I am a hypocrite. I started this blog with two intentions in mind: 1. to let people into my world of mental illness. To let people see the day-to-day life of someone living with a mental illness and experience the uncomfortable. 2. To be a small part of eliminating the stigma that comes with mental illness. To talk about it, as it is not talked about. To make people realize that, as you wouldn't balk at the symptoms of someone with any other disease, a person with a mental illness should be able to be honest about their symptoms without people thinking it's fake, or for attention or that they could really just get better if they wanted to.
So why am I a hypocrite? Well the last time I posted was in January of 2015. The last time I posted about mental illness was even before that. I also only seem to post during times in which I am experiencing severe symptoms. It's not that I think you all want to hear about every aspect of every day of my life, especially when nothing extraordinary has happened. But it might be good for me to prove that people with mental illness can live very normal lives. It's been a pretty good year, which is why my last post was so long ago. People need to see that it is possible to lead a perfectly normal life, even though there are times you're not sure you want that life to continue.
As you may have guessed, this has not been a great day for me. It actually hasn't been a great month. If you've read any of my other posts, you know that winter is terrible for me. If there wasn't an Elijah and Jon hadn't gotten sick, we would have moved south long ago. Winter seems to go beyond any medication I'm on. This winter, thankfully, has been fairly mild. I've only had a couple of really bad days, and just a couple of weeks in which "daily life" was difficult for me.
One of those really bad days was today, and here is where I am really a hypocrite. I spent the day covering up how I was feeling. I knew when I woke up today that it wasn't a good day. But Jon and Elijah were introduced as members of the church today, so it was important to be there. There wasn't a lot of talking involved on my part, so I could handle that. When we got home, I went to my room and laid in bed until I had choir rehearsal. I considered not going to choir, but I knew I needed to go. On the way there, I tried to think of lies about why I was upset, just in case I suddenly burst into tears or just couldn't muster a smile for someone. I thought of how best to put on a happy face. Basically, I was planning about how to lie to people because I couldn't possibly tell them how I actually was, and I certainly didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. So I'm sorry if you're reading this and I lied to you tonight and told you I was fine, or all right, or something of the sort. I'm sorry if you bought my "happy face". I even laughed at times. But I'm not fine. I'm not all right. I'm not happy. I had a bad day. I fell apart. I struggled with symptoms of a disease that I have lived with for 25 years and will live with the rest of my life. I was numb, I was sad, I was angry, I was hopeless, not all at once all the time, but all within 12 hours. But I made it. It's the end of the day, and I will wake up tomorrow and get through that as well, and hopefully feel better than I did today. So no, I'm not all right. I'm not ok. I'm not happy...but I will be.
Coincidentally, I heard this song for the first time tonight. While it was written for sexual assault victims, and I wish to take nothing away from that, I think we all feel like this sometimes. And tonight this resonated with me.
Til It Happens to You
