You know what I fucking hate about mental illness? It doesn’t go away. It’s chronic, but we aren’t really brought up to process mental illness as a chronic problem. We don’t think of mental illness as a condition, but rather an infection -- temporary and easily remedied. Get ‘em to the shrink and in one inspirational-movie’s length of time you’ll have a shiny new human, equipped with a zest for life and love interest to boot!
Like, people with allergies don’t pine for The Day when suddenly their epi-pen will cure them of their allergic reaction to peanut butter. So why do I pine for the day when my depression will be a thing of the past? Why am I convinced that one day I can live a life without the ebb and flow of the bullshit I’ve been saddled with rearing its ugly head. I once had a dietitian tell me she believed people could “fully recover” from their Eating Disorders -- that these disorders would never again poke their heads from the ground. I laughed in her face. You can’t cure it. You can’t make my brain not be broken. You can only manage expectations. You can treat symptoms and learn coping skills and protect yourself, but you can’t get over it. You can’t have surgery or do a round of chemo or cut off a necrotic limb and be done with it. And if you fall down on the job, think maybe you’re good for once, it will sneak up behind you and claw at your heart.
I have probably been through thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars worth of treatment in my 23 years on this god forsaken hell hole of a planet. I have taken anti-depressant after anti-depressant, seen therapist after therapist, gone to two separate clinics, and I am Still Fucked Up.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give the mentally ill is this:
You are never getting cured. Own it. Own that shit. Because only when you stop pretending this is all gonna go away some day can you begin to fight it. Know it will always be waiting to gain the upper hand. You can’t drop your guard for even a second. You are going to have to work twice as hard to do anything in this world and there is no fucking use wishing things were different. They aren’t. This is what you have and you better make the fucking most of it.
Take the medication. See the doctors. Keep up with your recovery plan. If you don’t, get ready for the backslide or the relapse or whatever you want to call it. No matter how assertively you communicate your triggers to others, you are going to get triggered. You are going to have panic attacks. You are going to be told there’s nothing wrong with you. You are going to be fucked over by jobs and by the healthcare system. There isn’t anything you can do about that. Campaign for a better system. Raise awareness. Do whatever you gotta do, but know in the end? It’s on you. Whether you function in this society or not is on you. Nobody can do it for you. No amount of accommodations, money, medication, or support can change the work ahead of you.
Don’t be like me. Don’t get caught in the pipe dream of a perfect life. Life is bullshit. Perfect is bullshit. Embrace it.