(no subject)

My friend ladymirth posted this today. It saddens me deeply how much courage it took for her to say it, and how few people understand what should, by now, in this modern world, be accepted common knowledge.

Here's what she said:

I have decided to come out.

I'm tired of keeping this a secret like I've done something I should be ashamed of. So at the risk of...well a lot of things, actually, I'm just going to say it: I've suffered from clinical depression and generalized anxiety on and off (mostly on) for the past six years. In my case, it's a simple brain chemical imbalance, probably genetic, that has a very complex impact on my life, derailing and disabling it in many ways.

People cannot seem to grasp the concept that the brain is also an organ that can be diseased, like kidneys or the liver, so when they find out, I am treated either like a crazy person, an attention-seeking fake-out, an incompetent, or like I've caught something off the internet. Psychiatrists talk down to me and treat me like a lab rat for their drugs, people who barely know anything about the situation feel qualified to give me half-baked advice either because of their superior life experience or because their mother's cousin went through a weird phase once. My own parents demand why I can't be "normal" when they given me everything I could possibly want. Anyone who doesn't think I'm faking and has a vague understanding of what depression is, silently proceeds to envision all sorts of horrible, ugly childhood traumas and becomes all awkward and pitying. The stock "comforting" response seems to be "don't worry, it's just a phase".

So I try and protect myself by keeping it a secret and just let everyone think I'm just weird. But then protecting my privacy starts feeling a lot like shame very soon, and my already self-hating psyche uses it as ammunition to convince me that I am some sort of freak who shouldn't be exposed to "normal" people. So I disengage from everyone until I have no support network left at the very moment I need it the most and this just reinforces all the negative thoughts and feelings until the depression cripples me even more.

And that, kids, is how social stigma against mental illnesses help create a vicious cyle for those who suffer from them. Six years of this is already six years too long. And if you are an ableist, ignorant, unempathetic person who prefers to shun what you can't understand, I refuse to care about what you think or live in fear of what you might do to me. If you are, otoh, a caring person who wants to understand and respect others, you will educate yourself about these matters and treat me like a normal person who happens to be struggling with a long-term disease, like diabetes or something.

Of course, given the number of people who actually blame diabetics for having diabetes, this might not be the best analogy. But then if you are someone like that, there's no use having you exist on this planet anyway, so it's not my problem.