Coming Out and Mental Illness

***Edit: This is a different kind of coming out. I have OCD and PTSD. After spending the past week feeling like someone who is less than human and convinced that no one would ever love me or want to be my friend anymore if they knew, I have decided to adopt a "Take me or leave me" attitude. You accept every part of me, or none of me at all. Don't pity me. Pity the people who are cruel and ignorant...because they will be harder to change. And hopefully, by living our lives visibly and without shame...they will one day. ***

And now for the original post:

Stigma is a black market emblem.

It is an antecedent that denotes us as a set of all integers rather than as individuals.

It is a de facto law that disqualifies our souls from participation in society...but not our skeletons.

Deinstutionalization has replaced hospital stays with the immutable mark of remissions on patient charts.

We are supervised not by hospital staff, but by the insidious glances of those who judge from a privileged distance.

We are the North, and the needles in their eyes-the daggers in their stare-respond to our weaknesses with an absolute magnetism. Our gestures become egregious and unforgivable, the by-products of a seedy bar on the wrong side of the bell curve.

On days when we feel as though we are dying, our screaming bodies-in the tradition of Socrates-attempt to transcend and ignore our nature because it is what we are expected to do.

When we stand up for ourselves, whether it be in the form of asking for an extension on an assignment or calling out of work because we cannot even get out of bed, our actions are the epitome of sacrifice. We dispel the order of the universe by coming across the exceptions to its rules and in the process, we bear the burden of harboring the variance that occurs within a species.

We stand by and witness the misrepresentation of what is a fundamental facet of our being, a recessive trait expressed only through the consternation of others in the wake of tragedies such as those that occurred in Aurora and Newtown.

We are a morbid curiosity bestowed upon others by the light spectrum, and not by purpose.

Enough is enough.

We cannot abdicate the responsibility to discuss these issues in a mature and dignified manner.

I know that They do not understand. Their ideals are less damaging than mine, less threatening to the stability of the world as we know it.

But we must disrupt the balance between all beings like ideas that were first espoused in the 1800's and the world hasn't been the same since.

This is simply a part of who we are. I would rather live in a world where corsets are loosened and morals follow suit than one where my mind is viewed as an abomination. If this confession carries the same weight as the bathtub gin that undoubtedly launched a thousand court dates, then so be it.

Sidewalks should be paved with gold, and not history books. They must be composed not by the winners, but by the common man and every ailment that is spewed-as Wilfred Owen would say-from his froth corrupted lung.