Wonder Woman

A friend asked me recently, "What's it like being on so many spectrums at once of mental illnesses? How do you cope and conquer?"

"It's complicated," I said, because isn't it always?

"Because this is all I've ever known, it's my normal. I don't wake up and think, 'Today I'm going to experience the world through the lens of a personality disorder and depression and ocd.' I just live my life, and names like pd and depression and ocd are just names for my experiences. I have no non-mentally ill experiences to contrast them to, so they just feel normal. That doesn't mean that they don't suck. I've struggled my entire life to have friendships and relationships, identify emotions, express myself, and to try to live without my patterns f****** up my day too much. I have so many problems that sometimes it feels really overwhelming ... yet that overwhelming feeling now feels normal to me, I've struggled with it for years and years. It's kind of like a monster who follows me around, except my reaction to it by this point is 'Hey dude.'

"I cope well some days and badly others. Medication helps a lot: it quells the depression and the paranoia so I can focus on the other issues. But medication can't do everything. I have a lot of behavioral therapy for the OCD and the personality disorder.

"Conquering is harder. I want to be Wonder Woman, but I am stuck spinning around the room instead of cleaning dishes, crying over inconsequential things instead of working on my book, and working on patterns instead of making friends. It becomes a bubble. I've been trying my best to break out of it, but then my sensory issues kick in and need to be managed.

"Like I said, juggling all of this can be overwhelming."

This is where I stopped. I've seen myself spilled out onto paper a dozen times or more by now, and it always takes me by surprise. Sometimes I forget how much of an impact mental illness has upon my life, and then I stop to think about it, really think about it, and the truth is sobering.

My friend was kind. "You are Wonder Woman just for doing all of that," she said.

But am I? It's strange, to be twenty-four and to have no college degree, no published book, just a marriage to my name. I feel like I've fought long and hard to stay alive, to get doctors, to get medication, to have so little to show for it.

Maybe this is my mental illness talking. I don't have one of my medications right now, and it has left me tired and sad.

Women are pushed so hard to be superheroes. To combat sexism both in personal and professional settings. To raise children and keep a career. To clean the house and cook the food and still get a good night's sleep. It's daunting without a mental illness. It seems impossible to me some days.

Wonder Woman did the best she could, every time, every day. And that's what it means to be Wonder Woman -- to try, again and again. To get up every time you fall down. To never give up.

I need to remember this.

#mentalillness