I've been psychoanalyzed, on and off, since I was four years old. I've gone to child psychiatrists, family psychiatrists, on-call psychiatrists, and amateur psychiatrists, and gotten a different diagnosis from almost every one. I suffered from depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder (think Winona Ryder in Girl Interrupted), bipolar disorder and gods know how many other horrible syndromes and disorders they told my mother about rather than me. I have also been fed some pretty outlandish bullshit. One lady, a hack brought in by my high school due to my obvious need for mental help (I wore black and didn't talk for a year in a world of pep rallies and football games, had it been post-Columbine I probably would have been expelled for being strange) tried to convince me that I would transform overnight into a pastel-wearing icon of teenage happiness if only I would accept that deep down I wanted to have sex with my father. I walked out and never looked back. She sells real estate now; I believe she may have found her calling. I've also been told that I irrefutably and without doubt was molested as a child and that my absolute lack of memories on the subject prove it to be true. I tried to explain the stupidity of this approach to the shrink in question, a lady I found because she was the only one covered by my father's insurance, but to no avail. No, the fact that I could not remember being abused proved how heinous the abuse must have been! This sort of circular logic proved to me that the therapist had majored in theology before switching to psychology.
My point is that I have been taught by experience to pretty much disregard all psychiatric diagnoses. But, it has recently been brought to my attention that my living room redecorating experience just screams "Manic Episode!!! Helloooooo!" So I thought I'd go with it. Maybe I am bipolar. So, for the last week or so, I've been watching myself to see if the label fits. It seems to, but it, like all labels, brings with it a whole host of problems. Like for instance, not knowing how to think. If all of my thoughts are to be attributed to either mania or depression, what happened to the ones that should be attributed to me? My ideas, my plans, all my newly thought-up undertakings, can I trust none of them? Are they merely the delusional goals of a manic person? Is my attempt to write a novel akin to another crazy person's attempt to gamble his way to riches? If I accept this diagnosis, if I embrace manic-depression, I lose all confidence in my own judgement!
If I am simply a slightly odd person with anger issues and related impulse control problems, then I can feel free to objectively look at myself and make decisions based on my own judgement. But if I am a manic-depressive person with many various symptoms as laid out in the DSM-IV then I must second-guess every thought in my head, and then disregard the second guess because even that is the thought of a crazy person. And my kid, instead of having a bizarre mom who occasionally, but with no diminished mental capacity, yells at inanimate objects, becomes a victim. Suddenly she has to endure the horrors of being raised by a mentally ill person rather than just someone who overreacts and has lots of energy as well as the occasional bad mood.
I think I'd rather be 'sane but really weird' than 'crazy but doing quite well considering'. Is it so wrong to do things on a whim? Is my child going to be damaged somehow by late night weekend glowstick-wars across the living room, or dance contests before school, or impromptu carpet-removal? As long as she does her homework on time and has a bed-time routine, what's the harm? Is it better that Tom be married to a crazy woman who really should have her moods chemically stabilized, or that he be married to a funny, spontaneous, passionate woman? I cry sometimes and I blow up about little things, especially before my period, but what wife doesn't?
No, I think I'm gonna keep my denial if it's all the same. I can't afford any medication, and wouldn't take any even if I could due to wanting to get pregnant soon, so the simple awareness of my own mental defects seems to me to accomplish nothing good. Of course, I could be wrong. That opinion could simply be the product of a mania-driven mind incapable of thinking clearly. Lucky I don't have any mania then, isn't it.
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