Taking off the Mask
After 20 years of wearing my mask of shame, I have finally decided to do everything I can to fight the stigma of mental illness. I knew I had to be honest and open about my struggles if I was ever going to help anyone else, let alone myself. In doing so, I finally found the voice I’ve been missing. I found strength in the honesty I had been hiding from for two decades. I decided to post an open letter to my friends and family on Facebook and reveal my truth to them. The result was so incredible. I have never in my life felt so loved and so supported. And guess what? Not one person judged me the way I was so scared they would. People finally understood me, and I’ve never felt so liberated. I could breathe again, I could stop lying and hiding. Finally! Here is a copy of my Facebook post:
I’ve struggled with how to approach this. I realized that I cannot fight this stigma—never mind asking anyone else to—and continue to be ashamed and hide myself. I’ve been on a hard journey the last few months realizing I have to stop hiding from this thing and just embrace it.
My friends, every day I struggle with bipolar disorder. I’ve been fighting this fight for 20 years and it’s so exhausting. I have good days and I have horrific days and some days I feel like I can’t fight it anymore. It’s hard to ask for help. I’m so scared of anyone finding out about my diagnosis. I have gone to extreme lengths to hide my bipolar disorder from the world. Shameful lengths. Somehow just by hiding this thing, I turned into a liar, a fake, someone I didn’t even recognize. The shame kept building and building. No more.
Bipolar disorder at times has turned my life upside down. I’ve lost friends, I’ve lost jobs, my home, I’ve had my immediate family members give up on me and totally abandon me. All because I was too ashamed to get help, or ask for it.
What a stigma! You hear it all the time, the trivialization of the word “bipolar.” Somewhere along the line, the word became synonymous with “crazy.” In fact, the only time I get truly crazy, is when I hear people use that word that way. It’s pure and simple ignorance. Which is why we have to educate this world about what being bipolar really means.
In two weeks, on April 30th, I will be walking for the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), in hopes of fighting this horrible stigma, bringing awareness and raising money for this worthy cause. I am certainly not the only one suffering.
Thank you so much if you took the time to read through this and you didn’t judge me.
I love you all.
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