Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth." Genesis 9:13

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Am I wrong?

Another blog I read has me thinking a lot. Because I'm me and I live my life and probably because of my experiences with psychiatric patients I have a very strong, firm belief that some, not all, but some, severely mentally ill people can live extremely normal lives. I know that it is possible to respond to meds even after psychosis and live a fairly normal, medicated existence. I know from my own life, it's possible to have a lot wrong and still live normally.

I've been kind of stunned to learn from this blog (not one related to mental illness) that all the readers who have discussed this in the comments think that severe mental illness automatically means it is going to be very hard to have a good relationship with someone and they laugh at the idea of dating someone with mental illness.

But what makes a mentally ill person totally ineligible to be loved that way? Am I missing something? Because I know that for me there are certainly mentally ill people I would not mix myself up with, and I actually had to very forcefully eject a friend from my life because her mental illness caused me too many huge problems, but there are many, many people who are without any mental illness who I would stay far, far away from.

Right now I feel like I've just learned that there is no hope for yet another thing in life. And I find it so unfair. I asked and I wanted honest answers, but I didn't expect that NOBODY would agree that there is any chance I could be worth dating. Which makes me wonder how far that goes. Does that mean I'm not worth being friends with? Not worth talking to? Is it scary to share space with me? Where does this stop?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are wrong about one thing--my commenter's were not laughing at the idea of me dating someone with a mental illness--they were laughing about me dating anyone at all!! LOL.. It has been a LOOOONG time.

Would I be in a serious relationship with someone was had major depression? Yes.

Schizophrenia or Bipolar. NO. It's just me. I have seen how that didn't work for my grandma or my aunt or my mom. I have seen and felt the horrible things my Bipolar father has done. I will never, ever date someone like him. No questions asked. He is completely functional in life, but completely incompetent to have a serious, kind relationship.

We have all had different experiences, so I think we will have to agree to disagree one this one.

Anonymous said...

It is unfortunate to read that there are people who immediately put those with mental illnesses on their "un-dateable" list because I'll never be on their list. (My roommate's un-dateable list includes men under 5'8" and hairy men! LOL )

Maybe it's just me, but I can't say whether I would or wouldn't ... it absolutely depends on the person. I am sure that there are people I interact with daily who are bipolar or schizophrenic who are compliant with their medication and are being treated correctly and I don't even know it. How am I to say that I wouldn't date someone who had to take drugs to feel "normal"?

I guess that if I run into someone who has those with a mental illness on his un-dateable list, it's better for me because then I won't ever have to put up with him!

*hugs*

Talia said...

Hi visiting from Sarah's blog

I think a lot of people with mental illness have doubts about their lovability but given the high proportion of people with mental illness it would be ridiculous to exclude people on that basis. Unfortunately there is still a lot of stigma around mental illness.

I think you should get to know someone before you start discussing mental illness because it clouds the issue.