So You Have Mental Illness

As you are well aware at this point, I fought like the dickens to not accept my illness. I would not identify with it at all. I had at this point even tried to work as the 8th grade Science Teacher but that ended in failure. I had to ask myself at this point, was I really being realistic or not. Were all the people surrounding me correct; I was disabled with mental illness.

It took me years to finally accept the fact. So, now what do you do with your life. I had many opportunities to volunteer as I mentioned before but none of them stroked my fancy. I tried some but my life was a shambles. I needed more in my life and I didn't know how to get it. My family who had ostracized me from their lives were not there to condemn me for trying to teach. However, the surrogate family, which was my partner's were. They tried to encourage me to think about getting involved with volunteering.

Here is a point that I would like to bring forth, no one professional or otherwise could assist me in determining what I could do with my life. It wasn't like I was in my late 70's, I was in my early 50's and could still participate in society. As I mentioned before, many professionals would say, "Just sit and relax; you worked hard in your life."

Finally, now almost 20 years later, a therapist did mentioned something which was a turning point in my life. He said, "you are not the disease, but you have the illness." That was so important to me to understand that I like the rest of the world had a health problem, but I didn't have to identify with the problem. I was an individual that had a health problem but I was not the health problem. How many people walk around and are told they have this disease or that but do they really identify as being that disease? This was a pivot point in my life and one that would change my whole outlook to the direction that I would and can go.

Now once this information was integrated into my mind I looked at all that I had done and said to myself, well, that was a wrong way to handle this disease. I started looking at the disease as an obstacle that I could go around or over not one that blocked my path. It WAS passable and I knew that I could do something about it. So, I went into teaching again but this time knowing that I could not handle 8th graders; went into teaching college students. I enjoy this and know that the horizon is wide open to me. I know that I have limitations but they are manageable. My second message to professionals is to allow the consumer to understand that they ARE NOT THE DISEASE but they have an illness.

Thank you for reading.