And Then The Fear Kicks In

When I'm having good days, I can feel so gung-ho. When I'm having bad days, I feel afraid. The social anxiety and depression have always been worse when I'm already run down. I haven't slept well since returning to Concordia, and today most anything that could go wrong did go wrong, with the exception of the time I spent at school. And tonight when I took a chance and stated my new passion, even in a vague way, I felt dumb.
There I was in a class about diversity, mostly revealing discrimination based on non-majority status in any aspect of a person's life. We were supposed to find something in ourselves that we had in common with Martin Luther King Jr. And here I was, a white, middle class, academically-gifted young woman attending a prestigious private college saying that I had experienced wrongs and mistreatment, had seen others treated the same way for the same reasons, and wanted to fix it. I felt so dumb afterwards. Everything that comes out of my mouth in that class feels dumb. Because unlike my peers, I've never been one to really explore and defend traditional minority groups. Put rather bluntly: I've never been liberal, and I'm one of the only education majors I know who isn't liberal. After feeling dumb for a while, I hit my breaking point, and, avoiding the panic attack that would disrupt the entire class, I burst into tears. At least this time I had a professor who not only noticed but was understanding.
But I still feel dumb. Because I know no one else understands. But how could they? The reason that we have classes about diversity and special education is that there exists an acknowledgement that at some point in time, discrimination has existed against different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and disabilities. But no one has figured out the mental illness thing yet, partially because it's never been overt. There aren't signs outside of public places saying that people with mental illnesses can't enter. There aren't job openings that explicitly state "people with mental illnesses need not apply." People with mental illnesses are not segregated from the rest of society in any way shape or form. There are no laws written against people with mental illnesses.
But that doesn't mean that the stigma, prejudice, and alienation aren't there. People start treating me differently when they find out. Some become overly cautious around me, asking me all the time if I'm really doing okay. I can't have a mildly bad day without it being because of my depression or anxiety. Others decide they don't want to be around me. When I start exhibiting any symptoms, they ignore my existence completely. When I've told people I deal with depression they tell me it's my own fault; I've been told I just need to stop being so uptight or that I need to fill my day with more God time. The fact that once I found the right medication after nearly a year of trying tells me that the reason I experience depression is a chemical imbalance in my brain. When I tell people about things that are daily struggles for me, I've been told that I just need to suck it up because they're life skills that I'll have to have by the time I enter the real world next year. I'm well aware that I don't have those skills, and I'm working on it. But, like some recognized disabilities, I have to work a lot harder to gain those skills, both because I first have to unlearn all the damaging coping devices I've taught myself for the last decade and because I need to work through all the physical discomforts I face as well as work through cognitive therapy in order to do the things that most people learn by now. Even worse is when I have a small breakthrough that I'm excited about, and I'm told it's not good enough because it's not the full-fledged life skill that I need to attain.
I've recently gone looking for information about mental health stigma online. I read one blog about the mentally "normal" majority having a problem with those of us who struggle with mental illness because we can seem so normal, and therefore, people who are mentally "normal" could turn out to be just like those of us who have a mental illness. I don't doubt that experience, but I can't say that it's one that I share. To me, the fact that mental illness is invisible is the problem. The judgement that comes about mental illness, then, remains as invisible as the mental illness itself.
And when I have a chance to logic it out, I don't feel so dumb anymore. I still feel the passion for taking a stand so that mental illness is made visible in the world and so that the whole of society becomes more knowledgeable about mental illness. If the class period I sat through tonight were to be repeated, I want a student to say that they tell other people it's wrong to treat someone as less of a person because they deal with mental health issues the same way that my classmates said tonight that they tell others not to treat someone as less of a person because they are of a different race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.  Because even though I'm a white, middle class, academically-gifted young woman attending a prestigious private college, I've been ignored, avoided, and judged based on my mental illnesses and their physical manifestations. And how can that be right?
So the thing that frustrates me most is that it's my mental illness itself that prevents me from pursuing my passion. But I also like to hope that it's my passion that helps me learn how to cope with my mental illness.