being sick
I was talking with a student who recently started taking medication. The medication she takes is used to treat bipolar disorder. She said, “I don’t want to be bipolar.”
Nobody wants to be sick. We might want something we get because we are sick, but deep down, we want to be well. And, deep down, we want others to be well.
There’s this trend I’ve noticed in people writing about their experiences with mental illness. People write about their experiences as though they’re trying to one-up or out-crazy each other. Like, “I cut myself ten million times.” Then the next person is like, “Well I drank Windex with razorblades in it” or some shit. This bothers me. For a long time I couldn’t figure out why. Why would someone want to be crazier than someone else? Which makes it seem like people really do want to be sick.
As I mentioned in “Stigma,” I’ve heard people say that people cut to get attention. Everybody wants attention. Universally, people need acknowledgment and connection. That’s not the only reason, or even the main reason, people hurt themselves. People don’t tend to refuse to read books because the authors–let’s say someone like Joyce Carol Oates who publishes prodigiously–by publishing a book, are trying to get attention. Many people respect authors who are trying to express their truths and have their voices heard. No one seems to respect the person who cuts, or the truths they have to tell. People who hurt themselves are expressing and externalizing a tremendous amount of pain in a dysfunctional way. Ignoring something, especially cutting, does not make it go away.
It’s not that people want to be sick. It’s that people need something, and they believe that being sicker will somehow fill their needs. If you’re crazy, really crazy, crazier than anyone else, maybe you’ll get the attention/admiration of someone because of your suffering. And if a person is operating under that presumption and believes that’s the only truth, getting better is terrifying. How will their needs ever be met if they’re common, if they’re just like everyone else? And they desperately need something.
But trying to outcrazy others leads the uncrazies to conclude it’s all for attention. And sometimes uncrazies react with anger, as though crazy behavior takes away something from them. That upsets me, too.
I have more to say about this, but I’m not sure what it is yet.
