Forgiving the Fraud in Myself

I was at the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Inspiration Awards Dinner, and at the end of the evening, a speaker got up and raved about a NAMI program called “In Our Own Voice.” IOOV is a public speaking program on mental illness delivered by people who have mental illness. This is the signature “stigma busting” program in the organization, where a human face replaces the ugly stereotypes of mental illness.

Presenters were asked to stand.

Now, I have been a presenter for over five years and have given over fifty IOOVs, yet I was reluctant to stand. In that room of 200 people, I didn’t want to be identified as a person with a mental illness. This was even after the keynote speaker gave us a passionate call to action as advocates. Even at this event, when I was with “my people,” there was an unexpected tendency in me not to be made to “come out.”

Embarrassed, I stood along with a handful of other people, and the audience applauded heartily. I was not proud but uncomfortable, and as I felt exposed, I chided myself for feeling exposed. Was I not supposed to be the advocate extraordinaire? The poster child for mental illness? The Great Recovered One?

When I sat down, my sister-in-law next to me rubbed my back and whispered, “I didn’t know you did that. That’s cool.”

Yes, it was cool, but I wanted it to be cool on my own terms. I wanted the people that saw my presentations to see my humanity, see my strength and courage, and then never see me again. I still wanted to be a “normie” in my daily life.

Case in point: I had dressed carefully and thoughtfully for the occasion, sporting a jacket with a dragonfly motif. I wanted to be known as the woman in the dragonfly jacket, not as the one with the mental illness. I was tired of that. I thought I’d outgrown the “mentally ill” label.

Of course, it was the wrong time and the wrong place to be tired of it, to feel beyond my label, when all the people there that I knew, which were many, already knew my story. But was a little anonymity among strangers too much to ask?

This thought took me aback, for I had come face to face with my own hypocrisy.

My two closest friends at the dinner had already gone, and so there was no one to talk to about my conflicted feelings. They were men, besides; I really needed a girlfriend to talk to, but there was no one. And T. had strategically avoided attending the event in the first place, so I was alone.

I watched as a man at the next table over put money in a donation envelope, a donation that was going to sponsor the public speaking program. I didn’t put money in the envelope; I didn’t feel like sponsoring myself.

As soon as the evening was winding down, instead of mingling with the crowd, I bolted for the door. I called my buddy who had left early, chastising him. I didn’t mention that I was made to stand up, that I didn’t feel like being an example that night. I don’t know if he would have thought I was being childish or that I was being what I was: a sham.

On my way home, I had some time to do some thinking. I thought about my therapist and what he would say about all of this. He would talk about the spectrum, about life being lived mainly in the grey area. He would tell me that I didn’t have to be the perfect advocate all the time; I was allowed to choose another identity, even in the most ironic of places.

He would have told me it was OK if I had kept my seat, period. That it was my right to respect my own privacy.

As I mulled over some of this therapy philosophy in my mind, I remembered a woman at my support group once saying that she felt as protective of her identity a someone with bipolar disorder as she did with her credit card numbers, and she held her numbers close to her chest.

Now would she be a marvelous human rights advocate? No. But this anecdote served to remind me that I can’t wear my illness on my sleeve all the time, even in a crowded room of people who applaud what I’ve done, what I do. Being bipolar all the time is exhausting.

I think I just need a break, and when I’ve had a bit of a break, I’ll tell my story once again, and my audience will appreciate the challenges of living with mental illness, and they will applaud, and I will go on, living as well as I can.

Even sometimes as a normie.