Mental Illness and Sanity as Excuses

Posted on January 20, 2006 in Mania Stigma

As long as you stigmatize any mentally ill person, you stigmatize me.

Jane raised a good question: do we use our illness as an excuse? It’s one that comes up often for we bipolars.* The mood swings over the misty mountains and we start throwing daggers from the moon before we plunge into the Marianas Trench and suck on the entrails of angler fish. The daggers sometimes stick in other people. The question is how much does the disease explain our behavior.

We’re on trembling earth here: the bipolar has fallen from the moon to the lowest part of the sea after all. The crash broke her spine, her will to live. On the other hand, other people are pulling stilettos, morning stars, or worse from their anatomies. How do we handle the aftermath?

I know a brilliant former pharmacology professor from who decided to run what he thought was a controlled experiment in using herbal remedies. He has stopped bathing every day, won’t takes meds, talks rapidly, picks fights, etc. and insists that he is just fine. The inside of the disease is no place to make decisions without consultation with a medical professional, yet he thought he could.

This man made a decision to not take his meds. I do not believe that he expected to become what he is any more than LeShaun Harris dropped her meds so she could throw her three sons to the sharks.

I am coming to see that my mania does not excuse what I did even though it may explain what happened. (Fortunately, aside from traffic laws and a few petty misdemeanors I never broke any laws or physically injured anyone. Mea culpa on scaring people — to a point.) I must hold myself to account for my actions even though a jury or a judge may take pity. Sometimes they should. But when the shock of memory becomes overwhelming, I may console myself with the knowledge that I did what I did in mania.

I have done what I have done, I make amends as well as I can, and I live.

To see the whole truth, however, I must examine the nasty things which sane people did to me while I suffered through my episodes. The mockery, the tricks, the nasty talk, and the gossip all operated as short swords plunged into my chest. Does their sanity console me? No. They should have known better. Does it excuse their behavior? Absolutely not. They remain accountable for what they did to me.

I deserve a few apologies as well as owe a few. While I plan to give what I can when I can, I don’t expect many of the sane to apologize because their brains are a huge crab which snips and tears at any ethic which suggests that a mentally ill person has a right to dignity. Even the recovered can be stingy. The sane like to run away from their mistakes and leave you in a homeless shelter or a back ward.

So what explains the antics of the sane around the mentally ill? I don’t know that I can explain it because I have lived so long inside my disease that I can no more understand them than they can understand me. I do my best to be kind to them, to allow them their tantrums and their “funny” moments, just like they don’t do unto me. That’s the burden of the bipolar or the schizophrenic in our society: it’s not so much that we’re not understood, but that in return for maltreatment, we’re expected to be nice and grateful.

The best among the sane deserve this thanks, but normalcy does not grant automatic win in the human lottery nor does mental illness mean an automatic loss. Unafflicted whine about how we expect something for nothing. What is it when they abuse us and expect us to clap our hands when they push a paltry sum towards better police understanding of how to handcuff a bipolar or a new homeless shelter set among factories? The gratitude they expect is something for nothing.

“Militant” is the word the unafflicted use for people like me. This local blog categorizes me as “weirdness” largely because they don’t get any mentally ill point of view which isn’t craven or defiant. I guess I’ve disputed their definitions of social conscience which allow for bile but not the practice of kindness. That is this cult of the unafflicted for you and this is the first and the last time I’ll mention those anonymities here.

My disease does not explain the cruelty of these ordinary folks. They represent just a sweet-potato-sharp point of the crap that I and other sufferers put up with. There is no excuse for that and no expecting that they will hold themselves to account for that behavior. They think themselves cultural and social critics, but really they are, above all else from my perspective, sly perpetrators of stigma. They are the people who laugh until you reveal that you suffer from a mental illness and then they go elsewhere to laugh. (Perhaps some are closet bipolars themselves.) I am not consoled by their excuses, which often include me in the equation (e.g. you were scaring me or you were acting weird so I abused you). What I can console myself with is avoidance — simply marking them as toxic and moving on. That suffices.

And the adult brats hate we who struggle to best our inner dragons because, unlike them, we do struggle. That contest of the soul shapes us as stronger and more realistic than the ones who just won’t come around to admitting their meanness.

Nevertheless, be kind to the sane. Our example may yet rub off on them.

*Is it just me or are there sometimes just too damn many good questions demanding answers?