I May Be Sick, I May Be Broken, But I Refuse to be Crazy

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked in the head and you need help.

All of those words were leveled at me this weekend.   To an extent, they are true.  I have a mental illness.  That mental illness sometimes grips me so hard, logic and reason are beyond my reach.  Yes, I do stupid destructive things while in the midst of this hell.  They seem logical and right at the time, there is no impulse control To be honest that is my healthy brain screaming out for help, much like Reagan wrote HELP ME on her physical body from the inside while the demon possessed her. 

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head and you need help.

Words spoken by someone who not only doesn’t understand, but clearly doesn’t want to.  Spoken by someone who would not step outside themselves to help. Those words said to me were as painful and as hurtful and as destructive as real physical blows to my body.  My manic brains seized on those words and repeated them over and over and over mantra style inside my head. 

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head, and you need help.

I have two irrational fears  in my life.  The fear of getting fat, and the fear of being crazy. ( I said they were irrational fears)   I can live with “mentally ill”, I can live with “bipolar”, I can even live with ‘sick’.  I can not live with ‘crazy’. I know I’m sick, I know there are times I look/act/sound like I’m fucked up in the head, mainly because when I’m in a spiral, I am fucked up. But crazy, while it’s pretty much common vernacular for stupid behavior, it also still stirs up images of loony bins and straight jackets.  And I am scared to death of crazy.

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head, and you need help.

The truth is, I’m getting help, but help doesn’t make a difference over night.  Medications take weeks to be visibly effective.  Therapy can take years.  I’m never going to be normal, and life with me is never going to be Ward and June Cleaver.  When I’m sick, or crazy, or fucked up in the head, I can put on a charming smiling face and be a lot of fun to be around. if I work at it really hard. But the whole time I’m laughing and having a blast, the voices, the other person inside my head is saying things like “You know you’re crazy right? You know this is just an act.  You know that it won’t stay hidden forever.  Someday they are going to know just how fucked up and damaged you are.”  So, what do you do, when you’re falling down that rabbit hole and the person you reach out to for help, the one you should be able to count on, is the one who’s telling you

You’re sick

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head and you need help.

I sit here, staring at my phone with such intensity I expect it to burst into flames, waiting, willing the little green light to blink, signaling I have a text message.  Hour after hour it stays dark. The help I reached out for, screamed for, cried and begged for was never there as I fell apart, lost myself, gave up.  Even now, as I am trying to put it all back together, find myself, and find my way through the shame and disgust at my words and actions, the help, the support, the person I need is nowhere to be found.  All because they believe

I’m sick.

I’m crazy.

I’m fucked up in the head, and I need help.

It is times like this, when I am trying to find… something, anything redeemable in me, when I question everything, when I have spent the entire day on the couch because I can’t get up and face any more of the world beyond my laptop, that I need to know that I am not alone.  I need to know that I have not been abandoned, and they can still find something, anything, within me that is worth loving. Because as I struggle to free myself from the voices, their words echo in my head.  It’s times like this that the voices inside my head scream the loudest, because there are so few voices outside my head to drown them out. I have to save myself because when it gets ugly, when it sucks me in and steals my rationality, my logic, my reasoning and my sanity, nobody wants to help, or knows how to help, and so they run.  I am left alone and abandoned, and faced with the cold hard truth the isn’t enough in me for them to love.  And I’m jealous of their freedom, their ability to run away. Because I can’t.