Advice to a Bona Fide Teen

I read Raine's post (Raine's Days, check my list) about some kids' romance with bipolar, as in thinking its cool and wanting to mimic it.

The fact is, to mimic or being anything other than yourself is pathetic. Case in point, when I was in the hospital at the tender age of 16, having finally gotten off the ICU unit of a fairly nice mental hospital (that experience would make your toes curl and nails to fall off, I probably should write about that more. Romance factor: -1,000) and was transferred to the adolescent mental ward. Lots of kids with real, devastating problems: cutters, people who had been on serious drugs, including heroin, and all the major mental illnesses.

I do not know what the original problem was of a particular girl, but in an effort to get more attention and to be 'cool' she started to specifically take on the problems of those around her. Not because she had those problems, not because she was retarded, but because she did not feel special enough inside to be who she really was, and thought if she had the mental problems of the 'cool' people she would be more important and loved.

The very opposite became true. Instead, we all Knew what she was doing, Hello, mentally ill people are not Stupid people, ya know? We thought she was ridiculous, annoying, a poser, a cheese, and that turned to stupid b*tch, you know all the things she would have rather avoided, in short pathetic, pathethic, Pathetic!!

In the hospital, I would know I've been in several, you make friends with people. It's natural, because you need that human influence, you don't get well in a vacuum. But never, I mean NEVER (well, I have one exception, I email someone occasionally, but we are not best buds or hanging out all the time) do you hook up with these people after the hospital. I'm not being cruel, I'm saying you are not creating lifetime friendships in the hospital, whether that breaks your heart or not. You are there to get well. You go home, and pray you don't ever go back.

So the upshot for this poser individual is that not only was she disliked by the rest of us, but her healing was held back, because she put layers of crap upon herself by pretending to be like others and not herself, and I know she had a lot of stuff to work through and was still there when we were long gone.

If you want to act, join Drama Club. Get really good at it. If you want to pretend to be bipolar, do it on the stage. Maybe you'll be good enough to play my part when my book and screenplay come out. Otherwise, get off it, because nobody likes a poser. Honest.

Go to school pretending to be Captain Jack Sparrow. People will think your nuts. And honestly, it would be stupid but a better 'nuts' than faking bipolar.

I know the type. You think its cool to be self-destructive. I think that's what it's really all about. From time immemorial, there are kids trying cigarettes, pot, cocaine, heroin. I think they are either trying to be cool (PATHETIC), or self-medicating. Hmmm....self-medicating.

I don't know if modern society has yet come in line with my true belief that Kurt Colbain was self-medicating for bipolar. I guess they have. Well, now 10 years later, some kids have caught on and want to recreate the glorious, romantic, rocker lifestyle.

Kurt Colbain was given The Curse, so huge that he used a drug that is immediately addictive on the FIRST try, and gives an enourmous high, yes, but it's hell, how do you get off it? Why would you feel the need to keep doing it to yourself? Nothing but HORRIBLE PAIN. If you think emotional pain is not real, you are in the wrong place, reading the wrong blog, and frankly not in the real world. He destroyed himself with it, because of it, because of uncontrollable ups and downs, and all the personal problems that we all have, even more so because his bipolar was just not dealt with right.

And that would be with real meds. I take a slew myself. I treasure my sanity and KNOW that it would Not Be Possible Without Medication. But its like being a diabetic, having to remember every day, niners, fivers, and niners, and mix the crap every day or week. I have mentally ill friends that are shocked by the amount of stuff I have to take. Don't disrespect me and and all the others by faking something that in truth requires a butt-load of medicine, therapy, psychiatrist visits, with your silly amateur crap. You're going to have to deal with life sometime.

Please fake a brain injury before you fake bipolar.

You can't fake it, we can all tell when you are, No one, not your friends, family or any true mentally ill person wants to be lied to and if you don't have a solid personality, no one is going to feel comfortable talking to you anyway. Focus on the gold inside you, I swear it's really there.

I think maybe people want to be Kurt or any other genius person with a monster illness because he was Cursed and alternately, Blessed. He was given the music gift, and I am sure so many would love to have that. But the truth is, his illness was so powerful that it destroyed Everything: his gift, his family, his Life. Pay tribute to him by not only playing his music, but by loving the different, in yourself and others, and focus on who You are. Or by God, so many other problems will ensue and you'll wish you had stuck to your own real ones.