I haven’t written a blog in a while, and the fact that I haven’t makes me feel like I have so much to unpack and say. For example, one of my Facebook friends posted about her husband with a “mental illness” yesterday, and there were dozens of comments about how “horrible,” “awful,” “painful,” etc. mental illness is, and she received loads of sympathy.
I get it. Psychosis is hands down the worst and most terrifying thing I have experienced. I get it that there are things that I have to figure out or forego or do in a different way than other people. I get that listening to someone talk about things that you know are delusions is difficult. I get that distorted thinking, anger, or whatever symptom a person might be displaying is hard. Yes, I’ve been there, done that, and no, I don’t want the t-shirt.
The thing is, I don’t like reading how “awful” mental illness is when schizophrenia is a part of my identity. When I came out five years ago and told family and friends about my diagnosis, I completely owned it. I started writing this blog, I started writing for mainstream publications, and I can’t think of a way that I could have put myself more “out there” and what I tried to say more often than not is, “Look, I have this illness and this is what someone with this illness goes through, looks like, experiences, etc.” And the thing I tried to say over and over again, is “I’m not that much different from anyone else.”
I wrote about my marriage of over twenty years. I wrote about being a friend, a daughter, a social worker, traveling, being a sister, etc. I tried to tell people that outside of schizophrenia, I am an average person with hopes, dreams, and desires. But the thing is, I never got past or around or away from the fact that I have schizophrenia, and it is every bit as much a part of me as my eyes, my feet, and my hands.
Is schizophrenia hard? Is cancer hard? Is diabetes hard? Is any disease hard? YES. They are all hard, but we never make them part of someone’s identity. And that is what I need to learn and tell myself. Schizophrenia is an illness like any illness. It impacts me, Rebecca, every day of my life. I have it. I feel it. I have to make hundreds of choices in my daily life to keep it from ruining me, but it isn’t me just like cancer isn’t my mom or stepdad who both have it.
I need to stop accepting schizophrenia as an identity that I own. It isn’t an identity. It is a disease. There is something abnormal about my brain. The brain of someone with schizophrenia looks different than a healthy brain scanned by an MRI. If I was someone who lied frequently, you could say, I have a character fault, but schizophrenia isn’t that either. There is nothing wrong with my character. It is my brain and the way it functions that is faulty, just like cancer cells don’t respond the same way healthy cells do.
I don’t know who I’m writing this to, you or me, or all of us.
If you think mental illness is awful or horrible or sad, that’s fine. Those words are true of almost every disease. Please don’t use those words to define or say something about me, though. I’m not awful, horrible, or sad, and I’m telling the world that at the same time I am telling myself.
Fantastically written and well articulated. Those are some of the very points I’d love to have been able to express myself.
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Thank you for your kind words and support!
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No thanks needed. The words are all yours and you own them. Loved reading your blog post.
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Thank you. This is powerful in the most beautiful sense. Thank you so much for sharing this.
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Thank you so much! xo
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I dont see my Schizophrenia as a decease. I consider my brain to work perfectly in some ways. Maybe not in the ways that others would deem healthy and normal. But even my dark days/weeks where the world is evil, in those moments after where the storm settles and that light comes back through again, even with those I dont consider Schizophrenia as a decease. Just went through a slightly rougher time than Joe down the street to get milk this morning. It’s all liveable and days deal-able.
And I would consider it as part of my identity. Why wouldn’t I? This is something I’m going to live with forever and continue to deal with for ever. So I’m going to harness it as this cog turning along side of me as I get on in the ‘untrustworthy’ world. If I never accepted Schizophrenia as part of my identity i’d be running from it for ever. And that is as much impossible as it is for all my Dr’s to call it a decease.
Yes I can see scans from others and the malfunctions in the brain, but why do I have to look at it like that? I’m just not going to give Schizophrenia the easy excuse of being something wrong and sad and that it needs help. No, my name is Meg, this is who I am. There is nothing wrong with me, yes I have really dark awful times but that doesn’t mean I dont have the good times as well.
I’m learning to live with my mental health because it makes me who I am. I wont hide behind more labels on top of labels to make the first label less real.
This is how I deal with my diagnosis and hopefully continue to deal with in the future.
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The great thing is we all have the choice to deal with it and call it whatever we want. I choose one way and you choose another. That is all fine by me. 🙂
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I live with bipolar disorder and I refuse to be defined by it. Or rather, I refuse to CONTINUE to be defined by it. That definition has consumed me for a decade.
This post resonated with me. Thanks.
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Thank you for reading and responding! 🙂
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Well written! Such power in words! There will come a day when it’s acceptable in our society to have mental illness just like cancer. One day, the world will be a kinder place. But until then, we have to accept ourselves…. Yes, we can have illnesses that make us feel awful, but that doesn’t mean we’re awful…
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Thank you and I agree! 🙂
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I’m on your side-it’s a difficult disease to deal with but don’t we all have our difficulties to a greater or lesser degree.?
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Yes, we do!
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This is a very well crafted piece on such a controversial topic. I myself have suffered from psychosis and have had diagnoses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (so, Schizoaffective?) a dear friend of mine is schizophrenic and refuses to accept that by neglecting medication. Do you have any posts about medication regimen? Like, an honest talk about how you have perceived prescriptions and the side affects. Sorry for rambling on, fantastic post! 💗💗💗DEL
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Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. I don’t usually post about my medications (the specific ones I take) because I have found over the years that everyone responds differently to each medication. 🙂
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Thank you for writing this. I have schizoaffective disorder, so it’s a challenge every day for me as well. And I’ve been dealing with it for years. Since I was in my teens… even though I didn’t accept it until I was in my 20s. I, like you, made it part of my existence. Everything I did or said, etc., had the component to my disorder wrapped around and inside of it. It has been only recently that I’ve come to separate it like you, and that’s so HARD to do when it’s been your identity for so long. So that’s awesome that you’ve been able to do it too. And it was very interesting to compare it to physical illness (as that’s what we do so often) and come away with the fact that yes, we have an illness, but our illness does not define us.
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Thank you for responding! It is difficult but it is positive and healthy in my opinion!
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