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The Stigma of Mental Illness
I want to talk about the stigma of mental illness. It is something that has affected my life dramatically, and something that I still find myself trying to navigate. In some ways, mental illness reminds me of addiction. There are functioning addicts — like my father. And there are people whose addictions take them into the darkest versions of themselves — like my brother. Mental illness, depending on the type and severity, has the same sort of scale.
My mother was not well when I was growing up. She seemed well. She was vivacious, caring, and charming. She dressed well and took care of her appearance. She looked well — and because of that, it was easy to brush off her shortcomings as character flaws. She didn’t work. In fact, she never held down a job for longer than a couple of months to my knowledge. At first, she said she didn’t work because she was committed to being a mother. But the fact was when she finally did get a part-time job at a local sandwich shop, she was always late and often called in sick. That job only lasted a month.
She had a giant heated waterbed. This is where I remember her being most — apart from basketball games where my brother played and I cheered. She sat for hours upon hours in that bed. She watched soap operas and talk shows. She left the house for fun stuff like movies or shopping, but she hated obligation. Even I had to admit that it looked like my…