I remember so many of those stories - mostly brief and fragmented, now, but he was my grandpere, and I listened. One of the little bits - hardly a story - that he conveyed was the way that some people whispered, never spoke aloud, the word, cancer. As if it were a secret, a hidden shame, uncouth and unacceptable. As if the thing growing in him were more frightening in the naming than in the living.
I was angered by that. It seemed disgusting and foolish, an antiquated superstition surrounding a common biological experience. To whisper a thing - it revealed more about the whisperer than about the word. Cancer isn't unknown, isn't too terribly rare. Sometimes it's due to processes beyond our control; sometimes it arrives as a consequence of our actions. Either way, an illness is an illness. To be ill, to be mortal, is to be human. How could that be shameful?
How could we look away?
When I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I remember trying to talk to Grandpere about it, trying to come up with some metaphor, some explanation as to how I felt. The closest I got was this: being diagnosed and medicated was like waking up and realizing that my life had been so damned hard because I'd been missing a limb and didn't know it. And the medication, the therapy, they were like being fitted with a mobility device so that I could function unimpeded for the first time. I had an illness, a disability, but I was finally getting help.
Bipolar disorder didn't have to be whispered, any more than cancer did.
We would never blame a cancer patient for naming their illness and asking for help. Who among us would understand it if a person sick with cancer hid their illness and resigned themselves, out of shame, to a painful decline and death? Cancer requires openness, fast reactions, treatment, resolve - community, support, expertise. We cannot treat that mutation of our cells in silence and isolation.
Nor can we treat mental illness that way.
I've got a whole bucket of words that people don't want to say. I've written about them, most recently in my previous blog post about disordered eating. Mental illnesses tend to go together, too - the comorbidity of bipolar disorder, anxiety, C-PTSD, ED, addiction is statistically significant, to say the least. I deal with a checklist of things which lead to other things; sometimes it's difficult to know what is an illness versus a symptom.
Anyway, I deal with them all, and I do pretty well, and I actually like who I am, and most days I'm incredibly grateful. My illnesses are a suit of armor, a mantle of strength. But it - it rankles me, on an emotional and intellectual level, that there remains a sense that who I am is something which cannot be said out loud. It's insulting and it's counterproductive.
Because, just like a physical illness, we have to talk about these things if we wish to heal. We have to get help. We have to be open and honest. We have to advocate for ourselves. Therapy is our radiation, medication is our chemo - our families and friends are necessary, and they simply cannot be ashamed. If our community is ashamed of us - how do they think that makes us feel? As I said, I like the heck out of who I am, but it can be hard to hold on to that when I feel like, due to my challenges, I shouldn't.
We see stories online of moms, dads, colleagues, friends, shaving their heads in support of their loved ones going through cancer treatment. Reading those stories makes us feel good - we are witness to that very human thing, compassion, companionship, a refusal to let someone struggle alone. We see that as brave. I wish we had some sort of similar advocacy for those of us with mental illnesses. An act of visibility, of being understood in some small way.
But I know that, for so many people, my illnesses mark me as other and as wrong. When I talk about it here, it might be seen as - I don't know. I can't really understand it. I don't judge myself for my biology, or for what happened to me. I don't think I have a right to shut up about it, either. If I don't want others to be ashamed of me, I absolutely cannot be ashamed of myself. And that means saying words out loud.
It would be an act of self-harm to hide. It could kill me.
I think it is difficult, since mental illnesses are so judged, to convey how happy I am while also being chronically ill. We look down on mental illness, whisper the words - how, then, could I be healthy and happy in so many ways? But I am. I am happy precisely because I talk about my illnesses and receive assistance.
I'm challenged by the legacy of disordered eating - but I don't hate myself for that challenge, and so I get better every day. I cope with addiction - but I'm honest about it, no longer giving in to the alcoholic tendency to hide my problems, and that's how I stay sober.
I have highs and lows and I medicate them and use them to fuel my work. I worry and worry, and I talked to my therapist, and she's gotten me to start meditating. I have emotional flashbacks but now I know what they are, thank God, and so I ride them out, expressing myself, forgiving myself, figuring out where those emotions came from. I identify through therapeutic dialogue people and situations which hurt me, which trigger flashbacks or anxiety or mood disturbance or what-the-heck-ever, and I avoid them, and I care for myself.
All of these things make me healthier, not sicker. I have a wonderful opportunity to look at the ways that my illnesses make me tough as hell. And I name them. I own them. They are a badge of honor. Sometimes I have bad darn days. Some days are so much better than "normal" people could ever understand.
A cancer patient is never cured, but victorious in remission. That survivor needn't ever be ashamed; that survivor kicks serious butt.
And that's where I stand. Kicking butt and claiming names - never whispered but right out loud.
So how could I be anything other than proud?
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