Personal Narrative: My Personal Experience With Mental Illness

“I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.” This quote, from Redfield Jamieson, perfectly captures my feelings about mental illness. For years, I lived in fear that telling anyone about my diagnosis would lead to my friends treating me differently, to teachers handling me with kid gloves, and my family looking at me as if I was broken. This fear of ostracization led me to feel incredibly alone, and combined with my symptoms I felt as if the illness I was dealing with would prove an insurmountable challenge; something that would keep me from ever living the life I wanted to live. After slowly coming to terms with my illness and taking the steps to
Hearing about my mother’s experiences in her youth with her manic-depressive mother gave me a twisted misconception about how mental illness took over lives. When an urgent care counselor talked with me about the possibility of me having bipolar disorder in grade ten, this vision seemed to become a reality. Nightmarish visions of myself being subjugated to electroshock therapy and taking medication leading to me losing all personality I had quickly flooded my head. Out of fear I refused to see that counselor or any mental health professional again. This kneejerk reaction forced me to fall victim to my illness. My academic standing fell as the mania prevented me from focusing on my schoolwork, and the depression kept me from even getting out of bed to study. Worse than that, however, the relationships I had with my friends were strained. Without them knowing about my condition, they quickly became intolerant of my cyclic moods and seemingly irrational behavior. I grew distant from my friends, and this led me to feel more alone than ever. The twisted reality I had constructed around mental illness had seemed to become