Reality

I did something stupid this last week I read the comments section after a science page I follow on Facebook posted about Robin Williams. I thought it would be safe, surely people who follow a science page would be rational and logical. To my great surprise this wasn't the case and several people commented that anyone who committed suicide was selfish. People who commit suicide are not selfish, they are many things, they were in a place so dark that they could not see a way out, they were in pain, physical or mental, they saw no hope for the future, but not selfish.

I struggle to understand peoples attitude towards mental illness, we never tell people with cancer to pull themselves together that its all in their heads, but that is something people with mental illness have probably heard. Its hardest when it comes from your own family. My brother can not understand how I appeared fine one week and was so ill the next. To start with appearances can be truly deceptive, I had been ill so long and hidden it so well I had managed to almost hide it from myself. I would do numerous things that people assumed meant I had confidence whereas the reality was I was terrified and was hoping by doing these things that confidence I was acting might become reality.

When I first became really ill  I could no longer maintain the pretends that all was well with me, I could no longer maintain the illusion. Now I am having to discover who I am, to admit to my fears and learn how to deal and hopefully conquer them.