I grew up in a small town. There are no streetlights on my roads, no sidewalks, and there’s always that offhand chance that you would need to swerve around a lost cow on your way home. The houses are far enough apart to respect neighborhood privacy, and everyone has known each other since the diaper age. It’s the type of town where everyone knows, but nobody talks. That’s heartbreakingly disappointing, though. If something doesn’t fit in with the perfect image, nobody talks about it.
About a year ago, I went to see The Fault in Our Stars with my little sister. I was going through a depression episode, though I didn’t know this at the time. I’d dealt with episodes like it for four or five years by this point, and I had become skilled at putting on a happy face when necessary. “Necessary” is code for “anyone who knew me before college”. That movie, however, broke my happy face.
I couldn’t stop crying once it hit about halfway through the movie, and I was still crying in the car on the way home. To give some perspective, it was at least a thirty-minute drive back to our house. Thirty minutes of crying in the passenger seat while my teenaged sister drove us home. Through my tears I could see her disgust before she finally asked what was wrong with me.
My heart breaks because this type of reaction is entirely too common. When I fractured my arm or twisted my ankle, my parents would always push for me to seek medical attention. I would stay home from school if I had a fever, and teachers would understand. This was not the case with mental health.
I still remember the summer I only slept two hours a night due to waking up in total darkness, trying to stifle my sobs so I wouldn’t wake my sister in the next room. I remember when my family finally saw the streaks on my arms and would just say my name with disapproval, like that would discourage me. I had a boyfriend who would even slap my scarred wrist the way a disgruntled owner would a misbehaving dog, shaming me for dealing with a depression in a way he could never truly understand.
While they didn’t understand me enough to know why I had changed so fast, I was patient and understanding while dealing with their confusion. You would want something that combines it all very quickly. The truth is I’ve been dealing with my disorder for many years now, without a diagnosis and without medication. I hid it from everyone for as long as I could because it didn’t fit in with my small town’s standards of perfection. The same flawless standards that my parents believed in. I didn’t even know that I was different from other people because we never seem to get around to talking about important things such as mental health.
If there is a moral to this story, it is that it’s okay. It’s okay to not be perfect, and I say this as much for myself as I do for you. I’m finally starting to accept the scarred body that has seen me through so many daily battles, especially over the past year. My family still has problems accepting it, asking me to hide my scars for weddings and church services, but the church doesn’t judge me for the sadness I have endured. My friends don’t turn me away in shame because of my past. I can finally look at myself in the mirror with pride. I have made it this far, and I am getting stronger every day. I know one day my family won’t see my scars as airing the dirty laundry of having a bipolar child, but as my way of reaching out for help when I didn’t even know I was sick.
That goes without saying, I am still far from perfect.. There are still days I wake up crying. There are other days I hardly sleep because of all of my excitement and I feel like I’m on top of the world, invincible, even untouchable. I’m getting the hang of it, though. I don’t mind when people don’t understand the way I work. The important thing is that I understand. If my friends truly love me, they will understand, as many of them already do. My family is trying, in their small town way, to handle my new label. With time, I think they will.
We can all do our best to understand, though. We can all understand that no one is perfect. I can understand when others have trouble adjusting to how I am, and learnig how to deal with my mood swings. I can’t control whether or not they understand me, but I can decide how I deal with that in the future. There is still a lot of growing we need to do in regards to how we treat mental health, because you can’t simply just fix it with a bandage.