Every girl romanticizes to a time when they’ll find the one. Dreaming about a cliché knight that comes just at the right time and place. Never to be lonely or sad again. We imagine a perfect ending, and can’t help it. People with mental illness do the same thing, but our shining knight is medication. We think a pill will be the end all. That someday we’ll find the right combination, and the stars will align. I hate to be a pessimist, but reality doesn’t believe in happy endings. There will never be a happily ever after if you don't change the way you think.

I’ve talked in a previous article about my struggle to find the right medication. It’s a scary process that so many people go through. You can lose your sense of self as you change from one pill to the next. I’m currently on pill number eight, and it’s only been a year. In this amount of time, it’s so easy to lose yourself. There is something to hold onto through this process though, and that’s hope. We know that one of these pills will be the right one; the glass shoe that fits. So, we convince ourselves that the journey is all worth it, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. We give up. We stop taking our pills and refuse to start on another pill. We don’t think it’s worth it. So, this is where my pessimistic statement comes in. I’m not trying to make you lose hope, but I want to be realistic. Our mindset is causing us unhappiness; not happiness.

I think having hope is the most important part of improvement, but sometimes it can make you ignorant. We imagine that recovery will be perfect. That once we’ve found the right medication, nothing can go wrong. It’ll be everything we’ve been missing in our lives. This will never happen though. There will always be some type of flaw. We’ll give up on any medication that doesn’t give us the happy ending we want; the perfection that we think we need. If you want to get better, you must look past these flaws. I’m not talking about the kinds that changed your personality or make you so tired you can’t function- but the ones that had a small issue. You’re searching for the one, but just like relationships, even the one has flaws. I think the moment you realize this, recovery becomes reachable.

Right now, my medication has many flaws, but it makes me happier. I need to change my lifestyle, but isn’t that how relationships should work? Compromising and accepting their flaws? Perfection is a concept made up in one’s own mind, and happiness is possible if you make it be so.