Love. Pride. Positivity.
Check out my side tags for my art, my hedgehog, and quick links to common tags I use.
My main fandoms are Overwatch, Marvel, LotR, Pokemon/Legend of Zelda/Nintendo.
My Battletag is HanzosNipple; message me if you want to play, or say hi if you run into me!
Once you're diagnosed, then they’ve really got you. Laugh too much, cry too much, talk too much, don’t talk enough - or, god forbid, get angry - and the people around you think you’re getting ‘sick’ again. And how likely are you to be believed about anything? Some people get beaten and raped in hospital, sometimes by staff. But if they complain about it, they may well be told they were hallucinating.
As a mental patient, you don’t just lose your credibility with other people, you’re taught not to believe in or trust yourself. You’re taught to doubt your own perceptions: they may be signs of your illness. It’s especially bad if you don’t think you’re sick. That means you have no ‘insight’ - the psychiatric term for agreeing with your doctor about what’s wrong with you and what should be done about it. If you fail to appreciate the nature of your illness, you will be deemed incompetent to make treatment decisions. As the process of declaring you mentally incompetent or incapable - carried out by psychiatrists, of course - allows other people to legally make decisions on your behalf, lack of insight can be ground for drugging you against your will.
Inktober (speedball calligraphy pen and India ink): Heracles being “cursed” with mental illness. The Greeks really knew how to humanize their heroes. I relate a lot to the struggle behind power, the difficulty of finding strength and solidarity.
I have a personal story to share that encompasses invisible disabilities, mental health, and ableism. There was this time where I went to hospital emergency with my best friend because I was clean out of places to go for professional support for my anxiety, and was told that the hospital would be my best bet because there was one right beside campus where I lived.
While in the waiting room, someone who was dressed as though they were a convict (orange jumper, handcuffs, and was accompanied by police officers) appeared. My friend and I were chatting, and ended up commenting amongst ourselves about how his shoes looked like Crocs. We made some joke about how being forced to wear Crocs was pretty serious punishment. This stranger who was passing by must have caught our conversation, because she commented something along the lines of:
“Shouldn’t he be sent to the mental health ward?”
(I can’t remember the exact quote as this was several months ago, but it connected the convict to “the mental health ward”)
After this person departed, I leaned over to my friend to try and make a joke about the one thing that was on my mind: “Hey, but isn’t that where I’m going?”
This stranger didn’t know that I was there for mental health help. She didn’t know why the convict (if he even was one) was there, either. Yet the assumption was made that he had a mental illness and I did not. I catch people nearly every day making comments like these that completely ignore the fact that there are disabilities and mental health issues that do not present visibly. Furthermore, to assume that someone has something on the basis of a stereotype, appearance, or symptom, is equally as problematic.
So stop making jokes about wanting to kill yourself. Stop using “depressed”, “insane”, “OCD”, “anxious”, and ableist language as adjectives. Stop bringing up suicide like it’s juicy gossip that doesn’t hurt the people around you who hear it. Although being invisible can be a real privilege at times, there are other times where people will invalidate you directly for not looking the part, or make hurtful comments your struggles without even knowing that you have them. A piece of advice I hear all the time is that you have no way of knowing anyone’s full story and struggle. It’s time for people to start thinking about that more when it comes to issues such as this. The message of this story is also exceptionally important regarding the similar way that sexuality and gender are not visible, but are heavily stereotyped or attributed to specific behavior.
Anyways, this hospital story luckily ended in me having a doctor that had a jawline so sharp that I bet it could open a letter, my pronouns being well respected, and my friend was able to finally get some studying done without being distracted in the waiting room. Plus, I got this fantastic story to help me explain invisible disabilities and mental health.
TLDR individuals with invisible disabilities are essentially ninjas and we will hunt you down
It’s very challenging for me to do, but I have on occasion been successful with channeling my anxiety attacks into artwork. It can calm me down, and as an artist, I want to capture my experiences visually. I refuse to be invisible. TW: there is some intensity with mental health in the writing, be wary of that if you’re trying to read it.
