I Wish Kanye West Never Told the World He Was Bipolar
Or why we should stop making a trend out of mental illness
When I was first diagnosed in 2007, my psychiatrist didn’t tell me I had bipolar disorder. He told me I had manic depression. The diagnosis made me feel like my world was ending right in front of my eyes.
It sounded like a death sentence to me.
I didn’t know anyone else with manic depression. There wasn’t much information on the internet about it. I couldn’t share it with my friends because I feared the stigma that might go with it. Only when certain people would confront me about my perceived “oddness” would I tell them what was wrong with me. They would end up joking about it, humiliating me in front of others, and calling me a crazy b*tch and a nut job every time I would do something they would deem out of the ordinary.
Mental illness is still uncomfortable and unglamorous.
It was a tough time.
I closed up even more and made my circle small. Whenever I would try to share my diagnosis with a close friend or boyfriend, our relationship would quickly fizzle out, and it would leave me alone in the darkness. I completely stopped talking about my manic depression for many years. My friends just…
