It’s 6 am and I am having a panic attack. I can’t help but think about how May is National Mental Health Awareness month and here I am in the whirlwind of my anxiety. The stigma of my diagnosis keeps me closeted in most components of my life. I think about how often I have been asked, “what is making you so anxious?” or “why are you so depressed?” and how these very questions are why I hold so much inside. If I knew why, I would slay it like the dragon it is but instead I am silent like the millions of Americans living with a mental illness.
Biologically speaking, I was born with a mental health disorder. I wish I could just “cheer up.” My brain just doesn’t work this way. It needs help to function; for me to function. I am on my way to work now and hoping no one notices that my medication hasn’t fully done what it needs to do. Here I am in my cold sweat and my heart beating out of my chest. Maybe if I dress nice, no one will notice. Maybe my nice shoes will distract me from the fact that I am still breathing too heavy. I know this is part of the nurture. The part that raised me to believe I should hold it in; that this is a private matter; that I just need to “pull myself together”. I sometimes think about how cheated I was. I never had a chance to not be mentally ill. I wonder what my ACE score is.
I start to think of myself as a giant redwood tree. My rings tell the stories of all the years of my life. If you were to cut me open would the lines show all the years of drought? The years of being denied the nurture I needed. Would they show the lacerations and cuts? The years of cutting myself and the years of letting others hurt me. I didn’t know any better. I just knew this was how it was, so it continued until I learned to make it stop. Until the medications helped me make it stop. And the therapy. So much therapy.
I am now typing at my desk at work wondering who will notice. I close my door because I am not sure if I might spontaneously cry. But in this space, I am the boss. There is no room for mental illness. This is seen as something our patients have. We speak about how fragile and weak they are. We don’t acknowledge that there may in fact be staff living with mental illness. Instead we speak quietly behind closed doors and deny opportunities for upward mobility because “you never know.” We have labeled the mentally ill as unpredictable and unstable. The most stable thing in this office is me. My team knows I will be here first thing in the morning and always the last to leave. I tuck my emotions in under my blazer. I have enough hours of sick leave saved up to take nearly a year off of work. But I am the unstable one because I have a diagnosis. The fear of being seen, of really being seen means I would lose the respect of my higher ups. They like to think they dance the steps of understanding, of compassion, but these are just words. I am expected to hold it inside. Just like my mother taught me. And the stigma continues. I wonder how it would look for me to out myself. To announce out loud all my diagnoses. But I know I will remain in my closet because my work world isn’t ready. After all, we are still grappling with women as people. We other the mentally ill. How advanced would we need to be to offer the space for me to have my panic attack?
And so many thoughts keep swirling around. They will continue because this is how my brain works. Is this how it works for everyone else I wonder to myself? Are we all living with this constant narrative? How would it feel to know that I am just like everyone else and everyone else is really just like me?
Today I am outing myself. I am the face of someone living with mental illness. So many of my friends here live with mental illness too. I see you. Today I want you to see me too.
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