I am more than my mental illness

I have been bounced in and out of therapy for the past 12 or 13 years. I have been told that I am to difficult, that I dont try.  I am given medication and have to deal with the side effects and multiple changes and looking for the right combination to stop the negative thoughts. I am labeled. My mental health treatments follow me with each therapist I go to.  My difficulites, my progress or lack there of is just laid out for the next therapist to see. Im a difficult client, I dont listen, I dont try.  I am depressed, I am a self harmer, I am silent about a lot of things.  The doctors and therapist label me before they know me. I label myself before I go to them based on what I have been told, based on what i have heard. I am able to hide behind the labels, I am able to find comfort within the various labels, while at the same time hating that I am different.  I have trouble deciding if I am normal or not.  I dont fit in but then add on a few mental problems and I just become a walking statistic. I am looked at differently, I am talked about, talked down to because there is something wrong with me. No one saw the problem with this.  I did not see the problem or understand what I was doing  and allowing to happen to myself.

My illnesses became my comfort zone. I am comfortable being called depressed because that gives me a reason to say i cant do anything because i cant get out of bed. It makes it a little more acceptable to have the suicidal thoughts because that is what depressed people do.  Who cares if I hide in my house, if I never speak to anyone?  My depression stops me form engaging with others and it becomes an excuse, a hinderance.

For years I have moved through the mental health system, I have seen the doctors, the therapist, the pyschiatrists. I have been passed along from one place to another, started over and expected to work with numerous people that i do not know. I have been told that some are not comfortable working with my particular illness, I have been misunderstood within my labels. I have been hurt by my labels but still I preferred the labels over the idea of claiming my life and myself.  I was comfortable being seen as 'sick', I wanted someone to pay attention to me, without hurting me.

Lately it is bothering me more that I am only seen by my labels both by myself and others in the mental health field that i interact with.  I am the good patient, I go to my appointments, i take my medicine, i talk to the therapist, i admit my feelings and hope that I am not put in the hospital because I am unstable. Yet, I work, I live on my own, I have my own life, I have expectations, needs, and wants just like anyone else.  My mental illness did get in the way of my life, it has gotten in the way of my life but I am noticing it now.  The difference is that now I am learning to work through the depression, to work through the urges to self harm.  I am learning how to relax and ask for help.  I am a person living with mental illness.  The illness does not control me.  The illness does not label who i am or what I can accomplish.  I wont allow anyone else to label me, but at the same time I have to learn not to label myself. I have behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that i deal with on a daily basis.  Yes, some days it is hard to get out of bed, hard to face the world.  My illness does not have such a tight grip on me these days, and I am learning to move past what others may look down on me for.  I am more than my mental illness, I am a person, I have friends who understand my struggles but they do not label me.  They do not make me different.  There is no me and them, there is just us. That is all there needs to be.