Stigma

I started writing publicly about mental illness in 2009, right after I joined Facebook. I wanted people to see the reality of my life—raw and uncensored.

Back then “mindfulness” and “positivity” were everywhere. If you didn’t perform gratitude 24/7, you were labeled “negative” and avoided like a contaminant.

In Los Angeles, where image is everything, that culture was especially brutal.

I was met with so much resistance. After posts about CPTSD, triggers, anger, or my very real bipolar depression, people told me I “liked being angry” or that I “looked for the negative in everything.”

These were lies. I was the opposite—I’m a realist and also an eternal optimist. I always tried to find the silver lining.

But honesty made people uncomfortable, and instead of sitting with that discomfort, they gaslit me.

I lost friends for being open. I was told it was “inappropriate” to talk about mental illness in public and that I should “just journal it.” No one wanted to hear that shit.

All I wanted was to be seen and accepted for who I was—and to do my part to break the stigma. Instead, I became a pariah.

But I didn’t stop. The people who mattered stayed, and I kept spilling my guts— inspiring some, disgusting others. The ones who felt contempt mistook vulnerability for weakness.

Then COVID hit. Lockdown. Isolation. Suddenly the rest of the world experienced a taste of the misery so many of us had lived with for years. It got so bad that when I moved to Portland, not a single psychiatrist was taking new patients.

Eventually, people stopped tearing me down for my honesty and started propping me up because of it. They finally understood where I’d been coming from. They stopped telling me to “think positively,” because they couldn’t, either.

Every now and then I still run into a “good vibes only” dweeb, and sometimes it still triggers me. But after everything I’ve survived, I just don’t have the patience or energy to entertain them.

They’re bullies, and I refuse to hand over my power ever again.