Monday, October 28, 2013
Oh, well, who ISN'T?!
My neighbor L. came over last night, to collect the mail I had been gathering for her and B. while they were out of town, and she got to chatting.
"B. sure does like to talk, lately!" she said. "He's driving me crazy! It's because he's bipolar, you know."
Okay, (a), TMI, and (b), who ISN'T?!
I swear to God, isn't everybody, these days? If they're not bipolar (back in my day, it was called manic-depressive, but I guess that phrase must have been offensive to somebody sometime, because now it's called bipolar), they're "on the spectrum". Or they've got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Or adult ADD. Or the motherload of pull-out-your-(insert disease here)-card, Fibro-my-freaking-algia.
If I ever get cancer, I'm gonna be PISSED at all these a**holes trotting out their medical diagnoses like they deserve some kind of flippin' AWARD.
Disease is not cool. Disease is not fun. No, it's nothing to be ashamed of, of course, but it's also not some f*cking flag for you to fly over your damn house. It's not something for your wife (or husband, or whoever) to bring up in casual flipping conversation with the NEIGHBORS.
Whoo boy. I dunno. I just get tired of people trotting out their speshul preshuss disease like a show pony.
If you want to be proud of something, be proud of the kick-a** muffins you make. Be proud of the incredibly complicated spreadsheet you created for your job. Be proud that you made someone smile today.
But don't be proud of being sick. That's just ... odd. Deal with your illness as best you can, but don't let it define you. Don't let it become you.
Because then? Then it's won.
But wait. Am I missing the boat? Isn't "owning" a disease supposed to be some kind of empowering tool? But, I mean, it's good, of course, to acknowledge your diagnoses, and not to be weirded out by what's wrong with you, but are we really supposed to be bragging about it, now?
Help me out, here, guys. What do you think about illness-as-empowerment?
Personally, I'd rather be healthy. Or be sick and just deal with it, and not ask everybody including the check-out dude at Walmart to deal with it along with me.
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3 comments:
I'd rather be healthy, too, than to take all these meds just to keep me propped up and walking around. I sometimes try to imagine what my life would have been like without it and I just can't seem to manage it.
And yes, everybody does seem to be bipolar these days.
Like me.
I remember years ago my doctor told me I had "the popular name" for chronic fatigue syndrome. Maybe Epstein Barre, anyway I told him bullshit-Cher claimed she had it and I was not having the same disease as Cher. Whatever I had I got over it. I think the real people who have serious illness are marginalized by the masses claiming all these diseases. I rarely discuss my problems and certainly not to the extent that my life is described in detail to people.
Becs, I know you are bipolar. I also do not believe for one second that you are doing it to be "fashionable". Or, in the case of my boss's son, to use it as an excuse to be an utterly worthless human being. Or to use it to ride the good ship S.S. Disability.
Bipolar is a real disease. And like fmcetc. says, all the people crying wolf, so to speak, are casting doubt on the real sufferers.
It's the fakers who piss me off.
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