Someone I know has been writing a lot recently about his struggles with mental illness, and it’s got me thinking about how I feel about that label, particularly since it seems to apply to even such an everyday demon like anxiety, which I realize I battle.   Do I have mental illness?  Does he have mental illness?  Do most of us have mental illness?  Maybe there are varying degrees of mental illness.  I don’t feel mentally ill.  I feel more like a beautiful mind – but I saw that movie, and that guy definitely saw people who weren’t there, and that’s not right.  He figured it out, though.  I try to figure things out.  I don’t see people who aren’t there.  I just have what I self-diagnose as manic episodes, like Thursday when I got a couple of hours “to myself” at work and started catching up on things and it led me to think about everything I could get done, and I stayed until after 10:30pm.  So yesterday I was really tired, but I made it to Asheville and somehow stayed up until 1am, and I wasn’t even ready for bed then.  And today my husband says I’m still processing things at a manic speed, making plans for the day.

All of this might not matter to me if I didn’t know from observing other people (and maybe myself) that manic (if that is truly what I experience) only precedes a crash.  I also did some shopping Wednesday.  This is another symptom of manic, now that I think about it.  Nothing crazy, but again, I am aware.  I am also aware of my lows.  Times when I am inexplicably sad and just want to be alone . . . and write.  Today I am hyper and writing because my head is noisy.  Not noisy because people are talking to me – it just won’t stop working sometimes.  Because it’s beautiful and there’s a lot going on in there.

I knew a woman who said she was perfectly normal until her 40s.  She had a job, children, a husband.  Then she became symptomatic and was diagnosed bipolar.  She will be medicated for the rest of her life.  She is permanently disabled.  Lovely lady, can’t handle stress, can’t hold a job.  I fear this.  I don’t want it for myself.  I cite this not because I think I am bipolar, but because I am very self-aware and also not immune to anything.

One thing I have learned is that mental illness, or things that might not be mental illness but are things people struggle with emotionally and mentally, can be very divisive and lonely if not talked about and shared.  These things can also be stigmatized and take us down when we talk about them openly, because people, jobs, insurers will use them against us.  So this is risky, but if you know me, you know I’ve never shied away from candor.

These are just some thoughts.  And I am seeing my therapist this week and will share all of them with her.

Also, I dreamed about the house this week.  Still processing that loss, obviously.  I was inside it when the new owners came home, at which point I realized I wasn’t supposed to be there.  I was upstairs, in the master bathroom.  The new male owner was singing, “Our house, our house,” and I came downstairs and explained that I was so used to going by there, I forgot it wasn’t mine anymore.  I apologized and asked why they hadn’t moved any furniture in yet.  I don’t remember what he said.  Then I left.

I’m not sure this blog has convinced anyone I DON’T have mental illness. 😛  Thanks for reading.