Madness
Yesterday, a friend stumbled upon my website. I haven’t made much of an effort to broadcast my health struggles, and this friend was unaware of the recent discoveries in my life. He asked me what it was like living with mental illness.
I must admit, I know he is going to read my response. That said, I want to answer the question as candidly and as thoroughly as possible.
First, I should say that I dislike the term mental illness. Mental illness…like the flu in your brain. Get a vaccine, take some meds, and wait it out. The phrase is too sterile. It’s the literary opposite of onomatopoeia. It sounds absolutely nothing like the experience of having it.
A word I much prefer is madness. The word is loaded with literary as well as linguistic significance.
The concept that madness is a benefit to health rather than a detractor dates back to Plato, whom Seneca cites in Of Peace of Mind: “It is sometimes pleasant to be mad.” Seneca also cites Aristotle as saying that “no great genius has ever been without a touch of madness.” Shakespeare would then incite a much wider movement that this idea might hold merit:
Shakespeare: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.” (Hamlet II. ii.)
Cervantes: “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!” (Don Quixote)
Emily Dickinson: “Much Madness is divinest Sense –” (“Much Madness is Divinest Sense”)
Melville: “So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense” (Moby Dick)
Shaw: “We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!” (Saint Joan)
Bierce: “Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves.” (The Devil’s Dictionary)
George R. R. Martin: “Is it so far from madness to wisdom?” (A Game of Thrones)
Similarly, I like the different meanings of the word mad. By another definition, I am extremely mad. I am mad that my body has to endure daily bouts of suffering beyond normal human experience. I am mad that other people have had such an effect on my life as to steal nearly a decade of it. I am mad that tasks that are so easy for other people present monstrous hurdles for me. I am full to the brim of madness.
But I am also full of resilience. For a decade, I have bent into hideously grotesque and gnarled shapes, but I have not broken. I have coped negatively, but I have learned to live and think positively, tolerantly, forgivingly. I have endured horrendously painful experiences and emotions, but I am granted joys more profound than most ever know as a result.
My answer is this:
I am not mentally ill, but I am absolutely mad. I am not better yet, but I am getting there. I am not free of scars, but I am free of mind. I know that it cannot hurt me any more than it already has. In Eleonora, Poe wrote that “Men have called me mad: but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.” I’m banking on the former.
I think we as a society tend to label things–“mental illness,” for example, to simplify them and try to make them “understandable,” even though the labeling negates our delving into the true essence of the thing. It’s superficial; it’s phony. Labeling makes it seem as if we understand the thing and know how to respond to it.
I’m glad you have begun to understand your “painful experiences and emotions.” I believe that your self-understanding will not only help you react positively to your “madness” and to the “madness” of the world around you but will encourage you to help those who apply the label “mental illness” to others they don’t understand know how to respond to and help the ones they label.
I think your analysis of the societal perception of mental illness is precisely on point. The irony is that the experience of mental illness exists outside of the realm of normal human experience. Additionally, it may take such varied shapes and symptoms that providing a universal definition is almost impossible in certain circumstances. Consequently, it is extremely difficult to bridge the gap between the societal understanding of mental illness and the truth about living with it.
I want to add that one of the most misunderstood aspects of mental illness tends to be the idea that it exists in a stagnant state. Somebody IS bipolar/depressed/etc. Yet, most people’s experiences with bipolar disorder and depression, as well as PTSD (I can only speak to the ones with which I have had experience), are anything but static. We move into and out of healthy states, yet the societal conception tends to gravitate toward viewing mental illness as an incredibly volatile and dangerous thing. If we’re being honest, it can be; however, mental illness does not manifest itself as a constantly dangerous and volatile entity over long periods of time.
Thank you so much for your thoughts! It’s the dialogue that is going to help shift the understanding of mental health in the 21st century. Plus, I believe your observations about society were on point. Thank you!