Beautiful Broken Minds

In our feeble attempts to make ‘normal’ people understand mentally ill people, we mostly just end up alone. It seems to slip everyone who is supposed to be ‘normal’s’ minds, that we don’t function think or feel the same way about ‘stuff’ as they do. Not because we’re selfish, self centered, stupid, retarded, or vain, but because our minds do not function the same way as theirs do. So we might appear to be like ‘them’. Perfectly ‘normal’, because we’re masters at faking ‘normal’ in order to survive, heck perhaps even rich and famous, but the invisible beautiful broken mind is ever present, presenting those with mental illness with a new challenge or 6 every single day we wake up to a new day.

Will we ever wake up to no challenges? Wake up to knowing that ‘today will be good’? …no, we’ll always wake up to confusion, often depression and always deep heartfelt pain. The thing is, we are very good at pretending, so we smile, and then it looks as if we’re ‘normal’, because we aren’t drooling on the floor, or walking with a limp etc…

Take for example, a dinner out. A simple dinner out right? Well, for a ‘normal’, it’s exciting! what’s on the menu!? what you gonna eat? is the place well known’? ;what should I wear?’ Oh the excitement!! ….but for us who’s minds are not wired that way, it goes something like this in our heads..

OMG, is this necessary? I can feel my heart racing too fast and I can’t make it stop. What if the restaurant is packed with people who all make a huge noise? I don’t know what to wear and whatever I put on, I’ll look stupid in. Should I buy an outfit? What outfit? I don’t know what suits me?? I’m fat. I wonder if I’ll bump into someone I know? What if that woman from the school that I had words with the other day is there? I’m not hungry! I’m sure I’m going to hate the food! I hate going out, it means I have to put make up on!! I’m panicking, why do we have to do this?? – and our beautiful broken minds scream ever louder.

You see, the thought of a restaurant, no matter how ‘fancy’ it may be reputed to be, is the last thing we give a shit about. We don’t care about restaurants, nights out, friendly get together s, we don’t care! What we do care about, is being loved. We care deeply about the real things that matter in life. We care that so many ‘normal’s’ don’t actually ‘see’ us, as we are! We hurt all the time. We care that our partners shout when angry, knowing that that will trigger the rage our minds hold, due to being broken. We live in fear of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. We bite our arms to stay off of facebook when we – or IF we – happen to realise that our illnesses are playing up and we’re vulnerable at that moment, and so will react badly to something innocent.

We only want to be understood. No diamond rings, they don’t mean anything. Simple love, understanding and acceptance from our loved ones is all we need. We don’t need anything expensive or fancy. To us, being loved, even though our minds are broken, means what a million carat diamond would mean to a ‘normal’.

I’m an advocate for mental illness, and through my youtube channel, I receive hundreds of pleas from people who suffer with mental illness, every single day. They all ring remarkably similar. This alone is proof enough, that our minds that are ill, truly are broken, all in the same way.

If I experience Bipolar disorder’s symptoms one way, and you’re Bipolar as well. You’ll experience the symptoms exactly the same way I do. It’s the illness. If it were not the illness, and we were making this all up, then why is it, that those who are classified as ‘Borderline’, ALL feel, react to the same things,  and behave the same way? 

People with beautiful broken minds are different. We are nothing like the ‘normal’s’. We think differently, we behave differently, we feel differently, we perceive differently, and we are completely different in every way. That is one of the reasons, that it’s so difficult for a person who suffers with mental illness to ever have a solid, loving relationship. The ‘normal’ expects us to be ‘normal’.

Because our illness doesn’t show physically, as in a broken bone that one can see, if we switch from behaving the way we are ‘meant to behave’, and then suddenly, our broken minds break, and we rage or cry for no apparent reason, the ‘normal’ has long forgotten that we are ill, and so his or her reaction is to get really pissed off, or leave us.

The honest fact that we cannot control our beautiful broken minds completely slips the minds of the ‘normals’. They remarkably go from being very ‘understanding’ (if we show them a documentary or film with someone who has a disorder of the mental kind), to exceptionally cruel and unforgiving when our minds break on us, perhaps during a disagreement and we over react.

We are the most vulnerable people in Society, and yet, we’re often thrown away, with the garbage. The fact that so many thousands who suffer mental illness, like Einstein for one, have given so much to the World seems irrelevant to the ‘normal’s’. The fact is, I have to wonder….

If being ‘normal’, means you don’t have the brains or wherewithal to understand someone who is clearly mentally ill, who doesn’t want you to buy them gifts, who doesn’t expect anything more than love and understanding, how bright are you? Would I want to be a ‘normal’ who is clearly totally blank when it comes to connecting to what really matters while we breathe? To feel no empathy or understanding for those who are ill mentally, through no fault of their own? To place ‘I love you’s’ on Facebook for all to see, only to never call and actually ask? To want fancy meals, holidays in the Sun, parties and people, plenty of people to fill my void….then no, I’d rather have my beautiful broken mind, no matter how much pain I’m in.

The amazing, beautiful, stunning, super talented beautiful broken mind of Sinead O’ Connor as she begs her family to ‘come get her’, as her beautiful broken mind is threatening to crack completely, along with her heart, will hopefully show the ‘normal’s’ how it is for us who suffer the same way. No money, fame, beautiful house, massive diamond ring, the best car or fur coats can fix us, or take it away, or do what we most want and need!

The only thing we want. To be accepted, loved and understood, and mostly forgiven. Always forgiven, even though we often know not what we do.