While searching the internet the other day, I stumbled upon a rather interesting image. Manic depression is the new black? Really? Apparently the artist made the image with the thought of making an ironic statement about how mental disorders change names over time, but what it made me think about was the news story I read earlier this year about people who want to be bipolar.

Yes, you read that correctly. People actually want to be diagnosed with this hell.

I first read it on BBC News, here, though it’s also been in a few other sources. Some arguments suggest that people come up with this before going to their doctor because they want a label for why they’re feeling bad, and others suggest that somehow celebrities have glamorized the bipolar “lifestyle”.  I’m not entirely sure what I think yet. Well, aside from the fact that if you want this hell that you are far more fucked up than I am.

Admittedly, when I went back to the doctor in April this year, it was under the impression that I might have bipolar (as I’d been diagnosed as such about 10 years ago) but my first request was that I be rediagnosed as I did not trust the doctor that I had been with when I was first diagnosed. So, basically, I got a second opinion. I said “these are the symptoms I’m seeing, and this is what I’ve been told in past please help me before I destroy myself.”

I remember that first meeting clearly. My friend took me. She insisted I had to show the doctor the mildly infected cut on my leg, even though I told her several times that it just needed polysporin. Doctor looked at it (and all the other scars up that leg…) and said it was fine, just needed polysporin. He agreed to take me on as a patient and tried to get me to a psychiatrist. We managed to get me a diagnosis based on an interview with one psychiatrist, but I’ve yet to get a steady psychiatrist or even psychologist.

But it has not been a fun game. In the past year, I’ve lost 40 lbs, spent several months starving, spent several other months vomiting, lost control of my motor functions any number of times, blacked/spaced out many times when life just got past the point of me handling it, forgotten who I was, and destroyed friendships. Why in the name of all that is good would anyone ever want to be like this?

I have never, and I don’t think I ever will, understood why some of us in our minds will romanticize such ideas as disease so that they become something we want. Trust me, I’m not doing this to be interesting or impressive. Besides, who would I impress with a disease that has the potential to destroy every relationship in my life? I can’t even see the results of my work if I kill myself, so that’s not really something to aim for. Is it the scars? Because I’d happily give mine away.

Or maybe the true sickness is the longing to be normal. How can I validate myself? How can I fit in? That’s it, right?