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| My roommate and I attending a suicide prevention event last September |
I started my last semester of classes last week and it has been so much fun seeing my friends again and getting back into routines (although the three papers assigned in the first week of classes was a little overkill if you ask me...). One thing I've noticed this semester, though, are the number of side comments and jokes that are casually made about mental health and suicide. I'm not going to lie, I'm guilty of it, too. The "Kill myself" or "Well, I'm just going to jump off a cliff now" comments might seem innocent and maybe even humorous, but there is so much more to it. If we really think about what those jokes and comments are implying, there is actually nothing humorous about them. They are referencing people taking their own life. They are perpetuating a stigma, and the flippant use of these phrases make light of a serious topic. During my classes so far, I have already heard 3 professors make jokes about suicide or being crazy. I cringe every time, but everyone around me thinks nothing of it. How can we be so nonchalant about suicide in our language, but be completely torn apart when it happens in real life?
Last week in one of my classes, a girl mentioned how she was getting married the next day. Our professor was laughing and casually exclaimed "Wow, she is CO-mmitted... I'm just not sure what kind of committed!" It was an innocent remark but it holds so much more meaning than we give it credit. We associate institutionalization with crazy, to the point that mental illness is often synonymous with crazy or insane. The thing is that mental illness has had this inaccurate label placed on it for centuries, but it's wrong. Having depression, bipolar, or schizophrenia does not make a person crazy, it makes them sick. There is something chemically wrong with them, but there is a physical explanation. There is a reason why people with schizophrenia have a sudden switch when they hit a certain age- their chemical make-up changes. There is a reason why people with depression can't feel happy- they are lacking the chemicals that correspond to that type of response. Just because you can't see a mental illness doesn't make it any less real. You can't see diabetes, but nobody questions its existence. SAME FREAKING THING.
This has been a hard concept for me to grasp and I honestly haven't really grasped it entirely. I struggle with accepting my past and accepting my diagnosis. I struggle to comprehend what that means in my life and how it impacts my daily decisions. It's a lot easier to just say I'm crazy than try to find the words to express what I am feeling or why I reacted in a certain way. "Crazy" just explains it all away and then I never have to do the hard work of becoming self-aware. I had a friend who recently lectured me a bit on calling myself crazy. My casual, self-deprecating speech patterns cause more tangible self-hate in my life. By calling myself crazy, it diminishes my agency and increases the shame instilled by the ever-oppressing shroud of stigma. I hadn't ever realized how influential my thoughts and spoken words are on my actions. It's still easier to just say I'm crazy and avoid the harder conversations. I'd rather "own" my craziness than be ashamed of it or worry about what people will think of me. But I've realized that I need to have those harder conversations in order to move away from the shame. I need to push past this barrier of "crazy" in order to take more control of my life. If I let "crazy" be the dictator of my actions, my life will continue to reflect that. However, if I deal with my illness in a healthy manner, I can move towards becoming a whole person again.
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Tangent, as always. But really, let's not make light of serious situations. Let's take responsibility for the words that leave our mouths and think about the impact those words have on others. Let's begin to eliminate the jokes revolved around mental illness and institutionalization. It might be uncomfortable or awkward to point out the inappropriateness of a joke about suicide, but it's better than making suicide commonplace in our society. Let's stop suicide, let's stop the stigmatization of mental illness. Instead, let's start to develop tolerance and let's start to rethink our understanding of mental illness.
*Let's make more decisions with others in mind.
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