The following passage from Holly Bourne’s Am I Normal Yet? is one I intend to use as an influence towards my performance. There are key points and quotes within it that I feel would contribute greatly to my performance:
‘What really pisses me off about people and mental health issues
I don’t really ‘get’ angry. If I’m going to be emotional, I do sad. Crying. Not swearing and yelling and punching walls.
Apart from about this.
Sarah once told me about the ‘dark ages’ of public awareness, where people didn’t really know much about mental health problems. And what they did know was mostly wrong. There was loads of MISINFORMATION and STIGMA and it was really terrible and everyone suffered in silence for ages, not knowing what was wrong, and not seeking help because they didn’t understand what their brain was doing to them and why.
But then we decided we needed to CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK about mental illness. Huge awareness campaigns were set up. A few soaps gave their characters depression and whatnot. following each episode with a voiceover saying, “If you’ve been upset by anything seen on this programme, go to this website and yadda yadda yadda.” Slowly, but surely, mental health eked its way into the public consciousness. People began to learn the names of conditions. People began to understand the symptoms. People began to say the oh-so-important phrase “it’s not their fault”. There was SYMPATHY and UNDERSTANDING. Even some politicians and celebs came out, as it were, and told national newspapers about their own suicide attempts or whatever.
We couldn’t stop there, could we?
I can say, with some confidence, that it’s gone too far the other way. Because now mental health disorders have gone ‘mainstream’. And for all the good it’s brought people like me who have been given therapy and stuff, there’s a lot of bad it brought too.
Because now people use the phrase OCD to describe minor personality quirks. “Oooh, I like my pens in a line, I’m so OCD.”
NO YOU’RE FUCKING NOT.
“Oh my god, I was so nervous about that presentation, I literally had a panic attack.”
NO YOU FUCKING DIDN’T.
“I’m so hormonal today. I just feel totally bipolar.”
SHUT UP,YOU IGNORANT BUMFACE.
Told you I got angry.
These words – words like OCD and bipolar – are not words to use lightly. And yet now they’re everywhere. There are TV programmes that actually pun on them. People smile and use them, proud of themselves for learning them, like they should get a sticker or something. Not realizing that if those words are said to you by a medical health professional, as a diagnosis of something you’ll probably have for ever, they’re words you don’t appreciate being misused every single day by someone who likes to keep their house quite clean.
People actually die of bipolar, you know? They jump in front of trains and tip down bottles of paracetamol and leave letters behind to their devastated families because their bullying brains just won’t let them be for five minutes and they can’t bear to live with that any more.
People also die of cancer.
You don’t hear people going around saying: “Oh my god, my headache is so, like, tumoury today.”
Yet it’d apparently okay to make light of the language of people’s internal hell. And it makes me hate people because I really don’t think they get it.
“Oh you OCD. That’s the thing where you like to wash your hands a lot, right?”
It annoys me that I’ve got the most clichéd “version” of OCD. The stereotypical one. But it’s not like I chose it. And, yes, I do like to wash hands a lot. Or did. Well, I still want to, every second of the day, but I don’t. But I also lost two stone because I refused to eat anything in case it contaminated me and I died. And I have a brain on a permanent loop of bad thoughts that I cannot escape so I’m technically imprisoned in my own mind. And I once didn’t leave the house for eight weeks.
That is not just liking to wash your hands.
No, you don’t have OCD too.
If you had OCD, you wouldn’t tell people about it.
Because, quite simply, despite all this good work, some people Still. Don’t. Get. It.
Mental illnesses grab you by the leg, screaming, and chow you down whole. They make you selfish. They make you irrational. They make you self-absorbed. They make you needy. They make you cancel plans last minute. They make you not very fun to spend time with. They make you exhausting to be near.
And just because people know the right words now, doesn’t mean they’re any better at putting up with behaviour. They smile and nod and say, “Oh, how awful, yes I watched a programme about that, you poor thing”… And then they get really pissed off at you when you have a panic attack at a party and need to leave early. When they actually have to demonstrate understanding, they bring out the old favourites like “come on, try harder” or “it’s not that bad” or “but that isn’t logical” – undoing all the original hand-patting and there-there-ing.
That’s why I can’t tell Lottie and Amber. That’s why I have to hold it in.
Because if any more people don’t get it… Don’t get me… Then I don’t think I’ll be able to take it.’
(Bourne, 2015, 90-93)
Works Cited:
Bourne, H. (2015) Am I Normal Yet? London: Usbourne.