dating someone with a mental illness isn’t cute. it isn’t endearing. my depression doesn’t look like listening to your heartbeat before i fall asleep. my anxiety doesn’t look like holding your hand. my obsessive-compulsive disorder doesn’t look like writing your name a million times across notebooks. my post-traumatic stress disorder doesn’t look like screaming your name.
my mental illness looks like asking you if you love me fifteen times a day and not believing you a single one of those times, and not because i’m “just looking for attention” but because i really. sincerely. cannot believe you. my mental illness looks like bringing up an argument from weeks ago because i can’t get over it, because i still lie awake letting it eat me alive. my mental illness looks like not showering for three days, hair matted to my face, not responding to your text messages because i don’t know what to say; there’s no excuse for all of this pain.
my mental illness doesn’t look like me, because dating someone with a mental illness isn’t dating just one person. it’s dating a person and their mental illness, too. you know, mental illness changes people. sometimes it turns them into people they don’t know. they say and do things they can’t explain. if you’re ignorant, you can ignore their apologies, brush them off, say there’s no way depression can make someone complete and utterly lash out, but
1. yes it can.
2. mental illness isn’t just depression and anxiety. it’s borderline personality disorder. bipolar disorder. schizophrenia. dissociative amnesia. anorexia.
it’s things you can’t pinpoint, things you don’t know about; it affects everyone differently. and it’s real. and we didn’t choose this. we could never choose this, even if we wanted to, and we’d never, ever want to.
and it might look like looking for attention to you. it might look like not trying hard enough. but it’s real to me, when i’m smearing my own blood across my skin. when i’m making impulsive decisions. when i’m ruining every relationship i’ve ever been in. and it hurts to hear that i’m not doing well enough for your comfort when i’m going to therapist appointments and changing medications every month.
because you love when i need you, when i tell you i can’t get by without you, when i truly believe that i need saving or i might end it all tonight. you love being the hero, but you hate when there’s nothing you can do, and i’m sorry but sometimes it will seem impossible to get through to me, to make me believe that i deserve to be breathing.
and i’ve met so many boys who have given up. who have ignored my cries. who think, “okay, well it’s not like you’re going to die.” when they realize they can’t save me, they stop trying. they pick a love that’s easier to deal with. a love that isn’t unpredictable. a love that isn’t a love triangle between them, me, and my mental illness. everything i was afraid of comes true, and my mental illness grows stronger every time that it does. sometimes it overpowers me.
but i am more than the “crazy” label you place on my forehead when my mental illness isn’t abiding to your standards. i am more than the “cute” label you claim when it is. i am more than the way i am silenced, the way people don’t often try to understand, the way mental illness is perceived as something general when it’s case-by-case.
my mental illness looks like love, the purest love i’ve ever known. it looks like doing more for others than i do for myself. it looks like bearing my soul to you and hoping you don’t get sick of me. my mental illness is brave. it is so brave, and i don’t need saving. i just hope you try to understand and stick by me.
gummygunk
stormborns
dededos
dailybridgerton
baratheonpilled
