Lowerarchies

    In my early years of mental illness, I was in agony all the time but was able to hide a lot of my illness to the point where a lot of people just thought I was some kind of selfish loser with a bad attitude.  I always kind of wished that I had less pain and more visible symptoms so I could get credit for being mentally ill but felt better.  My illness now is a little bit like that, and though I am definitely heartbroken about a lot of it, I would like to say that I was kind of right about some of the way I thought that it might be nicer to have a more obvious illness with less pain.  And my symptoms now are very crazy schizophrenia symptoms that are considered by many to objectively be the worst mental illness that a person can have.  But as a person with that privileged status, I would like to say that any mental illness and even heartbreak that isn't mental illness can zap people as much as any other category.  Depression and anxiety seem so normal, almost like healthy human emotions, but they can both be entire disorders that devastate people beyond comprehension.  I have had all kinds of different depression feelings before, and some different kinds of anxiety, and I just want to say that they are not lesser mental illnesses in any way than the stuff that makes me talk to myself and hit myself in the middle of a job interview. And I still think no matter what I say, people will never understand how painful depression can be, and how debilitating anxiety can be, but I will still say that if people tell me they are so sorry that I have schizoaffective disorder and a whole mess of other symptoms, I might genuinely say sometimes, that "at least it's not PMS."