Blind Willie Johnson: dark was the night
Last night I passed someone in a pub doorway. Poking my memory a bit, I realised that it was a woman I recognised from the waiting room of the psychiatric unit. She was the orange hair and rouged cheeks sort; the sort I hope I don't become but worry, when I catch sight of myself in the mirror with blusher up to my eyebrows and my hair sticking in all directions, that I am already.
Recognising people like this is an occupational hazard (if you can regard being a member of the psyche services as an occupation, which is debatable at best). It's also supremely odd, and another indicator of how uncomfortable we still are with mental illness. It feels, sometimes, like we ought to have a code; or like, perhaps, we already do- too much rouge, a battery of scars, eyes that dart from side to side and never quite settle, collar bones protruding just that bit too much. The trouble is, although it allows us to recognise one another, it also allows the perfectly and unthinkingly sane to recognise us. And, then again, why would we even want to recognise one another? Mistrust doesn't polaraise us simply into the mad and the non-mad. Waiting to be seen in the psyche building I find myself looking sideways at people, trying to work out from their behavour what they are there for, wondering if they are sort of okay, like me, or if they are one of the really bad ones. My first few sessions in group therapy, aside from spending most of my time recasting the Breakfast Club from those around me, I was repeatedly reminded of a line from Casablanca. Captain Renault says to Rick: "I've often speculated why you don't return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me." My eyes slide sideways to those around me and I think -what are you here for?. Did ya kill a man? Did ya? It's the impish bit in me, the perfectly sane bit with the slightly distrurbed sense of humour, which makes me want to ask, and makes me want to chat blithely. I try not to; I am supposed to be crazy, after all. I have my reputation to think about.
I think there is a lot to be said for challenging the notion of illness as applied to the mind. In my own case, those character traits which, beyond my control, cause me such difficulty, when brought under my control can be not just okay but rather wonderful. I like my capacity for throwing myself absolutely into something or someone; I like my capacity for sponteneity and for generosity. Learn to control them, and my personality, despite containing all the same elements, would no longer be "disordered". In fact, I think "disorder" is a bit of a misnomer. My personality is fine, thank you very much. What it isn't is necessarily in my control. It's like a big and unrully dog which pulls me every which way; it is too strong for me, and so veers from one extreme to another with frightening regularity. So the method of treatment I am going through is this: to use drugs to make the etremes of mood I suffer from less severe. And then to teach me how to manage my own mind.
All this also ignores the fact that a lot of time I, and many others with similar and even radically different diagnoses, are fine a lot of the time. A person with bipolar disorder is not always up or always down. The schizophrenic isn't always hearing voices. Sometimes, when you tell a new person about your disorder, your days spend in therapy, they look at you like you have cheated them. All this time they thought you were acting normally, and all this time you have actualy been crazy! Crazy I say! Oh, you may have been hiding it well, but it was there, under the surface, looking out through your eye-holes. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't underly everything I do. When I am well, it isn't hidden, lurking and unpleasant but cleverly masked; it just isn't there. My mind, then, is in one piece, whole and unsullied and as sane as any of us.
As for the rest of the time. Well. I'm not so scary to look at.
I admit it. I'm a fraud. Most of the time, I'm not that crazy at all.
Recognising people like this is an occupational hazard (if you can regard being a member of the psyche services as an occupation, which is debatable at best). It's also supremely odd, and another indicator of how uncomfortable we still are with mental illness. It feels, sometimes, like we ought to have a code; or like, perhaps, we already do- too much rouge, a battery of scars, eyes that dart from side to side and never quite settle, collar bones protruding just that bit too much. The trouble is, although it allows us to recognise one another, it also allows the perfectly and unthinkingly sane to recognise us. And, then again, why would we even want to recognise one another? Mistrust doesn't polaraise us simply into the mad and the non-mad. Waiting to be seen in the psyche building I find myself looking sideways at people, trying to work out from their behavour what they are there for, wondering if they are sort of okay, like me, or if they are one of the really bad ones. My first few sessions in group therapy, aside from spending most of my time recasting the Breakfast Club from those around me, I was repeatedly reminded of a line from Casablanca. Captain Renault says to Rick: "I've often speculated why you don't return to America. Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the Romantic in me." My eyes slide sideways to those around me and I think -what are you here for?. Did ya kill a man? Did ya? It's the impish bit in me, the perfectly sane bit with the slightly distrurbed sense of humour, which makes me want to ask, and makes me want to chat blithely. I try not to; I am supposed to be crazy, after all. I have my reputation to think about.
I think there is a lot to be said for challenging the notion of illness as applied to the mind. In my own case, those character traits which, beyond my control, cause me such difficulty, when brought under my control can be not just okay but rather wonderful. I like my capacity for throwing myself absolutely into something or someone; I like my capacity for sponteneity and for generosity. Learn to control them, and my personality, despite containing all the same elements, would no longer be "disordered". In fact, I think "disorder" is a bit of a misnomer. My personality is fine, thank you very much. What it isn't is necessarily in my control. It's like a big and unrully dog which pulls me every which way; it is too strong for me, and so veers from one extreme to another with frightening regularity. So the method of treatment I am going through is this: to use drugs to make the etremes of mood I suffer from less severe. And then to teach me how to manage my own mind.
All this also ignores the fact that a lot of time I, and many others with similar and even radically different diagnoses, are fine a lot of the time. A person with bipolar disorder is not always up or always down. The schizophrenic isn't always hearing voices. Sometimes, when you tell a new person about your disorder, your days spend in therapy, they look at you like you have cheated them. All this time they thought you were acting normally, and all this time you have actualy been crazy! Crazy I say! Oh, you may have been hiding it well, but it was there, under the surface, looking out through your eye-holes. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't underly everything I do. When I am well, it isn't hidden, lurking and unpleasant but cleverly masked; it just isn't there. My mind, then, is in one piece, whole and unsullied and as sane as any of us.
As for the rest of the time. Well. I'm not so scary to look at.
I admit it. I'm a fraud. Most of the time, I'm not that crazy at all.
posted by tattybluetrees at 2:16 AM
1 Comments:
I wish you well. Hope you recover soon. Have a happy life. (Not that I can, but I still hope others can.)
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