For Young People:
Some Transparency and Encouragement
Alongside the purely professional content of this site, I want to reach out in particular to people of my generation and younger and share some life experience and commentary about it. If I can help someone by doing this, then to me that would be a very positive outcome.
Between childhood and the present, I’ve grappled with some serious health issues, as well as my sexual orientation and gender identity (Sidebar: If I had to put a contemporary label on how I feel about myself, I’d say I’m gender-agnostic or gender-fluid or non-binary. Frankly, I, too, am confused about what exactly all today’s terms mean exactly but am too much of a feminist and too interested in my other work to make philosophizing about or railing against my biological sex or how it’s socialized a priority agenda item, despite my frequent private frustrations.).
Most recently, I was (finally, thank goodness) diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a few years of worsening and undiagnosed signs and symptoms in my twenties. I’ve again been faced with decisions about how open to be for the sake of de-stigmatizing various conditions. In the end, I’ve decided to be very open, believing that the people I want to work for or spend time with would receive this information with openness and respect.
To be clear, however, I’m not trying to normalize making private medical history a matter of public record. This is a very personal choice I’m making. I’m proud of what I accomplished living untreated with this condition and am deeply optimistic about my future. I remain unapologetically me. I believe that (mental) illness is a weakness, but I also believe that there should be no shame in it. I hope that, one day, better understanding of the biological underpinnings and effective treatments of mental illnesses will put them on the same medical and social footing as “respectable” conditions. After all, even if an illness has social or circumstantial causal factors, that does not lessen the fact that it’s a physiological response to those factors.
On illness, generally: It is an important fact that you can write your own story—in particular, one in which you remain the hero(ine) and the illness plays whatever role you decide. I consider my own life to be an example of why universal and fair access to (mental) healthcare is so important. With the right support, I have had a very rich life so far. Today, I would choose to be cured in a heartbeat if that were possible; I do not believe that bipolar disorder is an ennobling force in my life, and I say this even as an intellectual and creative person. Even though there is presently no cure, happiness and stable productivity are still the goals, and they are often achievable.
More topically for folks of my generation and younger about existential anxiety (vs. clinical anxiety), which seems to be in the zeitgeist: My take is that there is both a lot and nothing to be anxious about. The world has a lot of uncertainty and crappiness in it, but anxiety is only sort of smart about it. It knows enough to look out for you by asking the question, “What if X terrible thing happens?”. But it’s dumb enough to just leave the question hanging around in your system as an unresolved threat to gnaw at you.
So answer the question. If X terrible thing happens, and it very well might, and it might not even be your fault, then you can still do Y or Z or … There is always a next step you can take to respond, and that’s the much more important part. Be impeccable in your role in every situation, and dig into that process of looking for the next step or other possibility. In my experience, that process is the happiness we’re looking for and are worried that some awful external circumstance is going to rob us of. It can’t, unless it kills us, in which case we really have nothing to worry about! So breathe (from your diaphragm, not your chest!) and settle back into things.
Finally, and very importantly, thank you to all the people who have given me acceptance and support. You will always share in whatever successes I enjoy, and you’re a big part of why I do what I do.