Of the many misconceptions surrounding mental illness, one of them is that recovery is something that people just reach one day, and then their lives return to how they were before they began suffering from their mental illness, or become better and fixed with this new and improved status quo. While that’s not completely wrong, the problem is that it creates this stigma that one day people are just going to wake up and suddenly things will be perfect and all the struggles will be gone. But that’s not the case.
Things do get better. There’s no doubt about that. With help from the right people and the appropriate tools, recovery is something that is more than possible. But it’s not a destination that we arrive at, it’s a pathway that we walk on every day once we make the decision to take steps towards getting better.
When it comes to mental illness, I’ve always said that I don’t believe in the term “recovered”. Not in a pessimistic, “My illness will always control me,” kind of way. But I think that recovery is a life-long process. It’s the choices a person makes every day to keep themselves above water, to make sure they’re putting the effort forth to keep improving their lives and keep their mental illness and its symptoms at bay. There’s a quote by Michelle K. that I believe sums it all up quite nicely:
"I don’t believe in 'recovered', the sickness of past-tense, removed from my life permanently. I will always wake up every morning, say hello to my demons, and walk right past them. There is strength in the daily fight. It is in my shadow."
Living life beyond one’s mental illness is about constant efforts, and realizing that some days will still be a bit grey sometimes, but that that’s alright. This illusion that has been created that recovery means that one is miraculously cured of all their ills is toxic to those who still find themselves struggling on some days, even if they have been getting better. Keeping the symptoms of mental illness at bay, to keep them from maintaining control over your life, takes a lot of work. It isn’t easy and some days it’s going to feel like you’re not going to be able to make it to the next day.
The important thing about those days is to keep telling yourself that you can keep going—that you can make it to the next day and you will. Recovery is about getting to a point where you have more good days than bad days, and when you do have bad days, they’re manageable and you realize it isn’t going to permanently keep you down.
Being in recovery doesn’t mean you have to be happy and put-together every second of every day. It doesn’t mean that if you relapse (whatever that may mean for you) you’re automatically back at square one. Bad days don’t undo the work you’ve already put in. Rather, what it means is that there is still more work to be done. There will always be more work to be done, because we can always make ourselves better—we can always reach a higher level of peace with ourselves, and that’s what recovery is all about.