I don't want 'mad pride'.
I do not want my soul tied to a word that is associated with a rabid slobbering mutt that needs to be put down with a rifle. A sad and terrifying dog that must be killed otherwise it will destroy itself and all the creatures around it.
I have experienced one of most extreme, loathed and despised of all human afflictions, madness. I do not want to be associated with images of screaming insane wards nor frothing animals
I am not necessarily annoyed by talking about madness. I would be offended for my experience to be called 'mad pride' as opposed to making up a new word with less emotional and historical baggage.
I don't have (diagnosed proof of ) Autism so my disadvantageous affects of mental health issues are not proof of me being impeded in my study. Even then, I admit I am capable of socialising. I believe I struggle more autistically in other ways. My point is, people that have been harmed by brain chemistry going hay-wire don't count as desirable 'disabled' people to hire. Just because some people are anti-social and require noise cancelling headphones (lol me?) apparently, they will have a nice cushy quota to be filled in companies like Microsoft. Cause of course they are all tech geniuses. Whatever society.
I read that article as I bitterly lay in bed at 1am, scrunching up my nose. Sure, let me guess, they are people who have worked their whole life towards one field? Similar to what I did with animation, I don't want to prod into my pain more.
I see a society that prioritizes a certain type of success. People who have an A to Z chronological life path, something I thought I had.
Some people will lose a job, lose a mother or lose their mind. Unfortunately industries will not be kind to people who have had to rebuild themselves from nothing, gosh my old employers couldn't care if I died it seemed.
These trends are more than hiring choices, but for being included in the grander scene of things. Imagine a big pool party. All the people there have some sort of pride for the thing that they may have suffered for in life, but things they should be proud of. Out of all the sexualities, POC, gender and neurodiversity pride, someone wasn't invited.
Mental health wasn't.
She just wasn't. She is sitting at home trying to meditate or pick up a new prescription of meds. Not because she is mean, not because she annoyed the other girls...
Just because she wasn't really eh, hmm, trendy enough?
She has yet to be of any use to this motley assortment of 'progressiveness'. I imagine the anthropomorphisation of mental health to be as such; With her brooding ugly clothes, shrouded dark hair and a sickly visage, she is surely a beautiful girl underneath. The face she shows to the world is gangly and sad, with her prone to crying in the bathroom during school breaks, but also tries very hard to control her symptoms in order to make friends.
From the outside, she seems sulky and unpleasant, but works to manage and overcome her ailments with a stoic front that is admirable. To these other girls she simply is just strange and unsightly, they do not bully her but also completely ignore her.
Once you overlook her daggy clothes and slumped posture you would see she isn't ugly, but she wonders on a daily basis if there is even anything good about her? She cries. She must have some worth right?
Ah, yes. I'm just bitter aren't I? Admitting I have had something stripped from me by 'mental health' and nothing given in return.
All I want to say, is I don't care if you're hiring 'neurodiverse' people but some of us also have stories to tell and have issues that make it just as hard to function. We are not considered neurodiverse as of yet. If its not official, we can't feel like we are connected to anyone and thus, Mental health-chan will sit at home playing video games and try not to cry.
I wish psychosis gave me extreme spiritual powers. So bad actually. I wish it made me so calm, transcendent and above all mortal woes, like the try-hard yoga pissants in the classes I used to attend. In reality psychosis taught me to endure extreme suffering which is valuable in itself. Learning that life is precious just for existing and that even if you are about to break or kill yourself, that life gets better someday soon.
You have to believe in your improvement though. If you are indulging in depression and truly aren't trying new hobbies and new love, you might as well jump in a coffin and rot. The healing is gradual but it does depend on immense daily effort. Nobody will pull you out of misery except for your own self love. Also maybe a change of scenery, which drastically helped me.
For mental health and trauma sufferers, self love is brutally hard. Even if my psychiatrist says that I am not brain damaged, I have had to deal with having my favourite hobby stripped back. I just have to. I've just adapted. I do not give two poots about feeling bad, instead, I feel like I have something to give the world by spreading awareness of psychosis.
I'll go back to what I said. I wish psychosis was this otherworldly rite-of-passage. I don't think my eyes can see through alternate layers of reality or hear ghosts whispering but that doesn't stop me from believing psychosis was an extremely spiritual experience. It is not spiritual in how everyone wants to peg it as, it is spiritual because it showed me my deepest repressed fears and my ultimate desires.
I felt a sense of the universe pulsing and stretching like a thin glittering electric veil across the sky.
A feeling that said all our existence on this planet is beautiful. I made up my own afterlife, as if unlocking a massive golden key in the sky I felt like god. I carry within me feelings unlike anything fiction can ever capture unless it is written by us, which is why I'm pursuing a Creative Writing major.
That hallucinatory ecstasy is very real. People in my life are eager to tell me it 'wasn't real'. So, your mind tells you things that define 'real' but if it's beyond your limited understanding of brain science to understand the interior world of a psychosis sufferer....
Does anyone disparage a drug trip in that way? No! Many people especially artists and musicians believe it is 'spiritual'. They put emphasis on 'psychedelic' experiences because they want to ensnare people into that disgusting loop of drug abuse. Fun fact, what I experienced was like LSD to 300%.
I didn't abuse myself with drugs or alcohol. I just fucking snapped.
I don't want mad lives matter.
We are not some rabid dog you can shoot and bury. Forget about it because it was ugly too see.
We are your shamans, witches, oracles and possessed people from all across history all over the world. The people you can't look in the face, but should learn how to.
I'm passing down my bipolar genes, so get used to it. We won't give in to eugenics.
Someday.
I am not mad.