Open letter to non-believers.
-an open letter: to those toxic people in this world, who insist on the downfall of others, who are already down.
The stigma still exists. It has not been eradicated and I’m not sure it ever will be.
As humans, we possess a tendency not only to reject what we cannot see and therefore what we cannot understand, but ridicule it. We exist within a society where to be seen is to be believed, which is increasingly damaging for those of US who suffer in ways that cannot meet the eye, working only to prolong pain and suffering.
This very mentality is so extremely dangerous and damaging for US sufferers out there. To have the existence of our very real turmoil debated, diminished and belittled. To have what WE know to be real, what WE feel in every inch of our bodies to be true- refused. To be insulted so spitefully, harshly and inhumanely by others, when we already have the biggest and baddest enemy to contest with in life: our mind. This mentality is more dangerous than anyone could ever realise. It is confirmation of our darkest thoughts in our darkest hours: that it is because of who we are that this is happening to us, that we deserve for this to be happening to us, a deserved, long drawn out, dehumanising punishment. The nail in the coffin, the hand that holds you by the throat squeezing to tightly that you’re unable to breathe, till you’re gasping for air.
The fact that there is even a debate about mental health is disgusting. It should not be open for debate. There should not be opportunity to refuse it. It’s existence is cold, hard facts- scientifically proven. Mental illness is a part of who I am. It is not who I am, simply a part- must like skin colour, or ethnicity. It is a characteristic WE possess, but it in no way defines us. So why is it acceptable to snatch away the existence of something that WE possess, something that belongs to US, is ours. It’s theft. And it is always taken by the wrong hands. Used as ammunition against us, to shoot us all down and keep us there. It is execution.
So, tell me, why is it those who know the least that feel so entitled to take. To take our pain, our misery, our anxieties, part of our character and burn it. To diminish it entirely and turn it into something completely unrecognisable. To reconstruct and push a narrative for the purpose of fitting their own personal agenda. These people, they have NO RIGHT. These people, they know so little whilst refusing blatantly to even try to understand so much. These people should not be allowed to push their narrative, no more than a white person should push their narrative on black rights or than a male should push their narrative on female rights. Unless YOU are supporting us, you should not be able to make decisions regarding US. Those that do not, do not try and do not want to understand should not be given this power. It should never happen, under any circumstances. Yet, the power and influence is placed into the very hands that WE are beaten down by.
Mental health is real. What isn’t real and what it most definitely is not is: laziness, or stubbornness or selfishness or any number of negative connotations that have been pushed to be associated with the disease. Instead it is an iceberg. There is the surface of which people see and deem fit to ridicule- however they are doing so without the entire picture, without seeing the extent that lies beneath the surface of the ocean, the rest of the iceberg, the understanding, the truth. The bits people do not see, and do not wish to see are the bits that WE hold so close to our hearts, that it begins to feel at times as though your heart has frozen over. The shameful secret of the extent of our disease, the exhaustion of being a sufferer. The bits we are not allowed to show the light of day to because they make YOU uncomfortable.
And that’s the funny thing isn’t it? That everybody is all for mental health and supporting sufferers whilst they are at the finishing line of recovery. The same people who run a mile at the sight of relapse of those who are not yet ready for recovery, the same people who are horrified by the extremely sad truth of the very ugly diseases we carry with us. It is a vicious cycle in which WE are ridiculed for doing nothing to ‘help ourselves’, but are silenced and prevented by the guilt YOU push onto us. And so I ask you, is it that WE wont help ourselves or that WE cannot, because YOU don’t want us to?. WE are made to feel as though we have no right or reason for feeling the way that we do, when in fact, it is YOU who has no right or reason to feel the way YOU do about something that does not affect nor concern you in anyway, no right or reason to make us feel the way that YOU do, and it is YOU who has no right or reason to make us feel a burden and problem to society, when in fact it is you who is more of a danger to society than we are and ever will be.
WE deserve love. WE deserve acceptance. We deserve appreciation. Full stop. NOT despite our ‘faults’, as the narrative YOU so often push would have you believe. Mental health is NOT to be attributed as a fault in a way that no other single illness is: Not cancer, not dementia, not amnesia nor a broken arm or amputated leg. Every other illness is accepted as separate to the sufferer, yet when it comes to mental health we let it define those who are sufferers. It is seen as a flaw to our character, a less than lovable trait that we choose to possess.. and it disgusts me. Why am I due to the structure of my brain, the only brain that I was given for my life, due to a chemical imbalance of neurotransmitters in that very same brain, something I did not ask for and had no control over, any less loveable or any less deserving of love than anyone else?
For all our so called ‘faults’ as YOU are so insistent on labelling them- WE are the embodiments of strength. WE are not weak as YOU are so desperate to believe and have everybody else believe. And YOU cannot tell us that it is so.
YOU show me the weakness in living when every inch of your body and your mind screams otherwise. Show me the weakness in existing out of pure love for those around you. Where you see weakness I see strength that comes from a place so contrasting to your own wants and needs. It is completely selfless. There is unlimited strength and power in the ability to give love and love others so deeply when you are unable to do the very same for yourself. A strength YOU so clearly do not and are unable to possess. WE are strong, where YOU are weak. And YOU don’t like that.
The mentally ill are the strongest people. WE possess a strength and courage so powerful that is scares YOU. It scares you so much that you feel the need to suppress it constantly and at every given opportunity, to strip US of what makes us so brilliant. To instead make us feel that the very things that make us so uniquely and unapologetically human are destructive, ticking time bombs that we need to get rid of. YOU dehumanise US. It is mass murder of our mind and strength and it is certainly discrimination against US for attempting to be so unapologetically ourselves, to accept and love ourselves.
This stigma that is created and pushed by those who do not and do not want to understand is what confines us, it stunts our growth- never enabling us to flourish and to reach our full beautiful potential. All for the sake of fitting the negative narrative that YOU are so desperate for US to believe. This negative narrative YOU concocted and all of the negative connotations that come with it- it is not designed for others, it is hand crafted for US and pushed forward to US. YOU are so desperate to make US believe the things that YOU are saying, to make yourself feel better about who YOU are. YOU make a conscious effort in choosing not to empower and encourage us, to let us flourish. YOU do not want change. And what it all comes down to is that: it is YOU that is insecure in who you are, not US, it is YOU who is a fragile person in danger of breaking, not US. Which is why you have created a storyline to tell that paints US as the problem, YOU want us to believe that WE are the problem- for if WE are the problem, it cannot possibly be YOU. Eyes and attention are diverted once again in OUR direction and therefore YOUR ego is stroked and you once again feel relief in the fact that YOU are secure- at the cost of US. A very selfish and therefore negative display of character, don’t you think?
But WE are not a problem. WE are not a burden. WE are not bad people. What WE are, is different from YOU, different in the best possible way and that scares YOU. Once again, different scares YOU, so YOU try to stamp it out. WE are good people, who feel things so very deeply, to our detriment sometimes but also to our advantage for it enables us to walk into the world with our eyes wide open without the facade of smoke and mirrors clouding our judgement. WE see the world, really and truly perceive the people and things around us. For what people forget, is that just because our brains are different from YOURS does not mean they are any lesser as people so often assume, in fact they have the potential for so much MORE. And through the labels of unstable and more, we know exactly who we are, no illusions,... do YOU? Are YOU any less unstable than you are accusing US of being?
And so I dare YOU to carry on, carry on calling me manipulative, controlling, selfish, lazy. Carry on telling YOURSELF that I am the greatest evil, that I am someone to be escaped. That I deserve to be all alone in this world. Because it may pain YOU to discover that no matter who YOU paint me to be, no matter who YOU keep telling YOURSELF that I am, that YOU want me to be, YOUR perception doesn’t change who I am. And that YOU putting that out into the world does not make it who I am, it never will. And perhaps the saddest fact of all for YOU, is that it reflects far more on the person YOU are than the person that I am. As through all the abuse and emotional torment YOU throw MY way, I will remain a deeply empathetic, perceptive, inquisitive, compassionate, generous, giving, fiercely loyal person, and YOU will remain bitter, hateful and close minded and in the end it will kill YOU, poisoned from the inside out and that will be through every fault of YOUR own. So let’s start being honest, the person YOU are painting ME to be, is the person YOU are.
I am tired of being told to simply accept that I am the way I, the very idea is an insult- I am no lesser, there is nothing wrong with me that I need to accept. Different is not wrong. I am who I am and my mental illness doesn’t not subtract from that- but rather adds to that. The implication of this is that the way WE act is irrational, that we are in the wrong, that our actions are less than desirable. When can we throw out this outdated, toxic concept that somebody who suffers from mental illness cannot operate separately from this, why does every single action that WE fulfil get reduced down to motivation from our mental illness. AGAIN. WE are NOT our mental illness. I could scream it again and again. But you will silence the screams and continue your narrative.. would you prefer I carried a sign that detailed the illnesses I suffer from.. perhaps a tattoo across my forehead, or perhaps when I introduce myself I should lead with my diagnosis. But again, why should WE do anything to make you more comfortable with US, WE do NOT exist to make you more comfortable, to dull ourselves and reduce ourselves to a label, that would simply make it easier for YOU to identify and continue to discriminate us.. Like the Jews being made the wear the stars. An easy, identifiable target. If YOU had it your way, we would be eradicated, however without US bunch of ‘misfits’ and ‘psychos’, you would be living in a grey world, no colour, no embellishments- for some of the greatest people, hell most of the greatest people to have graced this earth, people YOU idolise, love and compliment for all of their great contributions were one of US. Not YOU. For we have great potential to fulfil, minds that are vivid and sometimes scary and beautiful that expand beyond your wildest dreams and WE are going to do great things, whether YOU like it or not.
