Funny and Innocent to Me

Posted on March 24, 2010 in Stigma

My shyness is catching up to me. I have to confess that I don’t feel very comfortable interacting with other people in group settings. There’s always that self-stigma — the feeling of isolation that comes from being the only one in many of my circles with the illness. When things are going wrong or when I am reflecting on the past, I have learned not to talk much about it because most people don’t want to hear about it. I find myself treated like Coleridge’s poet who has a circle drawn around him just for being himself. There’s a terrific loneliness that comes from this, even when the story is mostly positive: Despite the hallucinations, the paranoia, and the rocking emotions that characterized my past, I came through it and I am alive to tell about it.

I find much of the symptoms of my illness funny and innocent; others see them as dreadful and portentous of evil. The same people say nothing about the alcoholics around them who spread so much more harm and are so much more violent because they themselves drink. The news never says “The alledged assailant had gulped two sixpacks.” I am the one running against society, the upsetter of convention. But there are those who feel like I do. They gather in support groups or on the web. My Bipolar_Blogs Twitterbot has successful brought people who suffer from the illness together and given them hope. And there are other venues that I participate in run by other people like Larry Drain of Facebook. These people strike me as sane and joyous. I may drift away for short periods of time, but I am always going back.

The key, I think, is to feel the feelings instead of burying them or dousing them with crude self-medication. Get to the root and the anger is decapitated.

Most people don’t have to have this much self-knowledge because they don’t have what I have. I am thankful that I am not the only one on the planet struggling like this because that life would be impossible to live for.

Thank you my bipolar friends. Your existence redeems me.