek are most likely the side effects of both medications. I do what I can with them. I try to do what schoolwork I can (I have some from last semester still left over). Failing that, I try to get up and get a chore done, get some work on my projects done. It's exhausting. You end up too tired to be frustrated. And the days just slip by.

#mentalhealth #depression #neuroatypicality