Random observations about Mental Illness

Just a few observations about mental illness in general.

One, it is different for everybody.  Some people get irritable and violent and scare the pants off of other people.  Some people just withdraw to the point that you'd swear you'd done something to offend them ( I do that).

Two, people with mental illness are not just people with mental illness.  I don't think I can say this enough.  Mentally ill people teach, they are engineers, they are inventors.  They go to church with everyone else.  They shop in the same stores.  They have kids and they love those kids and they are soccer moms.  They are business owners and they are the nice people who reach out to us when we move into a community.  They may also be the weird guy who make everyone nervous.  That's just the truth of it.  But most people tend to think that mentally ill people are only weird guys living on disability.  Not true.

Three, mental illness is a chronic condition.  It's been eight years since I was first diagnosed with bipolar II.  I didn't want to believe the doctor when he told me I'd always live with this.  In fact, I spent a long time med-free,  believing that MAYBE he was wrong.  When I finally had another episode my new therapist kindly told me that 100 percent of mentally ill people go off of their meds at one point or another.  It's just too overwhelming to believe that this is a FOREVER thing sometimes.  Just too much.  It takes a while for it to sink in.  For me I finally decided that I'd be med compliant when my youngest baby was just a few months old and I realized that if I didn't take my meds and work at being well she would never know the same mommy that her big sisters and brother knew.

Four, mental illness is an isolating condition.  It isolates in a couple of different ways.  One, it carries a stigma and so it is hard to open up to other people and tell them about your condition.  And two, it takes a lot of energy to fight the illness sometimes and that means that while you as a person are trying to keep your head above water, you are ignoring other things . . .like friendships, like a career you might have been trying to build or a project that you'd hoped to complete.

Are there any good things about mental illness?  Maybe.  Come back, say tomorrow.  I'll think about that and see what I can come up with!