I get really sick to my stomach when people are constantly romanticizing mental illness. Anxiety is NOT beautiful butterflies flying swiftly through your bloodstream. Depression is NOT the reason that you are upset with your math grade, or the reason you can't stop crying after your 2 year relationship breakup. OCD is NOT a cute personality trait given to mothers who don't like their houses dirty, or people who choose to color-coordinate their closets. Bipolar does NOT mean changing feelings, it is clinical mood swings. Mood swings are spread across the timeline of 6 months, the first being filled with depression, and the next being occupied by uncontrollable mania. Bipolar isn’t a word you can use to describe the weather, or your girlfriend/boyfriend who was sad five minutes ago (probably something you guys inflicted), but is happy all of a sudden after pouting. Those are feelings that are part of the human condition; and for the weather, it will do what it pleases. Don't offend or put people down with the careless use of your words. Think before you speak, because sometimes what you choose to say is offensive and detrimental to others. Please, out of respect for the people around you, get educated before you use those words, and when you do speak them, use them only in times when educating others, and for the greater good.
It is not a race to be the 'saddest', or a contest to be the first one who's doctor finds it reasonable enough to put you on Prozac. So tell me about your boss, tell me about your homework, tell me about your alarm clock, tell me about how your parents will not buy you a brand new car for your 16th birthday. Explain to me how these things burn your days to the ground. Tell me these things, and I will congratulate you FOR BEING HUMAN. Stop reading sad fiction stories on tumblr just to make yourself feel something less than happy, when you have absolutely no reason to revel in sadness. Stop wishing you were on medication, needing cognitive therapy, or thinking that a psychiatrist is right for you. You must recognize natural emotion and grief before self-diagnosing yourself with depression. Clinically diagnosed mental illnesses are anything but beautiful. They are tragedy and catastrophe at its finest. To want to possess one of these things, is like wishing you could plants seeds within you that reproduce blood cells uncontrollably that sprout a tumor in your body that grows and grows and goes undiagnosed until it is a tree and its strong unwilling branches are growing from within you, outside. Do not romanticize with mental illness. It is unforgiving and absolutely horrifying. It is not like how they portray it in the movies. It is laying on the bathroom floor at 2 a.m. because your throat burns and your stomach screams at you for taking so much out of it. It is standing in the shower watching blood run down your legs and your life circle the drain. It is shaking uncontrollably and not being able to stop the adrenaline rush that is running marathons around your heart in attempts to rid your body of the fear that you are in danger, when you certainly are not. It is buying the same pair of jeans 78 times online because the two polar ends of your brain are not working the way that they are supposed to. It is hallucinating visually and audibly, and not being able to differentiate reality on your own terms, because your brain robbed that from you. It is washing your hands until raw flesh surfaces, and it is counting every single article of clothing you own 3 times before you go to bed to ensure that your family will never be without food, shelter, clothes, and warmth...it is NOT pretty. Stop romanticizing mental illness.
Mental illness will not dance with you under a soft kitchen light in the middle of the night. It will not dip you gently in its arms, to bring you back to its kiss. It will not carry you to bed like the way a lover is supposed to do. It will drop you. You’ll have to find your bed in complete darkness, and you’ll have to fight to know if tonight the monsters are going to live in your head, or underneath your bed. It will not dance with you, the only dancing will be the monsters who are taunting you. I know that you look at tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, and all the other scary stops that are on the same road as the information superhighway that social media has become. I know that sometimes your mind and your body crave sadness because sometimes you just want to feel something, but please understand that is dangerous and can cause harm to you. In an article called
“Did We “Take Delete the Stigma” Too Far?”
on https://stopromanticizingthingsthathurt.weebly.com/the-romanticism-of-mental-illness.html, it addresses the concern that the public is taking mental illness and using it to express their pain by labeling their trials with words like artitistic, aesthetic, elegant, and alluring. The article states “while mental illness isn’t something people should be scared of, it also isn’t something that people should aspire to have.” I love this!! I love it because it is so true. People should never be afraid of mental illnesses, or people who are diagnosed with them. But also, people shouldn’t ever aspire to have such illnesses. The article also states,
“Today, people everywhere are romanticizing mental illness. Girls have started to associate the words “tragic” and “beautiful” together. Let’s think about this realistically for a second. In fact, let’s look at the dictionary definitions for tragic and beautiful.
trag·ic /trajk/ adjective
causing or characterized by extreme distress or sorrow
beau·ti·ful/ˈbyo͞odəfəl/adjective
pleasing the senses or mind aesthetically.
I don’t know about you, but these terms definitely don’t look like synonyms to me. In fact, they seem more like antonyms. So why are people everywhere talking about how tragic is beautiful? The new mindset “tragic is beautiful” likely stems from the false idea that mental illness has a positive correlation with creativity. And it’s true, people who suffer from mental illness have been known to create beautiful things, but so have people without mental illness. A mental illness itself isn’t beautiful, it is debilitating.
You see, that’s the thing about mental illness. It’s all encompassing; it’s all consuming; it hurts. A mental illness isn’t beautiful simply because pain isn’t pretty.
We throw around mental illnesses every day as if they are adjectives, as if they are something we aspire to have. People say things like “I’m so depressed, I failed my statistics exam.” Girls can’t stop talking about how Jessica looks so “anorexic,” Tommy is so “bipolar,” and Professor Jacobs is absolutely “psychotic.” When did we start self-diagnosing ourselves and others with terms we really know nothing about? The truth is: you aren’t depressed because you cry when Rue dies in The Hunger Games. You don’t have Generalized Anxiety Disorder because you get nervous for your final calculus exam. Skipping a meal doesn’t make you anorexic, and being organized doesn’t mean you have OCD.
DON’T BELIEVE ME? SEE FOR YOURSELF…
Tumblr is where a lot of the romanticism of mental illness stems from. The pictures to the left are images you would be likely to see on any given day when scrolling through Tumblr. We, as a society, aren’t doing anything to discourage it. In fact, by refusing to acknowledge the problem, perhaps we are encouraging it. It stands to reason that these images and posts might actually encourage self-destructive behavior. Misery loves company and sometimes a shared sadness can be seen as a way to fit in. Teenage girls are the most susceptible to these images and messages. Every picture has a different affect on everyone. The one that troubles me the most is the first one that reads “I think suicidal people are just angels who want to go home.” I believe that this post is glorifying suicide and saying that it’s okay. Suicidal people are not angels that want to go home, they are people who are in desperate need of some help. By posting quotes like this, and re-blogging them, we are promoting suicide as well as romanticizing it. Most days when scrolling through Tumblr I see black and white pictures of a girl’s arm with fresh blood rising from razor cuts. There is often a quote accompanying the picture describing the beauty of the fresh blood and scars. Girls on Tumblr have decided that cuts are beautiful because they have decided that depression is beautiful. So I ask you, is perpetual sadness really beautiful? Imagine walking around everyday with the weight of the world on your shoulders, too exhausted to get out of bed in the morning, ready to give up before you have even began the day. Depression is a veil that clouds our thinking and casts a shadow over our true selves. It’s a seemingly endless black hole that keeps propelling us downward. I don’t know about you, but that’s not something I think is beautiful. And it’s definitely not something I would ever hope to experience. So why are we romanticizing it? Why are we trying to make mental illness into something that is beautiful when it clearly isn’t? Society has turned mental illness into something that is “cool,” “edgy” or even “glamorous.” Suddenly, everyone is convinced that they have anxiety or are depressed. They think that having a mental illness will aid them in being beautiful. Sadness doesn't make you more alluring, self-mutilation doesn't make you popular and suicide just makes you dead...where's the beauty in that? No amount of flowery prose about suicide or graphic pictures of self-mutilation will change the fact that mental illness isn't an art form. There's nothing "cool" or "edgy" about it. Every day is a battle and requires a choice to be made between living and dying, trying and giving up. The struggle is real. The romanticism of mental illness hurts people who actually suffer from a mental illness. It can hinder them from receiving the real help they need. Mental illness then becomes desensitized because “everybody has it.” Having a mental illness doesn’t make you tragic or beautiful. It just makes you hurt. Pain equals pain, and #painisntpretty.”
I decided to paste the rest (basically the entire) article onto this post because it has so much great information, and I don't know who could’ve explained it any better !!
If you want to view the website where the article is, click the link below!
https://stopromanticizingthingsthathurt.weebly.com/the-romanticism-of-mental-illness.html
Check it out !!! It has so much good information that everyone could benefit from in positive ways !!
I FREAKING LOVE YOUR GUY’S GUTS !!! THANK YOU FOR READING THIS AND SUPPORTING MY DREAM TO MAKE A CHANGE !!! <3
think positive. think big. think accurate. think respectively. be yourself & don't try to be anything else. you are absolutely astonishing & inspiring & capable of anything, just the way that you are. STAY HAPPY MY LOOOVESSSSS :)))