SICKzine

While berated and plagued by physical illness throughout the years due to my almost nonexistent immune system, I have been subject to a far more severe illness that cannot be detected by physical symptoms and can only be cured through will power and mental warfare alone. The medical world classifies it as “mental illness.”



The brain behaves much like the hustle and bustle of New York City. Neurons and chemicals cross synapses with lighting speed like people getting on and off the 6 train with places to go. Like the motor skills building or going to gland hubs to make sure adrenaline is pumping more than usual when I am at a concert thrashing around assuring that my cells are keeping my heart beating in time with the music.



Sometimes the trains get delayed or services become obsolete due to construction in the tunnels or to budget cuts. Sometimes your body goes on strike in places where there used to plenty of workers to maintain serotonin levels and suddenly half your body is on strike. Half the work force leaves and you start to feel unsteady and emotional, but you just cry a little bit and act a bit more solitary, nothing to really worry about. With those facilities not nonfunctioning other parts of the city start to run bumpier and eventually more collapse occuyrs. Then you shut down completely because if no one is in the city, why bother being a city?



This- in medical jargon- is known as the cycle of clinical depression. The chemicals you need to keep your brain running smoothly have left you, they are fed up with the way you have been treating them. That’s the bottom line of your illness. It can be fixed with hours of therapy and multiple visits to specialists. When those fail to cure you your next, and seemingly genius step, are chemical combination A, B, C, or D.



This chemical cocktail enables you to wake up each morning without the dread of living another day full of misery, stress, pain, uncertainty, sadness, and a myriad of other symptoms which most people suffer from occasionally but you suffer from constantly. Not only constantly but amplified to the point of suicide looking like a better option that handing in your homework.



But keep in mind clinical depression is only the beginning. On top of that you have mania caused by straggling chemicals still trying to make your brain function as it knows it is supposed to. But they don’t do much expect give you short bursts of creativity and energy which eventually leave you more burnt out than you felt before. You also find out that you’re anxious: generally and socially. This is caused by your depression and mania. Although these diagnoses start to make sense you wonder, am I really that messed up? You the psycho pharmacologist’s about these ‘attacks’ you get. Where nothing can calm you and everything swirls and your body shakes. You can not stop crying and heaving and you have no idea why. So then chemical cocktail A, B, and C are not enough. Now you need G, F, and X too. That will supposedly solve all those problems. Then after a few weeks on these new cocktails you realize you can’t cry, you still feel awful and unable to do anything and the panic attacks, although less frequent, have become more violent. So then you take drug D and it is all better. We promise, trust us, you will feel so much better.



It will put an end to days spent in your bed with the lights off refusing to move because- “why bother? The day will be awful. I will fuck up everything because that’s what I do. I am a fuck up. I can’t do anything right so why bother? Why be a burden on my family and friends? They say they are there for me, but I know I scare them. They are just trying to be polite. They don’t really want to listen to me sobbing and complaining about anything and everything. They don’t want to hear my self-deprecation. They think I am a drama queen who wants the spot light and all the attention. She wants everyone around to feel bad for her and pay attention to her and only her. She’s just bullshitting us all, what an attention whore they all think. Why bother getting out of bed when all you have to look forward too is failure. Because you are a failure, and a fuck up, and there is just too much to deal with, and you’ll get nothing done, and, and, AND…” This goes on constantly morning, noon and night. You miss work, deadlines, classes, concerts, sitting in the sunshine, hanging out with friends. I miss everything. While the alarm is ringing. While the phone is going off. While schoolwork sits in piles. While I lose my job. While you sit secluded waiting for something, anything.



You think after seven years of a constant never ending affliction you would have learned some coping skills by now. But every day is different. Bringing new stress, more panic. There are bigger fish ot fry and you have no appetite.


Mental illness has few physical symptoms and it is difficult to explain to those in my own radical community. “But you seem so happy!” “Why do you take those medications? They poison your body and make those horrible pharmaceutical companies richer! How could you willingly pump funds into those evil companies?” (“you wouldn’t want to see me off them”), “What’s wrong? Having a bad day? Come here and tell me all about it!” (“no, no I’m fine- but you seem sad tell ME all about it. Let me be your shoulder to cry on.”), “What the fuck is your problem dude?”



What’s my problem? Everything is my problem. Life is my problem. A chemical imbalance that I cannot see and barely understand is my problem. People not believing me is my biggest problem. Why schizophrenia or obsessive compulsive disorder are seemingly more “understood” and “accepted” as mental illnesses by the public rather than depression, when depression is the most common, I won’t ever understand.



My problem is forming the phrase, “I have a mental affliction which alters my behaviors. Sometimes I have to rely on many different medications, several specialists, and myself to pull together what little strength I have to make it through a morning. How do you explain to someone that I sit in a car with my hand poised contemplating the pros and cons of opening it and hurling myself onto the freeway or lying in the bathtub seeing how it how long I stay under without air in my lungs. How going out with friends, going to class, going to work and always thinking everyone is staring at me and making judgments and assumptions which make me never want to leave the bathroom. I am always worried that I will never be good at enough and that anything I touch will crash and burn.



I have chronic mental illnesses and sometimes it just hurts to keep breathing. I do not know if this can help you understand but maybe you can at least know what it feels like.