Posted by Angel Girl on June 18, 2004, at 10:57:21
In reply to Re: expectations, posted by deirdrehbrt on June 16, 2004, at 19:14:08
> Hey AG,
>
> I read this post, and my heart really goes out to you. It's no fun for any of us to have to go through all of this, but each of us does.
> No, your friends don't understand. That's not your fault, but it's not really theirs either. Not so long ago, people who were ill like us were stuck away in a hospital. If you saw "Girl Interrupted" try to realize that that movie was based on the real life experiences of Suzanna Kaysen. She spent a year in a hopsital with Borderline Personality Disorder.
> People like us were hidden away. In some sense, we are still hidden away. We're just hidden in the open. You don't see much on TV about mental illness, except for depression described as "You just don't enjoy things the same way as you used to". You see tons of stuff of GURD, IBS, PMS, ADD, ADHD, Hypertension, High cholesterol, erectile difficulties, and just about anything else you can imagine. You don't see Bipolar anything, Severe depression, Borderline, Schizophrenia, nothing of what we're really dealing with, unless it's on a program like CSI, or something where there is a character who happens to have the condition.
> I guess I'm angry too. I don't meet people and say "Hi, I'm Dee. I'm a multiple. Who do you keep for company?" I have to know someone fairly well before I disclose the things that go on in my head. Sometimes, it shows, and I have to explain.
> On the other hand, people can be playing cards together, and when one says that they can't eat the chips because they have high blood pressure, everyone there is happy to talk about it. If I say that I cut myself last night, the table would be quiet, and the party would maybe end early.
> I think that the only real solution is to talk to our close friends, explain to them that we really love them, and need for them to understand why we do the things we do, what we're doing, and the steps that we're taking to try to get better.
> I guess that I want my friends to know that I NEED them. I've been there for them, and I need them to be there for me. Maybe that's a good place for the accountability to start.
> It's so terribly hard. You can't live alone with a disease like this and expect to get better. We need to be able to rely on people. Even when we're sick, we are willing to help out. It's our turn to need their help. Maybe accountability needs to be placed on society to not ignore us.
> Ok, done ranting.
>
> Dee.
DeeYou're right with the different scenerios that you mentioned. Those would be the probable results to the given situations you mentioned. I think people shun from that which scares them. Today it is the mentally ill, yesterday it was cancer. People used to, and maybe still do to some degree, think that if they associate with those that have it, they'll get it too. As mentally ill people were locked away years ago, in my mother's generation, if you had the big *C* then all of sudden your number of friends started to dwindling. Everyone was afraid that they'd catch it from you like the common cold.
Thankfully, people have learned enough about the big *C* now that it doesn't have the stigma attached to it that it did several years ago. I'm not really sure that mental illness will ever lose the stigma. Actually, today to say you are 'depressed' can be used so commonplace and not in the actual medical sense. ie: I'm depressed, my friend is going away for the weekend and I'm going to be alone. That's not depression. I don't think that the majority of people *really* know what depression is. They think it's being *sad*. To be honest, I don't think *anybody* knows what it feels like to be depressed unless they've actually experienced it themselves. You can imagine what it might be like but in reality whatever you imagine doesn't come anywhere close to what the reality of depression really is. I've resided down in that *black pit of despair* and NOBODY could even begin to imagine THAT hell. Ok, I've gotten way off track and rambled on.
As for my *friends*. I don't think there is anything that can be done now. They're just so sick of my illness and that I will react to something in an irrational way or that I get paranoid or that I interpret things differently than what they were meant to be. They want an easy relationship. I guess they felt that this depression of mine was going to be something very short-lived and it hasn't. Bottom line is they're just sick and tired of me, like it or not, I have to accept it. I can certainly understand how tiring I must be to them. I didn't wish to be this way and you know what, *I'm* sick and tired of me too.
AG
poster:Angel Girl
thread:356808
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040611/msgs/357789.html