madness

 Madness is a funny thing. It's a horror movie trope, a psychiatric label, a societal label. To me, though, it's an identity in and of itself.

The first Mad moment in my life that I can recall is my first memory of plurality. I was eight years old, barely, and had just been informed I was going to move over 4000 miles later that same week, and I vividly remember telling my mum in the kitchen that I "didn't feel like myself." I knew who I felt like, but somehow, I knew it was Mad to admit to, and so I didn't admit. 

I was a Mad teenager, too. I would (allegedly) go into piles of old prescription drugs laying around my house and take whatever I could find that'd get me a buzz. It became routine. I'd self-harm with anything I could get my hands on, so long as it wasn't obvious, because again, I knew it was Mad. No one had taught me explicitly anything of the concept of Madness, yet I knew Mad was bad.

In my late teens and early twenties, I really went Mad. Starting SSRIs for the first time after a hidden (again, Mad is bad) suicide attempt triggered something within me which I now know to be (hypo)mania. I would spend years paranoid of being followed, stabbed, stalked, raped. I would have fleeting visions of shadows moving in the darkness of my room at night. I would talk, and talk, and talk. I would return to my teenaged obsession with self-harm and substances. I would feel the hum of electricity under my skin. Then, I would collapse under the weight of it all, being so depressed and hopeless I could barely take care of myself for months on end. I wished for nothing but to die, and it took my lowest (and highest) points to get me to see anyone about this. Again, Mad is bad.

This culminated, obviously, in a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. I should clarify that, although I had well researched and agreed with antipsychiatry by this point, I sought out this diagnosis. I wanted it, because I know from experience that drugs help me, just not the ones I can get on the street or from my GP. For me, my diagnosis wasn't an explainer of my self, but a means to an end; drugs. I had, by then, started to figure out how to explain my self through the lens of Madness.

When you become psychiatrised - your behaviour and person seen through the lens of mental illness and disorder - it is tempting to take on that medicalisation as a facet of your identity. I used to. I was clinically depressed, and I had DID, probably OCD, and some sort of psychotic disorder. It can feel like saying "hey, it's not me, it's my biology." Being all antipsychiatry, though, I learnt to reject that. I learnt to instead embrace the idea that I was never broken, that I was whole in myself, and that I was allowed to exist as I am. I had freedom and autonomy, or I at least deserved it.

This, to me, is what being Mad is. It's a rejection of the label Madness meaning "you're crazy and need to be fixed." Instead, it embraces the person behind the diagnostic label in their entirety. It means moving beyond the label, the medical model, the "fixing," the academics, into radical self-acceptance and love. Madness is to me what queerness is, or transness is. A layer of my identity that is simply me, who I am, nothing pathological or to be fixed. Something that makes me, me.

Now, I move through the world as Mad. Mostly against my will - I would never choose psychiatric abuse, labelling for life, oppression. I take neuroleptics and an SSRI, I go to the day hospital, I deal with doctors upon doctors, I need help through moments of psychosis and suicidal ideation, I have a plan in place with my girlfriend for if I ever get sectioned under the Mental Health Act, I get accommodations at my university for my "illness." I'm aware that, if I'm seen at the wrong moment, I get stares, cops called on me, shunned as "that crazy person down the street," dangerous.

Despite it all, I quite like my Mad mind. It's not that I don't want to feel better - I don't think anyone wants to live terrified and miserable. But, I don't have to be "fixed" to not be terrified and miserable. This is why you can scream at me about being anti-recovery or whatever the fuck. I don't want to be fixed - I want to be surrounded by loving friends and family, the things I love, do the activities that make me happy, be my truest self. I want to be embraced as I am, shown I don't have to be scared or lonely or miserable. I want to be seen as Mad, and I want Mad to be a good, valuable, trait that shows people that psychiatrisation isn't the (only) way. We can be Mad and happy, whole, human.