Dear Fellow Sufferers of Mental Illnesses,
It’s currently 5:07 in the morning on a Tuesday, and I have spent the last week in a cycle of typing and deleting, agonizing over what I could say to you that hasn’t already been said by people far more eloquent and accredited than me. There have already been hundreds of people, each having written a hundred articles, about the hundreds of chemical imbalances going on in my head that explain why in the hell it takes me so long to open a door without feeling like the room is going to explode. And about a hundred more YouTube videos telling me that I should love myself regardless of the struggle.
But then it hit me — I already do love myself. And so should you, fellow sufferers of mental illnesses. Some people may not agree with my opinions on this, and that’s their right. But here are my thoughts on why we are the best damn people on the planet.
First and foremost, we have the distinct advantage over most people in that we aren’t actively trying to be assholes. The fact that we go through our day to day lives struggling in some capacity makes us far more open to considering the problems of other people when they come up. Anxiety, for instance, is most often found in people who display a strong sense of social and emotional sensitivity. Granted, some of us who are suffering from behavioral or emotional problems may not have the lucidity necessary to always consider the consequences of their actions as they happen. But here’s the thing; when it boils down to why we get up in the morning, we are trying so damn hard to function every day not for our own sakes, but because we want to keep our families happy, our significant others loved, our pets healthy. We care so much about others, and isn’t that something remarkable?
Secondly, we are grateful. So grateful, of every day that we get. There’s something very unique that happens when you have minutes, hours, days, weeks, months taken away from you because of something you can’t control in your head – you start cherishing everything that you can get. I know personally that some of my happiest moments come from things that could be considered so simple, like blackberry preserves on an English muffin; simple, but I care so much about it because there are days where food tastes like dust. There are so many things and so many people that get taken for granted. But we are in the unique position to be far more aware of the support and privileges that we receive than the average bear, which I think is rather cool.
Thirdly, and I admit that this one may be difficult to read, did you know that the tenth leading cause of death in the United States is suicide? Every U.S. citizen is more likely to kill themselves than ever be the victim of a murder, and people with mental illnesses even more so. How incredible is it, then, that you’re still here? From the fact that you’re reading this, you’ve been fighting the good fight against statistics — and winning. We are living proof, every single second of every single day, that being sick does not make us second-hand citizens.
Because at the end of the day, we need as much self-confidence as we can muster from ourselves. Approximately one in every five adults in the United States suffers from a mental illness, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness in 2015. But the period between onset of symptoms and actual treatment can span decades for some people, who live underneath the stigmas that being sick means having a fever, that to admit to a disorder is to admit to weakness, or that the world will consider them subhuman.
And don’t get me wrong. I know there is nothing fun about being mentally ill. There is nothing fun about dealing with a disease that tears you up from the inside without leaving anything for a surgeon to find. There is nothing fun about becoming that creature that is so much less than what we really are.
But if we are meant to go through some part of our life with this demon on our backs, we owe it to ourselves to hold our heads up high, as exclusive VIP members of the club where drinks don’t mix with the medication and late nights aren’t spent being ashamed of who we are. It’s a really shitty club, yeah, but it’s ours, and damn it all if I’m going to let the party die.
So what do you say? It's only 5:07 in the morning, after all. Care to dance like your head isn’t watching?
Yours Truly,
Casey
