Merry Christmas!

If you have read my blog in the past or have just stumbled upon it, I want you to know that recovery IS possible. I am totally weaned off of drugs. My goal five years ago was to write an autobiography about how I was written off as disabled, almost a “throw-away.” Many, especially the professionals, thought I should be on meds for the rest of my life.

I am a successful person now.  Success is in the eye of the beholder, but I am willing to bet no one in the town I now live, would ever guess that I have a mental illness or that at one time I was basically a drooling fool. Drooling because of the meds!

As I said, I thought I would write an autobiography, but I am still to scared to do it. I feel 90 percent recovered. I head up a small non-profit agency and I am an artist. At this time I don’t make enough money. I am scared that if I went public with my story, I might need future employment. Will employers not really want me?

I will give you an example. I have been very, very busy so I wrote a generic email and blind carbon copied it to several of my friends. In the email I said that I was too busy to put up my Christmas decorations and that we didn’t have electricity for the part of the house that we wanted to put the decorations.  Well, a friend who knew me from my depression and bipolar mania days wrote back to say she was so sorry that I was feeling blue.

Blue!  I was busy, busy, busy. I’m wasn’t sad, blue or depressed.

Now this person was/is a very good friend who stuck with me through the worse. But I suspect she will always see me as mentally ill. We never see each other any more. We met in the days before Internet and we live thousands of miles apart.  I guess I haven’t told her about my long journey off the meds. She saw me at my worse. To be fair, she doesn’t know about the new me.

But the fact that I my busyness was misconstrued for the blues as why I had no decorations was revealing to how people view you once you have been labeled as mentally ill.

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