Amanda Bynes has entered rehab after leaving an L.A. hospital where she was being treated for mental illness. For months leading up to this obvious... painfully obvious diagnosis she was the laughing stock of so many people. What aggravates me is that people jumped on the bandwagon of apathy and ugliness toward this human being who was suffering from something she would not be able to get a handle on on her own. This is the reality of our society, where people who have these mental illnesses are not seen as people suffering but people to mock. Living with mental illness is so difficult and painful, not just for the person suffering from it but loved ones as well. 99% of people who mock or make fun of people with mental illness do not understand that yes, we do see what we are doing. Yes, we understand how crazy we act sometimes. No, no, no we cannot control it. There are people out there who whole heartedly believe that Amanda could control exactly what she was doing. No, she couldn't, obviously! She may have seen what she was doing and wanted so badly to stop how she was behaving, but when you are in the throws of an episode, it isn't so easy to just turn off the actions.
A lot of people with mental illness turn to drugs and alcohol to try and drown out the voices, the behavior, the actions, and thoughts that burn the mind. I was a heavy drinker and drug abuser in my youth because all I wanted was to stop the voices that pounded in my mind 24/7. Instead of looking at Amanda and saying to yourself, "bitch be crazy." Ask yourself, what if that were me? Mental illness does not discriminate. It does not care what your religious preferences are. It doesn't care the plans you made for the future. When it appears, it will try to destroy you. It taps into every reserve you have just to hold it together DAILY. It's exhausting. It is literally physically exhausting to live with mental illness. Anyone can recover from physical exhaustion with enough bed rest. But for those who live with and suffer from mental illness, that exhaustion never leaves because we spend our entire day just trying to hold ourselves in one piece to keep house, to work, to spend time with our loved ones, to be ok. We go to bed and can't sleep because our minds do not stop. And that only exacerbates the symptoms. It's a cycle vicious in nature and rarely are these things ever alleviated.
I remember a movie Diana Ross did so many years ago about mental illness. She played a woman who was pretty much out of control until she found a doctor who could help her and did help her. She got medication and treatment and was able to function again. One day she went to the corner store for a sandwich and a soft drink and on her way in she saw a homeless woman standing outside tending her cart with obvious OCD tendencies and she was talking to herself. While she was checking out the cashier made a comment about the woman standing outside. He was cruel and not at all empathetic. On her way back to her car she stopped by the woman and gave her her sandwich. That small gesture may have seemed small to anyone watching the movie who did not have mental illness, but that kind of kindness is rare for those of us who suffer from it. That is why I have a YouTube channel and a blog, to educate people about mental illness and why it is NOT funny.
I'm not sure when apathy became cool but it's sad and pathetic. We live in a cookie cutter society where one person looks exactly like the next and they say the same things and believe the same things and not one person can think for themselves. How sad is that? If people stopped for a second and took their faces out of the phones and saw the world for the reality it is, their minds would implode. Yes, reality sucks sometimes, but its honest.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Monday, September 9, 2013
Going to the Chapel (or City Hall) and we're Going to Get Married..... Same Sex Marriage
When I was 18, I was part of a group called GPA (Gay People's Alliance) in Normal, IL. Oh the Irony. We would do speaker bureaus to educate students at Illinois State University on homosexuals. We would speak to psychology majors during the part of the semester where they would learn about human sexuality. Our goal was to show people, especially those entering the field where they help people.
One of the things I was so shocked by was the pure anger and hate that came from some people. They hated us because we were gay; no other reason. They expressed in creative ways exactly how much we were destroying the world by our existence and how we were the fault of every bad thing that happened in the world. What they always failed to see, and even to this day, is that gay people, for the most part, about 99.99% of us are extremely docile. We are always the ones on the defensive, staving off verbal and physical attacks against us by people preaching and proclaiming they are acting in the way of god; any god.
Sadly, because of all the negativity I felt from those people, and after doing the bureaus for about two years, I just could not take the anger anymore and I stopped. Shortly after I met my first serious girlfriend, someone I would be with for six years, and though not legal, we did get "married."
During our time together, we watched our kind get killed, lesbians raped to change them, two men I knew died from complications from AIDS, and the gay revolution began. We lived near Champaign, IL. and it was very progressive compared to Bloomington/Normal where I grew up. We still faced hatred. I recall one evening, my then wife and I were walking through the parking lot of the mall, not bothering anyone, not talking to anyone, holding hands, and just enjoying an evening with mild weather and a sky full of stars. We walked by a car loaded with young women who were talking to each other but fell quiet when we walked by. We didn't let go of our hands but walked with heads held high and soon we heard them making gagging sounds and then one of them pretended to shot us.
Fast forward to 1996 when I moved to California. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. Moving there was like clipping the strings that bound my being and I could finally breath. The whole time I lived there I never faced issues with me being gay. It was incredible. I loved every minute I was there. But it wasn't meant to be and I left January 4th, 2000 and soon after I moved to Pooler, Georgia. It was close to Savannah but the culture shock was very apparent. And being gay was frowned upon. I missed my mother ship known as California but on July 7th, 2000 I met the woman who would become the love of my life.
When I say she is my One, my equal counter part, my love and my life, I am not exaggerating in the least. For everything weird quirk I may have, she offers a balance that keeps me grounded. In this entire world, she is the One. September 9th, 2000 we exchanged vows, making promises we have kept, and in our hearts we were married. Because then it wasn't legal anywhere. Then in 2003 it became legal in Belgium, then in 2005 Canada, in 2007 Germany, 2009 Sweden. But in June, 2004, it became legal in Massachusetts and the wild fire began to burn. Soon, one country after the next was passing same-sex marriage bills, and slowly, every so slowly in the United States, one state after the next started to pass similar bills while others passed bans. But what astonished me was not the states that banned same-sex marriage, but the ones that passed it. In 25 years from doing speaker bureaus to watching television and crying at the thought that I too could get married to someone I loved even though it would not be recognized in any other state made me feel that the revolution had picked up steam and was NOT... WAS NOT going to settle for crumbs while straight couples got the buffet.
Fast forward to September, 2013. The United States, months after declaring that keeping gays from marrying was unconstitutional, declared that gay couples who got married legally within the U.S. could now file joint Federal Taxes. Why is that a big deal? Why should anyone care? Because, a gay couple will pay 38,000 dollars more in taxes every year than a straight who are together for the same length of time. Melissa and I have been together for 13 years. We are still, in the words of our friends, in the honeymoon stage. We are still very much in love, very committed to each other, and very eager to share our lives together. So, on September 9th, 13 years after we had our commitment ceremony, we got our legal marriage license in Niagara Falls, NY. On September 10th we will be legally married. We will finally be recognized as a couple.
I started to cry after we got the license because it took 25 years, 25 long years, for this day to happen. In my life time I am experiencing this first hand and I will know, finally what it feels like to have my government consider me real and equal and protected.
One final note that deserves to be shared. When we went to city hall and filed for our license, we were met with congratulations and kindness. When we went out to dinner and shared why we were in NY, we were met with the same. Attitudes change, everything changes. And even though it may take a while and in some cases a long while, do not lose heart.
One of the things I was so shocked by was the pure anger and hate that came from some people. They hated us because we were gay; no other reason. They expressed in creative ways exactly how much we were destroying the world by our existence and how we were the fault of every bad thing that happened in the world. What they always failed to see, and even to this day, is that gay people, for the most part, about 99.99% of us are extremely docile. We are always the ones on the defensive, staving off verbal and physical attacks against us by people preaching and proclaiming they are acting in the way of god; any god.
Sadly, because of all the negativity I felt from those people, and after doing the bureaus for about two years, I just could not take the anger anymore and I stopped. Shortly after I met my first serious girlfriend, someone I would be with for six years, and though not legal, we did get "married."
During our time together, we watched our kind get killed, lesbians raped to change them, two men I knew died from complications from AIDS, and the gay revolution began. We lived near Champaign, IL. and it was very progressive compared to Bloomington/Normal where I grew up. We still faced hatred. I recall one evening, my then wife and I were walking through the parking lot of the mall, not bothering anyone, not talking to anyone, holding hands, and just enjoying an evening with mild weather and a sky full of stars. We walked by a car loaded with young women who were talking to each other but fell quiet when we walked by. We didn't let go of our hands but walked with heads held high and soon we heard them making gagging sounds and then one of them pretended to shot us.
Fast forward to 1996 when I moved to California. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. Moving there was like clipping the strings that bound my being and I could finally breath. The whole time I lived there I never faced issues with me being gay. It was incredible. I loved every minute I was there. But it wasn't meant to be and I left January 4th, 2000 and soon after I moved to Pooler, Georgia. It was close to Savannah but the culture shock was very apparent. And being gay was frowned upon. I missed my mother ship known as California but on July 7th, 2000 I met the woman who would become the love of my life.
When I say she is my One, my equal counter part, my love and my life, I am not exaggerating in the least. For everything weird quirk I may have, she offers a balance that keeps me grounded. In this entire world, she is the One. September 9th, 2000 we exchanged vows, making promises we have kept, and in our hearts we were married. Because then it wasn't legal anywhere. Then in 2003 it became legal in Belgium, then in 2005 Canada, in 2007 Germany, 2009 Sweden. But in June, 2004, it became legal in Massachusetts and the wild fire began to burn. Soon, one country after the next was passing same-sex marriage bills, and slowly, every so slowly in the United States, one state after the next started to pass similar bills while others passed bans. But what astonished me was not the states that banned same-sex marriage, but the ones that passed it. In 25 years from doing speaker bureaus to watching television and crying at the thought that I too could get married to someone I loved even though it would not be recognized in any other state made me feel that the revolution had picked up steam and was NOT... WAS NOT going to settle for crumbs while straight couples got the buffet.
Fast forward to September, 2013. The United States, months after declaring that keeping gays from marrying was unconstitutional, declared that gay couples who got married legally within the U.S. could now file joint Federal Taxes. Why is that a big deal? Why should anyone care? Because, a gay couple will pay 38,000 dollars more in taxes every year than a straight who are together for the same length of time. Melissa and I have been together for 13 years. We are still, in the words of our friends, in the honeymoon stage. We are still very much in love, very committed to each other, and very eager to share our lives together. So, on September 9th, 13 years after we had our commitment ceremony, we got our legal marriage license in Niagara Falls, NY. On September 10th we will be legally married. We will finally be recognized as a couple.
I started to cry after we got the license because it took 25 years, 25 long years, for this day to happen. In my life time I am experiencing this first hand and I will know, finally what it feels like to have my government consider me real and equal and protected.
One final note that deserves to be shared. When we went to city hall and filed for our license, we were met with congratulations and kindness. When we went out to dinner and shared why we were in NY, we were met with the same. Attitudes change, everything changes. And even though it may take a while and in some cases a long while, do not lose heart.
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