During my sophomore year of college, I was diagnosed with a mental illness.
And let me tell you, I was scared out of my wits.
Here's what happened: I'd just come home from a summer studying abroad, and I couldn't breathe. I was at a park, hanging out with my boyfriend. Suddenly, I started hyperventilating, which quickly turned into not breathing at all. It's like my trachea had collapsed on itself. My boyfriend laid me down on a picnic table, hovered over me, and tried to coach me through it. All while wondering, what the heck is going on?
When I went to urgent care afterward, the doctor diagnosed me with panic disorder.
In my mind, I flashed back to watching Cleopatra in fifth grade. When Julius Caesar collapsed and foamed at the mouth, all the servants ran out of the room. Nobody could see Caesar in these moments of weakness.
I remembered a horror/thriller movie I'd watched called 13 Sins. In it, a man who struggles to provide for his mentally ill brother and his racist, emotionally broken uncle is recruited into a game show of sorts, where he has to commit increasingly terrible acts to earn money. Spoiler alert: In the end, the main character refuses to commit the last act. His mentally ill brother, however, goes through with it.
I remembered listening to people talk about mass shootings: "well, obviously anyone who does something like that has mental issues."
And a single word rattled around in my skull, like a bee searching for something to sting.
Crazy.
This is what happens when the narrative surrounding mental illness is one of horror, death and weakness. When mental illness is only discussed in the wake of a mass shooting or a notable celebrity's suicide, people are conditioned to associate mental health issues with fear.
Girls who experience suicidal ideation at the age of 15 do not get help.
College students who are driven to fits of anxiety by trying to keep a 4.0 GPA do not get help.
Successful business people who cannot afford a moment of weakness do not get help.
People who need help do not get help.
The resources are often nonexistent-- but even when they are, people are made to fear the stigma of mental illness more than they want to get help.
I did. I wanted to live my life normally, but I also knew that I didn't want to admit that I'd begun seeing a psychiatrist or that I'd started a daily anti-anxiety medication. I was afraid of being labeled crazy.
And my mental illness is nearly invisible-- especially when I'm good at taking my medications on time. What about people who very obviously don't fit the mental mold that society squishes us into? Who will tell them that they don't have to be scared of themselves? That they don't have to be called crazy? That they are not a burden to society?
Who will tell us that we aren't the monsters in a horror movie?
